Guild Wars 2

I’ve seen many tips by ArenaNet about avoiding the C:/Program Files/ folder, and using C:/ or C:/Custom/ for installing GW2 instead.

Any reason why? Just wondering.

Off the top of my head, C:\Program Files has specific restrictions on it that can make installing/changing/updating files written to it a hassle.

A lot of programs install elsewhere to avoid those issues.

Experience: software developer who got fed up and installed things to the user directory.

I can not think of a single reason to do so, do you have links to these suggestions from ArenaNet? Or do you remember why? Program files is meant for storage for files, and exes, things that do not change often unless through an update etc, but not under operation or launch, which is what the Application Data directory under users is for, which is where the .dat file for GW2 use to be (not sure if it is still stored there), but it is data the game modifies often. And if your program is behaving properly should work this way, or it would need to ask the user every time it is changing something in the directory, and if it is doing some sort of bypass to execute these types of changes…Well, that’s a no no.

KelKatar.6541:

Off the top of my head, C:\Program Files has specific restrictions on it that can make installing/changing/updating files written to it a hassle.

Yepp .. that is exactly the reason.

If possible, put your games on a completely separate drive from the OS and pagefile to improve performance of all 3. My install of GW2 is on a USB 3 flash drive (reads as fast as an SSD) and backed up on my game drive with a daily schedule to update them both.
For example:

USB drive is not designed for frequent read/write

vpchelko.4261:

USB drive is not designed for frequent read/write

This.

Also USB drives are no where near a proper SSD, USB drives have fluffed up I/O numbers and are pure sequential, where for normal use, 4k read/writes matter FAR more, also a USB drive will wear far faster than an SSD, as it has super cheap NAND, that will get slower over time because of no cleanup or TRIM, it has no proper built in controller or RAM and no over provision.