Is there any reason why...

iv just started the game, and i ve been playing it loads yesterday, and i just start up factions to go to the harbor and i have to download of 9000 files? i no there are updates but not that much :S

At first I thought it was the Nightfall PvP Event, but then it started downloading for Cavalon (Luxon town).

Wonder why?

GW downloads the updates "Just-In-Time", not "Just-In-Case" like most other self-updating games. This means that when an update is released, you download only the essential files needed to get into the next zone. Remaining files will be either streamed down when you are idle (such as when you are in the character selection screen) or just when you need them (such as entering a zone for the first time). Apparently you had many files queued for download, accumulated over several previous updates. Which is perfectly normal, if you really started out recently.

IIRC, PvP event update consisted of 1400+ file updates. The rest up to 9000 should have been the files you have never downloaded yet.

OK, but I've visited Cavalon many, many times. Why would it need to update for the Event?

I think if you right-click the GW shortcut, go top properties and where it says: "

Target: "C:\Program Files\Guild Wars\Gw.exe"

change it to "C:\Program Files\Guild Wars\Gw.exe -image"
(note the space before '-image')

This downloads and decompresses everything so you won't encounter these massive downloading sessions. Once everything is downloaded and decompressed, GW will just close and change the Target back to the original (i.e. remove the '-image').

The downloading session might take up to an hour depending on your connection speed.

Hope that helps.

i think it should be "C:\Program Files\Guild Wars\Gw.exe" -image

note the position of the " "

its worth doing that, i just left it going and went to watch TV for a while, saves a load of hassle in the long run, but basically as Ishmael says it downloads essential files for getting into the game and the first place you appear in you then download these extra files, you have to download them and cannot avoid them, so as soon as you entered the game you were obviously in Cavalon first so you downloaded them before appearing in Cavalon.

Probably updated or new textures, sounds, items, etc. Perhaps the skins needed for the new classes. True, it was not possible to see a Paragon in Cavalon (hey, that rhymed! I should write a poem below it.) but I would guess determining the truly unnecessary files such as those would be an unnecessary hassle, so the game downloaded all graphics for all characters regardless.