i have this same problem. I have not been able to play the game at all besides make a character. I sent a ticket to guild wars about this and i am on my 3rd day of waiting for a response. In the mean time I have done much research. Boctroy and I have ATI Mobility graphics cards which mine is switchable (not sure about his) and you cannot update the graphics driver to the most current for laptops with switchable graphics. This is very frustrating and I am planning on calling AMD first thing Monday to hopefully get the game to look the way it should so I can play it.