Guild Wars 2

I’m currently downloading the game for the first time and I’m extremely excited to play. My question is : Do I have to download the entire thing before I can play, or can I play at like 50 or 60%?? On wow and other games they’ve made it so you can start playing before the entire game is downloaded while it finishes downloading in the background. Is Guild Wars the same?

Thanks

I could be mistaken but I think I had to all the patches before I could play.