Curse

Suilebhain · Nov 17, 2007, 08:03 PM // 20:03

It can take me hours to decompress the files I need to enter a zone or a mission. Any suggestions?

lordpwn · Nov 17, 2007, 08:19 PM // 20:19

It's taking so long because it's downloading game files you don't have on your computer from the game servers.

You can make the game download the entire contents of its data file at once by running the client with the command line argument "-image" (no quotes). This will probably take several hours with your connection if it took you that long to enter a zone or a mission, so leave it running overnight or something. Make sure there's enough space on the hard drive: a full gw.dat file's currently around 3.5 GB in size.

Once you've done the above it shouldn't spend much time downloading stuff except when there's a major update out, and even then it'll probably not take more than a few minutes. Zones should load in a few seconds.

Suilebhain · Nov 17, 2007, 08:34 PM // 20:34

Thanks. I'll try that.

Question is, has there been a change to the client to require this? I started playing around about Day One and was pretty steady on through Factions and never saw any need for anything like this. It started around the time that Nightfall came out and I had a time away from the game, but really got bad after GW-EN. Even Missions I played in Tyria take a million years to load now.

By the way, my connection is DSL, my PC is 2Ghz with 1 Gig RAM.

Quaker · Nov 17, 2007, 09:04 PM // 21:04

It can also be a result of the bandwidth of your connection and the amount of "available" RAM you have.

lordpwn · Nov 17, 2007, 09:06 PM // 21:06

If it downloads a ton of stuff _every_ time you enter the same area your gw.dat could be slightly corrupted, I've seen others post about the game losing track of its files and redownloading stuff unnecessarily when there's something wrong with the datafile.

If you want to be sure, delete the existing gw.dat before doing the -image thing. You won't lose anything, maybe besides your video settings, and it may result in a slightly smaller file since the new one won't contain any old game assets that have since been obsoleted in patches.

Suilebhain · Nov 19, 2007, 09:34 PM // 21:34

I did the defrag first using Contig and that didn't do it, so I used the -image and that worked like a charm!!!

Thanks, Lordpwn.