56k - Few Questions b4 Buying

I first played guild wars a year ago on dial up, and was crushed after downloading files and files just to load me character to download more files. Lol. So after 3 years of playing WoW (just quit btw) im ready to try this game again. Now i hear people use the -image in the shortcut icon and what not, but what my question is.

I plan to get the first guild wars that came out.

1. When i need to download all those files through the -image, how can I go about installing the game on a computer that has High speed, and being able to download what i need, without having to load any files back home (56k) and being able to transfer what i need from one computer to another. Should i use a USB drive and just store it there, bring that home and replace the gw.dat file or whatever it is? or buy a blank disc and use that? How big are the files that need to be downloaded in order to play without downloading any extra content?

2. What exactly needs to be done? From fresh install to being able to play without downloading files before i play, what exactly does -image download?

Thanks for the help

Well no other way have to Download the files when the screen load those files in the map. But im like you 3 years ago i had Dial Up when i first play GW it was very fast but when it got more popular the Dial up tended to slow down alot and the game was getting crappy so my adise to you is to have the Game DL files it will take awhile at first once the game gets the files DL then you load in sec but you will have huge D/C's on GW with Dial Up, i know from exp with GW on Dial Up. There is trick you can do with it check your once in awhile when you see huge files that are DL cancel the game, yes cancel it. Restart it when you do the File Count will drop but the amount of files that are DL and will DL rest of files but at faster rate, that what i did it helped me alot. With all the Content Anet has added you will be rofly DL over 8k files.

1. There's a Guild Wars client you can download from the Guild Wars website (link). Install that and use the gw.exe with -image on your high speed connection and then move the gw.dat when it's done.

2. -image downloads everything. Get it done once and all you have to download after that are the new updates that come out.

I did the same thing when I got my new PC, but I just transfered it from 1 PC to another. So far my Gw.dat file is 6.5gb so you may want something like a dvd and then simply replace your current Gw.dat with the new one.

Pretty sure that -image will download everything, so once its finished you will only need to download small files when there is a new update.

Rath beat me to it

Putting it on a DVD is the best thing to do that way you always have a backup with you incase your hard drive crashes...or windows decides it wants a reinstall.

Don't worry, I think you got the filesize more right. I forgot that I haven't done the -image since my most recent Guild Wars installing, so that 3 GB isn't the full gw.dat.

A guildie of mine has 56k and it takes him overnight to download the files using -image. He also is subject to frequent disconnects and load times that take quite a long time. He has subsequently taken a break from GW until he gets a faster connection.

Me and a buddy use to play both on a Dial-up connection and it worked fine for us. So I'm sure it should be fine for you :P

Agree with the rest .. just use the -image shortcut and copy the gw.dat file to your pc .. Then just before you plan to take part in the weekend event run your game with -image overnight.. Should work great

If you have an external hard drive, you could just use that to keep all programs on. Use the hi speed connection that you have on another computer and download it all onto the external, then just bring it home and play it off the external, never putting it on your main hard drive. You may have difficulties when an event comes (Christmas, Halloween) and you have to download all that information. It used to take about an hour to download all that update when I had dial-up way back then.