gettin back into guildwars

hello all. i originally played GW when it was first released, then again when factions was released. now i decided to get nightfall and boot up GW again. my question is, is there any way to get around having to dl the 9000+ files per map for my chars or do i just have to grin and bear it? or would installing nightfall remedy this situation?

any tips would be appreciated.

Installing from the Nightfall CD will help a little, but you will still be facing a huge download. Nothing ever stays the same in GW and there have been a lot of changes since Nightfall was released.

My current dat file is 3.26GB. Welcome back.

great, mien is only 2gb lol

Installing nightfall will help as it will install any files it has on the cd leaving only changed files to be downloaded, if you can and want to you can let it download everything overnight or while you are away.
Just add -image to the end of the target of GW icon.
So it should look like this :

"C:\Program Files\Guild Wars\Gw.exe" -image

( of course the location will be different if you installed in a different place)
When it has downloaded all the files remove the -image part and you wont have to download anything ( until there are updates)
It can take a while to download everything , so keep that in mind.

thanks, only 51000+ files to go