help, purchased elemental war of magic and cant get impulse to work correctly

i purchased the game today, only to find out it had shipped with tons of bugs and required a sizable patch, i registered the game successfully on impulse, then i downloaded all 183.77 meg's of the update, then impulse went to a verifing status and has hung there for the last 3 hours, i havent been able to do anything to get it to resolve.  i remember using impulse in the past and hating it, and now i pay $50 dollars for a game i have to patch and then deal with another buggy interface to try and even play the game, obviously i am very unhappy and looking for a quick resolution to this problem.  it shouldnt take 5 hours to get a brand new game to work out of the box, this is ridiculous.