Guild Wars 2

Hi there,

some of my friends (who just started to play the game 2 weeks ago) complained about why they have to download ALL data before being able to start playing the game. For players with a bigger bandwith that probably isn’t that much of an issue, but those guys for example are happy if they get ~120 kbyte/s.

I asked myself that question before, but didn’t bother me to ask for that, but after that I though… Why is it?

GW1 and since a couple of years(?) even games like WoW or Age of Conan have implemented such a system that allows players to download just the basic files, afterwards being able to play directly while the rest of data gets downloaded in the background/if it is needed.

What happend with such a system for GW2?
Especially with the separate zones I actually thought the game would bring something like that back to the game…

That’s it,
Replect

TL;DR: What happened with a system like that in GW1, where you didn’t need to download ALL the data before being able to play?

I loaded up WoW one time when it wasn’t downloaded (cause it allows you to do that) and yes I was able to go farm random mobs for a bit but you couldn’t access anything to do with the patch. And if I can’t do that, why I farming mobs… I have Solitaire right here? Take the time to go play some flash games.

GW2 does two distinct types of updates IIRC. One type can happen while you are playing and we just end up restarting after 3 min hence the 3 min timer in game.

The other is the massive updates that are updating UIs, textures, new areas etc. These are buried in the .dat file and our computers pull that info from the .dat file.

GW2 is also an open world compared to GW1. We need that .dat file fully updated to make sure we don’t have any problems in the world. GW1 was able to update per map hence why we could play sooner and it would update as we loaded into a map that had been updated.

pre-downloading the new content is better – it wouldn’t be very fun to log in to see lots of broken stuff.

in GW1, i just altered the shortcut with a -image command. i don’t know if it works now.

rgrwng.4072:

pre-downloading the new content is better – it wouldn’t be very fun to log in to see lots of broken stuff.

in GW1, i just altered the shortcut with a -image command. i don’t know if it works now.

I don’t know if it works with GW2 either. I do know if the update is huge I copy my gw2.dat file over to my laptop and my wife’s computer. Speeds up the update on those machines since it isn’t being re-downloaded and just being copied over the gigabit network here at home.

Ravion Hawk.4736:

GW2 does two distinct types of updates IIRC. One type can happen while you are playing and we just end up restarting after 3 min hence the 3 min timer in game.

The other is the massive updates that are updating UIs, textures, new areas etc. These are buried in the .dat file and our computers pull that info from the .dat file.

GW2 is also an open world compared to GW1. We need that .dat file fully updated to make sure we don’t have any problems in the world. GW1 was able to update per map hence why we could play sooner and it would update as we loaded into a map that had been updated.

It’s open world, but still separated in zones… There are probably hundreds of MB in that last content patch for example that is just related to specific zones (Orr for example).

If there are huge files related to specific zones/dungeons/PvP maps and I’m not going to travel to those, than I have to wait additional time for data that I don’t really need at the moment, because they are bounded to those areas.
If I travel to those areas, THEN the game could load the data within the loading screen, just like GW1 or Age of Conan are doing it…

It’s no problem for me, but someone that even needs 4-5 minutes for 40MB would be happy if he don’t has to download additional hundreds of MB of data that he probably won’t even need in his play sessions that day!
Currently he has to download it, not being able to play that specific day at all in worst case…

rgrwng.4072:

pre-downloading the new content is better – it wouldn’t be very fun to log in to see lots of broken stuff.

in GW1, i just altered the shortcut with a -image command. i don’t know if it works now.

It’s probably not fun if you can’t enter affected zones, but at least you could do something in-game!? :-)