Loading Maps

So I decided to play GW again after a huge break. Its taking me almost 2 hours to load each map... That's ridiculous! Is there a way to speed up this process?

Isn't loading maps something done by the processor/memory/videocard/harddrive and not your internet?

Post specs....

You mean all the extra files you have to load up on each map ( 500+)

theres a way to Force load all the files, so you don't have to load those ase you load up in new location

Do a -image in the command line. It will take a long time but you won't have to worry about loading maps for any place. On your shortcut for Guild Wars, right-click it, select Properties and then in the target box put in "C:\Program Files\Guild Wars\Gw.exe" -image
If you have Vista then this thread can show you with pictures how to do it there -image in Vista thread

I bought prophecies right when it came out. The files are the ones I need to load for each map, so whenever I enter a location, it gives me a gigantic load time. Im running on DSL at 700/s, yet the downloading rate for guildwars is at about 30 kbs/s .

I looked into running the client with -image; however, for some reason, there's no target space on the properties from my guildwars shortcut.. strange

you created a shortcut of gw.exe right?

After installation, I simply dragged the exe file to desktop.. It didn't give me an option of creating a shortcut. It gave me a direct X error for some reason, yet I have direct X installed, and I can run the game completely fine.

I never had to create a shortcut really I just moved the GW.exe to my quick launch 2 times and one is for signing in and the other is the -image. if you found nothing in the target box, just Find Target and go get the gw.exe yourself

When you add something to the quick launch, it automatically creates a shortcut to the original file. However, this is probably not good:
I'm assuming that your desktop and where you installed GW is on the same harddrive partition (C:\). If the two were on a different partition (or drive), it wouldn't be a particular problem. This is because Windows automatically copies a file if it's on a different partition (or drive), whereas it simply moves it if both are on the same one.

Now, I suggest you move the .exe back to its installation directory, manually copy it (by right-clicking or by ctrl-c) and then go to your desktop and right-click and choose paste shortcut. You can then go ahead and use the method that Panix originally explained for -image. Or you can simply copy that command line from Panix's first post and use "Run".

Bear in mind that you will need to modify the path of your gw.exe in the shortcut or in "Run" if you did not install it in the default location. Also, I suggest you do this over night. It takes an awful long time to download all the files for GW, and you probably don't want to be sitting there, watching it.

Meat's explanation in brief:

You didn't create a shortcut, you MOVED the gw.exe to the desktop.

[O/T] Hey Meat - that avatar - it..it..it's MEATHOOK! Thanks for renewing a happy memory

Just go in to my program files and have a look in GW folder first to see if the exe still in there. If it is then just go to start, then run then type in "C:\Program Files\Guild Wars\Gw.exe" -image. That should do it.