Downloading when entering the game?

How come sometimes when i log into my character, i have to download some files, and other times i don't?

Jimmy it is due to anet fixing bugs, making skill changes and other stuff to make guild wars a more prosperous and conventient. happens a few times a week good luck man and god bless ^ ^

Awww man, so annoying on this 56k connection, lol. Got home and just wanted to pop in for half hour or so, and spent the whole time downloading. haha

Thank you for the quick reply!

If you happen to be curious what changes are included in the download you are waiting to finish, you could check this page for updates: http://www.guildwars.com/support/gameupdates/

you could also set up a shortcut to connect to anets server and download the updates, then close when it's finished. It's what I do before I play, if there's a download, I go do something else and come back later.

To do this, copy your gw shortcut and rename to gw image. right-click on the shortcut and go to properties. in the target line of the properties window, add -image after all the other text that is there. There is more specific info on it here on the forums. I'll look it up and edit this post with some more information.

EDIT:

Here's a link to a thread regarding gw switches and how to use them.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=94814

Thank you, that will come in handy.

Hmmm, it seems i'm thinking of another thing....

The downloads i'm talking about is after i choose a character and go to log on, before it loads the map it downloads files sometimes (last night i got on fine, today there was downloads, got off and back on fine... and now more downloads.) What the hell?

the game only downloads the files necessary to load whatever area you happen to be in, therefore, if you go to a new area, you will need to download that areas maps and info. If you image the game as mentioned above, you will have downloaded everything and should not need to download anything except game updates. However, you will still need to decompress areas you are loading, which is what i think may be what you're talking about.

Edit:

forgot to mention that apparently there is a big update today. I'm still at work so I haven't been able to download it.

Double Edit:
Since you're on dialup, be prepared for a very long download if you are imaging for the first time. My GW.EXE file is like 3 gigs

Yeah i downloaded that update earlier, but i guess i will let the image thing run all night... if i have to cancel it in the middle do i gotta start all over?

i think so, but i'm not sure.

good luck. i'm off work now and got to go do some errands.

If i can't pause the download, or pick it up later... I don't have a chance downloading all that. I've never managed to get over 300mb without a corrupt file on 56k.

Get DSL then. My truly unlimited 8MB DSLMax line only costs £14.99pm and is cheaper than most 56k dial-up connections. I notice that you're in the US of A, so I would have thought that DSL is pretty widespread and cheap for you given all the different ISP's you guy's have. Hell, don't Walmart do DSL these days?

Its $14.99 a month here, but my dads a cheap ass and won't pay. We get dial-up service free.

I let it run for 12 hours... 4%, this is gonna take a looong time...