Question about the collection

Hey
I just bought the guild wars collection online and had some questions about them being stand alone games, this game looks really good and i've been reading up about it while it's in the mail and got confused about some things

When it arrives should i install them all before playing them, or just the first one, complete it and move on to the next, or make a new char for each campaign?

The thing is i'd love to make a char on the first and complete it, but while i'm questing and / or grinding on those long nights (if there is grinding) i might get the urge to play on the next game! and i'm a bit of a perfectionist, i'm gonna want to keep playing the first one before moving to the next...but them not being expansion packs apart from eye of the north troubles me

Do you have all the games, if you do how did you go about playing it?
would appreciate some input (i'm a little ocd crazy i know bare with me)
thanks!

Installing just 1 will install most, if not all, the files you need to play the other games. While they are stand alone campaigns, they are all the same game, just taking place in different regions.
When you reach a certain point in whatever campaign you choose to play first, you will be able to switch to the others using the same character, with no negative effects. You can switch between campaigns as often and as many times as you want. Your level and skills will not change between the campaigns, you will keep everything you have gained to that point.

Aah thank you!

1. there will be only one access key code in the box. This will give your account all three campaigns and the EotN expansion.

2. After your install, just use the -image command line to download the content that is not on the DVD. This will prevent long load times between areas. http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/-image#-image

3. You can completely finish a single campaign before moving on to the next. The original order was Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall and then the expansion Eye of the North.

For the completionist in you, you need to keep this in mind. While you can start in any campaign and travel to all the others after a certain point, you won't be able to do any of the quests that occur before the travel point.

For example, in Factions you start off on Shing Jea Island and do two missions and several quests before reaching the continental transfer point. A character made in Prophecies will be able to participate in the missions with no reward, but will not be able to obtain any of the quests from the island. Everything after that point, however, will give full rewards regardless off your starter campaign.

In Factions and Nightfall, the transfer point is relatively early in the game, so you won't miss much. However, foreign characters in Prophecies will miss out on a great deal of quests, skill rewards, and lore, since the Prophecies transfer point is about a third of the way through the campaign.

Starting a character in each campaign is a good idea. This allows you to experience all of the beginner-area content, even if you intend to mostly play a main character through the campaigns in order. If you like to know all the lore of the campaigns, you don't want to miss some of the beginner quests.

Also, starting characters in Factions and Nightfall is the only way to experience the non-core professions to see if you like them.

In my case, I used one of my character slots for a temporary character. I used that character to try different professions and starting areas, deleting the character and recreating as necessary. This isn't a total loss, since doing this also unlocked a handful of skills for each profession, as well as providing some cash that I could bank for use by my permanent characters.

Thanks everyone i understand much better now and how i'll go about playing