Did I make a mistake already?

Well, I went ahead and bought the game (trilogy). I got it from the NCsoft store. It seems though that I have to download the new map every time I enter a new zone for the first time. This is going to be frustrating as heck. Is there any way to download a big chunk of the game at one time? Having to download a 20k+ file area for each zone when I enter it on my connection is going to be a nightmare... any way I can just get one big (however many GB) file and download it as one game?

gw.exe -image and then go to sleep

First off, if you edit the command line on your desktop icon and append " -image " to the end (no quotation marks around -image) you'll download an unzip everything in the game to your directory. Be warned however that this will be about 4+ gigabytes, so you might want to do it overnight or when you're going to be gone for a while.

Second, one thing is that you'll only have those big 20k downloads when you first load into a campaign, after that you'll have relatively smaller (I want to say only a few thousand) as you load into individual regions (of which there are a handful for each campaign). So this first time you're downloading those 20k files will be the last, and you'll only have to download and unzip large chunks a few times afterwards. The first day or so will be a real hassle trying to load up the game, but tomorrow it will be fine.

Most players, when they need to, will just -image overnight though.

If the above post didn't help you: http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Command_line

Look for the command line "-image".

edit: I meant the first answer.

Thanks to all for the help.

Just remember to remove it once it finishes downloading the files.
If you run it again, with the same command... well then... you download the whole thing again.

False, the launcher will just disappear the second it appears, because there is nothing to download anymore. The command only makes the client download missing files, not the entire .dat all over again.

Welcome to Guild Wars btw

So anyone can run the -image that is missing only a couple files and it downloads only a couple files?

Sir, yes sir!

EDIT: Srry Flubber ^^

yeah but if the -image switch isn't removed after the d/l process the client just closes itself out.
-at least that's how it used to be.

/edit got beaten to it ;-p.

I'd recommend creating a second shortcut with the -image command for easy access to the download when there's a game update.

It sure is frustrating. Add -image next to the location when you right click and properties the game icon. Be prepared to wait for a good hour or 2 or more, NCSoft's servers are bad.