Curse

Dawn Angelheart · Mar 01, 2009, 01:01 AM // 01:01

you can download the Gw dat file from the official site, but i wa sunder the impression that, it was an old file, and not worth the time to download.
but installing from the GW:EN disc was fast as it was latest released.

Can you download the GW:EN dat file?

DarkFlame · Mar 01, 2009, 01:21 AM // 01:21

You can download the client from the official site, the client being a small minuscule thing(only a couple of mbs is size) and not something that has changed in a very long time. The job of the client(in addition to loading the game) is to download the gw.dat, which will be the current one.

The EoTN disk contains the latest gw.dat, out of all the other disks and installing from it will save you from having to download at least 3 gbs of the .dat via the client off the site. Its not needed, just a time saver.

Astral_Nomad · Mar 20, 2009, 11:41 AM // 11:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dawn Angelheart

you can download the Gw dat file from the official site, but i wa sunder the impression that, it was an old file, and not worth the time to download.
but installing from the GW:EN disc was fast as it was latest released.

Can you download the GW:EN dat file?

Yes you can... to do so (assuming you already have GW installed):

- Click to Start. Click on run and type cmd.exe - This will open up the command prompt / DOS box.

- type cd "\Program Files\Guild Wars\" - WITH quotes. This will move you to the Guild Wars Program folder.

- Enter this command to download the most current gw.dat file from ANet. Gw.dat -image

** Note that this will give you a fresh copy of the file, overwriting/deleting your old one. When you start up guild wars after this download, some of your settings such as your video and screen options may be reset and you will have to set them again as it seems that the gw.dat appears to store the (lesser) settings within it and they will have been lost with the old copy.

I would suggest one more thing. If you have a monthly download cap as some people do - burn the gw.dat file to a dvd disc if you have a dvd burner, or make a copy of it to another drive other than your windows drive.

This way if you ever have to reinstall it again, you can just install gw up to the point where the login screen appears, quit the program, and copy your backed up file into the Guild Wars folder (replacing the old one). Then you can start up gw for normal use.

This will save you the majority of the downloading involved in installing guild wars - especially if you have multiple campaigns as all campaign data is stored in that file.

bottom line - instead of downloading almost 4gb of data, you only wind up having to download 20 - 100 megs tops at first start up depending on what you have gamewise. Any downloading from there will be very minimal.

Enjoy.