Annoying Load Screens

So my friend quit guild wars and let me use his account for the time being, and so i download the client off the internet, and log on then choose a character, and to my dismay, i have to download 19 thousand files before i can even land in the marketplace! And it's annoying, when i go to random arena's theres like 1 thousand files to load, and when it finishes the match is already over.... And now i come in like half way of the match which is really annoying. And also every map i haven't been too yet i find myself having to download 500-4000 files. So tell me if I installed it off the CD would i have the same problem? And tell me if you also experienced this before.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10169426

Is that what your talking about?

Yes if you downloaded it off the cd's you would have the same problem. Use the -image function like Vix said. It is because of updates to the game that you have to download things.

Edit: Yes that is what he is talking about. However that does it a long way. I won't post pics but I can explain. Make a guild wars shortcut icon on your desktop. Right click the icon. Go down to Properties and click it. It will have a word "Target" then the link to where guild wars is saved to on your comp. just type -image at the end of it. Run guild wars and it will download everything. Then go remove it and you will be able to run the program and actually play.(Leaving in the -image will not let you play. Atleast it won't for me.) Make sure you put a space between what is already written in the Target and the -image. Hope I explained it well enough

But thats the issue, the only computer of mine (i know vista blows) that can support guild wars is a vista, so yeah. Also i'm wondering do i just leave it on log in screen, or do i have to load a map?

And then you take that switch off when you want to play the game since -image won't actually let you play the game.

Ok problem fixed, i'm going to play starcraft while i wait....

I guess this method downloads the files for all Campaigns even if you only have access to one?

Yes, it downloads everything you don't already have.

You can also copy gw.dat to any portable storage device and transfer it to another computer to avoid the downloads.

Roughly how large is the .dat file?

I'm only running Prophecies at the moment, so it doesn't seem worth downloading everything. I'm planning on getting the other campaigns at some point though, so if it isn't too big, it might be worth it to save the loading times.

My .dat is 3.6 gig for all 3 campaigns and EotN.

Thanks. Doesn't sound too bad, and the download speed seems pretty good at unsociable hours, so I may aswell do it