Guild Wars 2

Are there local save files to backup when formating for a new windows install? I don’t want to lose my game but I’m upgrading from Win7 to 8.1. Is there anything I need to do to backup my account?

Your account will be fine. Your account, progress, characters, bank and so forth are saved on Anet’s end. When you update your OS it isn’t going to change anything. I wouldn’t suggest what you are about to do though.

Well I certainly wouldn’t “upgrade” from windows 7 to windows 8, but everything is saved on the servers, not your computer. You may want to put the game on an external HD though so you don’t have to redownload all 20GB again.

As the others above have pointed out, all of your character related data is saved on Arenanets servers, not on your computer.

You should however locate the GW2.exe and GW2.dat (that .dat is around 20GB) and copy them somewhere safe so that you don’t have to reinstall the game!

When I reformatted few months ago (without backing up anything from GW2) and logged into GW2, pretty much everything was exactly the same, including my tons of hotkey changes (which I was very happy about.) Don’t recall losing anything.

Actually I did save my screenshot folder to my usb harddrive but that’s about it. Backup those if you want to keep screenshots.

What the OP is talking about I believe is the ability to save his .dat files.

Probably easier for OP to redownload GW2 since we all don’t just have 20gb+ drives sitting around.

Is there anything I need to do to backup my account?

GW2 is run off of Anet’s servers or rather the servers Anet rents, so all progress of the characters and interactions within the game have to interact with the servers. Progress and preferences like in-game keybindings are also saved in their should be the servers so the controls should be the same for any computer. Not sure if the screenshots are saved on the server or are client-side, so might want to find and save them first.

If you do have an extra 20gb+ drive and don’t want to redownload GW2 I’d just copy and paste the whole GW2 folder(probably in your program files folder) into the extra drive and then paste it into your program files once you upgraded to Win8.1. But as said earlier, for alot of people it’d be easier just to redownload.

TheGaryTh.1649:

Probably easier for OP to redownload GW2 since we all don’t just have 20gb+ drives sitting around

Partitioning is stupidly easy and is a cheaper means to the same end, assuming money is the issue (even though external HDDs are like, <$0.50/GB… might be less, haven’t looked in a couple years).

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Well I certainly wouldn’t “upgrade” from windows 7 to windows 8, but everything is saved on the servers, not your computer. You may want to put the game on an external HD though so you don’t have to redownload all 20GB again.

Me neither, clean install is always the way to go.

In My Documents there is a Guild Wars 2 folder for each user account on your computer, save those directories as well, there is a 46mb .dat file in there as well as your screenshots and custom music.

Save your Guild Wars 2 game folder so you don’t have to redownload it again.

A 32gb flash drive should hold it all depending on how many screenshots and if you have lots of custom music.