Loading times on maps

So i came back to try this game again, only to watch my loading bar take 45 minutes to load the first map. I have very fast internet so this should take a second or two, is every map going to do this?

Depending on how long you stopped playing, you probably have tons of new updates/files/whatever to download. Instead of sitting there loading forever every time you zone, run Guild Wars with the -image switch overnight. That will force Guild Wars to download everything from the server. To add the switch, right-click your Guild Wars shortcut, click "Properties", then where it says "Target:", add -image to the end, like this:

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

When it finishes downloading everything, go back to your shortcut and remove the -image text. Run Guild Wars as usual.

Or if you bought the game from a store you can install the disks. If not do the image trick PRNG mentioned.

The discs only take it up to a certain point (when they were published I would assume)... any updates since then would still need to be dwnlaoded.

I just have 2 shortcuts on my Desktop to make it easier. One for playing the game and the other that I use every week or so to update the maps. The first time that you use the -image switch, it takes a very long time to download all the maps to your hard drive, but subsequent downloads just get the updated maps...those are the ones I do every week or so. This keeps me from having to go back and forth changing the properties on my game shortcut.

I got this all day Saturday. Very annoying.

So eventually I ran myself a tracert to www.guildwars.com and found that I couldn't resolve the address.

So I logged into my router and forced it to use some open DNS servers instead of auto-acquiring whatever random ones on power up. Immediately I did this and re-booted my router maps loaded in a couple of seconds again.

Give it a try it could be DNS related.

The install disks have the game client and some very, very minimal game files on there, so that isn't going to help much. Try the -image prng mentioned.

If that doesn't do it, it may be related to something else.

Yes, as everyone says, PRNG suggested something so awesome that I didn't know, but if you are away from the game for a while, it takes forever to load. This is especially bad going into updated cities, like Shing Jea at Christmas.

I've gone away from the game having 1 second load times to come back and have 15 minute ones... It just happens.

Thanks for the help!

For how long am I suppose to let it on "-image" mode?

Until all 50k (?) files are downloaded. The launcher will automatically shutdown after it's done. Then remove the -image command, and play the game.