Downloading everything?

I picked up the special edition earlier and installed it only to have the fun of watching it sit downloading for hours and hours just to get to the title screen. I figure WTF it was just patching to the latest edition and I'd be playing soon.

So I make a character and go to go ingame and wee 300mb map needs dling. Oh what fun that is..

Is there something I'm missing here or is the installer on the CD more or less a 10k file which lets you install the main game online? Starting to seem rather annoying when it takes several hours just to get into the game let alone do something like a mission which obviously must require another ten hours per mission :/

Didn't take me long to download and get in and I hadn't installed the game from the CD just went straight in.

You fail at guild wars.

deleted by: Tsunami Rain
reason: flame.

Don't flame. You just stooped to his level and then dug down a bit deeper, with that little shouting match.

Don't worry about the downloading. Once it's downloaded, that's it, done. Excepting a few updates, downloading time shouldn't be a problem if you have a decent conection and/or patience.

There has been a LOT of updates to the game since release PLUS this is Dragon Festival weekend, so you get even more updates, depending upon the speed of your connection it could take a while. Im on 768K download dsl, and it took me a while to download stuff when I recently reinstalled guild wars.

Not having a shouting match, that was more being polite considering my current mood. :/

I have a lot of patience but WTF is the point of an offline copy if you just go and download everything any way? Doesn't it rather defeat the point? Not to mention it seems every area needs to load not just one.

Maybe it's just me but isn't it rather poor design to expect people to DL everything when thye have hard media right in their hands? I mean why not include the first couple of areas on the CD and download the rest as you play them? Surely it's better than Barbie's D&D fashion designer after a ten hour wait which is what us dial up users are suffering when we buy it :/

Unfortunately for you, that trusty CD in your hand was probably created at least 6 months ago and the game today is much different than 6 months ago. Quite frankly there is no point in even having a cd for this game except for copying textures and image files that haven't cahnged a whole lot. Everything else has. Being an online game it checks each time you start the program to see if you're running the latest and greatest(Joke) version.

So you're telling me 8500 things have changed just in the newbie town since release? Doesn't seem likely.

It's not just files for the newbie town it's downloading. Don't forget about all the changes to skills, items, what ever else general to the game that has changed. You'll get all the general stuff the first time you try to load.

Well the game uses DX9 now and not 8, plus the GUI has changed as well i think! Best thing to do is edit ur GW shortcut and put -image at the end

aka
"D:\Games\Guild Wars\Gw.exe" -password etcetc -image

This will make the game download EVERYTHING, so you wont have to worry about long loading times then Just remember to remove -image after its done, or the game wont load

I have a friend I play with all the time on dial up so I feel your pain, not much you can do about it unfortunately BUT when its done, its done, so there is light at the end of the tunnel

Make a special shortcut on desktop with
"D:\Games\Guild Wars\Gw.exe" -image
and use for updates.
also make a backup off GW.DAT and keep on a DVD disk if possible, will save alot of time if you have to reinstall