A tip for people with lag

Just thought I'd pass this on for what it is worth. I contacted customer support about the constant background downloads, 'cause my laptop seemed to lag more when they were taking place. I was told I could download the entire game in one go, and no longer have the background downloads. This took a while to do, but once it was done, it was helpful.

To download all the available game data, type all of the the following in
Start->Run (including the quotes):

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

[Or if your game path is different, obviously enter the proper path to the gw.exe file]

I run this whenever there is an update to make sure I get everything at once.

i think almost everybody here knows this already thats old news but thxs anyways

ROFL I didn't know we all popped out of the womb knowing everything there was to know about GW. I think people who are new to the game might just disagree that they knew this already...lol - I didn't know it, but perhaps I should have absorbed it from the ether, or somewhere...like...that.

Theres a thing in Tech Corner for lagg and a bit on all the command switches in community works


Thanks though

Well there are already a few threads discussing the -image switch and other switches as well like the -nosound. These can be found in places like the technician's corner where they belong more than in the Q&A. Here is a very well detailed thread on the different switches you can use http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=94814.

It's nice to post it though as i agree that not everyone might know about this, i'd just like to point out that the information isn't just in the ether, it's on a lot of forums and mentioned on a fair amount of threads too just hard to find sometime.

Thanks for posting...new players don't always know where and how to find great tweaks like these.

New players? Heck, I've been playing since the February beta weekend and didn't know about it! Yessir, 3844.5 hours of game play and had no clue...over 3 million experience and completely clueless...then again, I've never had much of a lag problem...even now that I've been forced to give up my precious cable connection and switch to nasty DSLzes...still not an issue...precious...it was mine, my own and they tooks it from us! Nasty little Hobbitses....but I digress. It may be the wrong place for it....maybe there are already threads on it....may even be common knowledge to many....but I appriciate the effort and sentiment behind the post...as for the less-then positive responses to the post...well, just ignore the cave trolls...

thanx i never knew about this either 35k files

i'm glad a few people found it helpful, even if it was posted in the wrong place... at the wrong time, hehe.

As a new player, i'm still figuring out a lot of things, and locating information like I posted would have been virtually impossible since I wouldn't have known what it was I was searching for (i.e. give me a "switch" that reduces my lag problem.... hm, i don't think so).

btw - i can't locate any threads because the search function doesn't work for me here... so that's my excuse and im sticking to it.

Maybe this thread should be -->MOOOOVED--> to the tech place.

No worries. For every person that knew of this already, there is a person that didn't know about it. Not everyone spends their time searching random things on the forum... so I am sure this thread was useful for many.

oh dont worry, there are always plenty of people who dont know about such things... it's always good that people post these sort of things even though others say its "old news"...

You could always delete your GW dotbak file and redown load everything and do as above mentioned.We did this in beta deleted our files.

thx for this. ive been playing since the game came out, and i didnt know this.

cool, been playing since day1 uk release, didnt know this. 31k files currently downloading, thanks

Everyone should know this, but people obviously still do not. After any major update, people complain about lag, a significant portion of those lag complaints are attributable to players not fully updating their game.

If you play Guild Wars without ever doing a -image, you are doing yourself and the game a disservice. The streaming tech is great and works well but it does impact the fluidity of the game and slows load time, etc.

Peeps need to remember to remove/or not use -image switch when they wish to just play the game because, of course, the game won't load.

Well, to be honest, I found it much easier to solve these sorts of problems in WoW. Their main website is better organized for finding tech information and I had to revert to customer support FAR less often. And while I'm on the subject, I also found their CS more informed as well. Though I give credit to the person who passed on the switch information to me. But, having gotten nowhere with other questions to gw cs, this time I actually requested a real-live answer and asked that they please not give me a pre-scripted response like "blah blah blah - background downloads are part of the game - blah blah blah".

Cool, thanks for the tip! I have been player for over a year and didn't know this.

Yeah -image is good, but only do it once in a while or once when you just install the game and want everything in one go. Also good if your .dat file get corrupted and you need a fresh one. Be sure to have room for the download files as well 4-5 gb, i think. Don't forget to delete the -image after you done as well.

I'm sure I seen this tread in Tech Q&A before, wasnt it get locked by a mod? Anyway -image is good take a while to do but worth it.

This has been said a couple of times in this thread and i want to clear it up - you create the image using the Start->Run menu, but the program is not launched from there. [Who launches GW that way? Anyone?] It's normally launched from a shortcut, so the -image in the Start-> Run menu has no bearing on using the shortcut. There's nothing you need to delete or change in order to run the game afterwards using your regular shortcut.

I also see no problem in running it when there is an update. It only downloads the new files, not the whole image. If you try to run it when the image is up to date, nothing happens.

Now, if your .dat file is corrupted, are you saying to delete the .dat file and run the image afterwards?

How would you know it was corrupted?

When you first open Guild Wars, the gray box that opens will say "Repairing Data Archive" - it takes 5-10 min to fix itself