I don't understand why people are complaing about the slow fps, game or graphics lag or whatever. Come on guys do you people ever take a look at the graphic options? I guess not.
Let me tell you I have a freaking Geforce 2 TI which is a card that aint for sale anymore and more then 6 years old. It doesn't support directx 9, shaders or post processing effects, and you ever heard me complaining about a overheated gfx card? No, so what to do?
First of all make sure you updated your gfx card drivers which basicly fix old problem that could case fps drops in newer games. Ati card are really famouse about these problems with drivers and OpenGL (which is being used for games)
When done, open up the game and tweak your GuildWars, like low shader detail, less world detail, turn off post process effects when you have a card that doesn't do it too well and don't turn up your anti-aliase too high which really fries your gfx card. Now that's it, in my case I even tweaked the sound in game which give me a little fps more. I run the game on my Geforce 2 TI at 20/50 fps and in big towns around 15/25 fps. Just play around with the graphic settings. 1gb of MB Ram is also really handy, and don't run more then 1 program else then GW durning gaming (I run normally winamp for music) because that drops your fps in some cases.
Last time a friend of mine bought a new gfx card, you know why? he installed the game, the game set everything high and he didn't change it, so he though, wth my gfx card is outdated. Not really because if he had changed just the anti aliase or turn down the shaders, it was perfect. :/ I know even people who bought a complete new pc because they thought there pc couldn't handle it, but instead they played the game on maxed graphics and yes that will always drop your fps. Games there graphics are always made that way that only the newest stuff gfx, processors or another technology can run the game with 60fps and maxed out graphics, and yes some gfx card can't do that, so then you have to tweak the game to run it smooth but with less.
On my laptop I have an Ati 600 mobile, and that one runs it all maxed out and jeee that looks really eyecandy, but it can handle the stuff without problems.