English

Ah, it wasn't just ages old data then that got it so big for me - good to know. (it where less than 5 GiB when I started playing Ryzom)

Because it contains the downloaded patches which still need to be unpacked.
Those are files with just the patch-id as filename - no indication for which client they are.
So these contain changes to the runtime data as well and not "just" the content and config data.