Guild Wars help (28 kbps Connection)

Hi, I'm new to GW (just bought) and GW Guru (just registered).

I have a 28kbps internet connection, and I planned/plan to play GW.

I installed it, and waited overnight for the intitial download. Today I started it up, made myself a character and got hit in the face with another huge download for Ascon town (or something like that.)

Basically, I am disheartened. I was especially disheartened, when I read a post on a forum about it: "You can find a program that sorts it into managable chunks of 512mb each." Manageable chunks!? That infers that it's over 1 gig! It could take me a week! More!

Theres no way I can do that, I can't tie up the phone for that long.

My actual question is this:
How big is the download for Ascon town? Also, how many of these are there? Am I looking at hours-long downloads every few steps until the whole world is downloaded?

Help and (hopefully) reassurance is GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks.

There is a way to get these files "in advance" using some sort of -image trick. Unfortunately I don't know how to do this, but many people on this forum do and can help you with that. It essentially loads everything in the game (which takes a while) so that individual towns and zones will load quickly the first time. If you go this route, you may want to find a friend who has a faster connection to do this with.

In general, playing Guild Wars using a modem connection is tough, not only because of slow loading, but also lag and just how long it takes to get anywhere. Doing all the quests for an area can take a couple hours (more in some areas) and it's often beneficial to go this route rather than doing them separately. The elite areas, assuming you're not playing with a gimmick team, can take ~3 hours to complete, which is of course a long time to be tying up the phone line.

your internet connection is FAR too slow for internet gaming. by most standards, that's not even enough to check email and read news.

broadband connections are now very cheap: you can easily get a decent one for $25/month. if you want to game on the internet, you have no other choice.

Hey, I'm guessing you#ve never played online games before? While ANet (the creators of guildwars) claim that the game can be played on a dialup connection, it will only download the parts of the game you are planning to play. It downloads the rest of it in the background while you're playing.

On a 28kbps connection however, the downloads will take a considerable length of time to complete. On my 3Mbps broadband connection from a fresh install of GuildWars on a newly installed copy of windows, the initial download takes a few minutes but before i can play it's usually about an hour to download the bulk of the content. If you move to a zone which hasn't been downloaded yet, you will have to wait while it downloads, and this can take a few minutes on an uncongested bb connection, depending on load on the server end.

So on a dialup internet connection you may be spending some time downloading all the content you need. Try getting a 56kbps modem or ISDN if technologies like ADSL are not available in your area. Once you're downloaded, you should be able to play the game though, according to Anet.


Edit: to download the most up-to-date content in bulk, type the following at the run window or a command prompt:
gw.exe -image
you'll need to be in the guild wars folder to do this, or else type:
c:\progra~1\guildwars\gw.exe -image

A complete gw.dat file is around 4gigs, so you could be in for a lot of long downloads. Of course, some of this has been already downloaded during your first overnighter, but there's probably still lots more to go. You could try the -image thing, but at 28.8 it would take days.

Another way you can do this is to have someone who you know send you a copy of the data file. I did this for a friend of mine. I burn a copy of gw.dat and send it to him by mail.

When he got it, he was able to copy that file into his guildwars directory and have the content of the game already availabe for him.

That file was over 4 Gigabites. Imagine how long it will take to download using your connection speed.

GW.dat download at 4GB at 28kbps = 3 weeks (I think).

from my gw.dat file (3.65 GB) it would take 12 days to download, 280 hours, so it's totaly not viable for you. Either ask a friend with better internet to do it, or pay someone in the internet to send the DVD with the burned file for you.

I'm pretty sure you can play with a decent ping even on a 28kb, as the game doesn't download more then 1,5 kb/s while playing. (with the full game)

I wonder where do you live :P

Well, let's be lazy and call 4GB 32 billion bits. In fact, let's be hyper-lazy and call it 28 billion bits. Divided by 28000 bits per second, that gives us 1 million seconds. 16, 667 minutes. 277.78 hours. 11 and a half days.

That's ultra optimistic. You will never get 28Kbps in normal usage. I took vast liberties with the math. Call it a fortnight.

Or, er, go with Mendez...

You should either return your copy of Guild Wars for a refund if that's still possible or get broadband internet, it will be unplayable even when you have everything downloaded. Horrible lag.

You can't return software once it is opened. They consider the fact you cold have just burned it. Pretty sure 99.9% of stores do not take back opened software.

Idk if anyone has suggested this but... Go to a friends house with fast internet.

Download GW Installer.
Go to Run.(STart menu, run)
Browse.
FInd yourGw.exe or your GW shortcut.
Click it once.
Press Ok.(Or open, I forget)
You should see something like this: "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Desktop\Guild Wars.lnk"
At hte end of it add -image
It should now look somewhat like this: "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Desktop\Guild Wars.lnk" -image
Click Ok(or run)
It will start doiwnloading like 120K files.

After it is finished. download winrar.
GO to GW installation folder.
Right click gw.dat.
Click add t library r w/e it is, I forg


Someone finish this form e cus i gtg lol. You need to tell winrar to compress it into sizes of 512MB. save it to like a bunch of disks.
GO to your us. Extract it but into smae folder so winrar puts it together,
there u go u have GW.
Someone explain i ndetail form e gtg

more importantly, he used his cd key, which is the only thing that's worth money in that case.

Did you install the CD? My Factions maps were taking 3-4 mins to load, then a mate suggested to install the CD, now they take about 10 secs. 28 kbps is way to slow anyway, you will get frustrating lag, Broadband is pretty cheap these days, and it realy helps for internte gaming.

Gonna be blunt. You're not gonna be able to play. Min specs are 56k and even then its horribly laggy. Even if you grab the updated and decompressed 3.7 GB file off a friend, your slow connection guarantees you're gonna lag out before you even properly load into any city.

28k also suggests to me, that rather then an isp imposed limit(since 56k service is a bare minimum almost anywhere in the world), its that you have a 28k modem. Which leads me to question the rest of your hardware.

Darkflame, I assure you, the rest of the hardware is sufficient. The reason I run at 28k (or supposedly 31 on a good day, though I don't notice the difference) is because I live where I can't get broadband, and my dialup- provider doesen't even do that right. Basically, I'm stuck with it. However, a new highspeed/wireless provider just opened up, and we'll likely get that ASAP if possible.

I'll admit, the answers did discourage me. But I've heard of people, and from a few friends, that they play with modems without too bad of lag (I've heard it evens out after awhile?).

Is it likely anyone *here* would burn the data on to a few CD's if I provided them and paid for shipping?

Thanks.

You need to move out of the northern most reaches of Alaska/Montana, as a first step. I don't know of any other places in the USA that offer under 56k. ADSL and ISDN are through the phone lines, and substantially faster. I would look into those options.

If you have the money...satellite.... that's available almost anywhere, even in the middle of nowhere with Courage the Cowardly dog.

My suggestion would be get a faster connection, used to run it on a 2mbits connection and works really well, high speed internet is welcome but not necessary for GW.

The PvE game is playable on a dial-up modem, although the only modem users I knew had 56k - i don't think 28.8 would be too much different.

I wouldn't want to try PvP on dial-up though.

Your main problem is the looong download times.

If your computer has a DVD drive, it would be easier to burn gw.dat onto a DVD than do the winrar/512meg chunk/CD thing.
Or a large enough flash drive or external hard drive could be used to transfer gw.dat.

Firstly to all the naysayers, yes you can run on a 28k connection. I certainly don't recommend PvP on that speed, but PvE is playable - it's just a matter of getting the files. I'd hate to say it though but you are just going to have to suck it up and tie up the phone lines for the long download. Unless you have a friend who already has the 3G+ .dat file there is just no other way to do it. Or unless someone here is feeling generous enough to mail a DVD copy to you.