A 'download all' button

Something that bugs me slightly, and of course, nearly has to bug people on dialup, and people playing with them ... is load times and downloading files.
Especially with biggish events and updates, the load between maps can be a bother.

So, i propose a 'download all' button, probably best situated at the login screen (with you not logged in, so that you can walk away without anyone being able to mess with your account), which would simply download every file you don't currently have.

Don't know the best way to do it, possibly have the game behind the scenes trying to load each map, and downloading anything it finds you don't have. *shrug* Not too sure. Only Anet know exactly how it works.

Useful for all i believe, just find a time when you don't need the net connection, click the button, and walk away, knowing that later, when you do play, you won't have to wait yourself, or hold up your party at all.

On dial-up that would be frightening, but I can see a good point in it.

Well, it wouldn't be something that you are *forced* to do, and the dialup person is going to need to grab those files when he enters the map needing them anyway.

I, too, like this suggestion...especially with this new beta going on this past weekend, I was getting downloads from every zone...for those that are still on dialup, they could just leave it on during the day (or at night) and dl them all at once...me like

I love this suggestion. After I reinstalled the game I took a party to Sorrow's Furnace, only to discover that it required downloading an 8mb upgrade before I could enter. Very irritating.

My friend is on dial up. She had to spend the day in "Away" status recently just doing nothing but going to various maps and loading them. It took her forever and if she was in a party when she did that, they would have assumed she got disconnected.

On the other hand, I'm not sure if this idea would entirely work, as Anet sometimes brings out new builds within an hour or even less of eachother, and we have to go through the downloads again anyway.

This is a good idea, but at the same time downloading all areas of the game is going to be a huge download. It would be far better to break it down into regions. For example a pre-download option and you can select ascalon region, desert region, north shiverpeaks, south shiverpeaks, lion's arch, maguuma region, and PvP maps. This way you could download the area you need and play it for a bit before having to do another massive download.

Since I have broadband, I would love to have this option, as it will only take roughly 10 minutes max to get everything I don't have already..

Not signed (I have broadband and it would benefit me) because it defeats the whole point of the instancing.

They wanted to cut down the download times.

"Download all" feature probably would cause unwanted spikes to the GW servers load which would create massive lag. Files will be downloaded when you need them which smooth down server load.

The problem is mainly for dial-up users. I hate to say this but dial-up users are clear minority nowadays. I bet they optimize downloading amount as much as they can because bandwidth is not free for them either. There is not really anything else they can do to ease dialers pain.

Defeats the whole point of instancing ? How does it do that ? Its supposed to be optional anyway, regardless of what you mean.