Technical

Untitled Document

Basics |

System Requirements
The final system requirements have not yet been determined, but ArenaNet have set the following as minimum system specifications for those involved in the Guild Wars Alpha Test:

Windows XP/2000/ME/98
800 MHz Pentium III or equivalent
256 MB RAM
ATI Radeon 8500 or GeForce 3 or 4 MX with 32MB of video memory
500 MB hard drive space
Internet connection
DirectX 8.0

Recommended System Specs :

Windows XP/2000/ME/98
Pentium III 1GHz or equivalent
512 MB RAM
ATI Radeon 9000 or GeForce 4 Ti Series with 64MB of video memory
500 MB free hard drive space
Internet connection

Patching (Streaming)
Many fixes and updates are added every day and on the large part these can be implemented without the player even knowing about it. This is due to Guild Wars' streamline technology, processing new content on the fly and without any downtime. In certain instances, the updates will require a new build yet this will, in general, require half a minute at most. The new content can range from bug fixes, skill balancing to exploit fixes; which means that we won't need to wait months on end for a patch but rather have a fix whenever one is needed.

The famous yellow lightning bolt
If players look carefully in the upper right corner of the game (or some of the gameplay screenshots), they might notice a little yellow lightning bolt. Is it magical power that you were not made aware of? No. It's the patching system doing it's job, as you are playing the game is streaming content to your computer. That is to say, whenever you see the lightning bolt, new content is being downloaded to your computer (fixes, updates, additional content etc)

Persistent Characters
Characters continue from mission to mission, acquiring levels, items, skills and abilities. In addition, every character is stored on ArenaNet's servers, so no matter whether you play single player adventures, cooperative missions, or head-to-head battles, your character will be stored in a secure environment allowing you to log in to play from anywhere in the world.

Characters/Guilds Per Account
Players are limited to 4 characters per account, allowing enough flexibility to have a variety of quality characters. Players wishing to have more slots available to them will need to buy another copy of the game. Characters can be deleted at any time and then replaced. Although each account has a potential 4 characters, they can only be part of one guild. That is to say if the character 'Blasto' from the account 'JohnnyD' decides to join the'Unreapers' Guild, then that means the character 'Blasto2' from the account 'JohnnyD' will also be part of the 'Unreapers' Guild, as the selected Guild is binded to the account; not the character.

Internet Connection Speeds
After receiving a bit of feedback on this issue, it appears that 56k modem users are able to play the game relatively smoothly. The only delays which are experienced occur when downloading new content [to be expected, as it often consists of a few megabytes]

Glow Effect
The in-game world is incredibly lucid and detailed, yet the feature which really stands out is the 'glow effect' where is the radiosity of world and its inhabitants is increased; the effect is a spectacular and original innovation. Depending on the area where the character is present, the amount of 'glow' will fluctuate from low to strong. In general, it is more evident when located in'greener' areas [jungles, forests etc].

Client Size
The most peculiar facet of the game for newcomers is the size of the initial Guild Wars client (.exe), it stands at roughly 65kb (this is not a typo). When you launch the game, the streaming technology comes into effect and downloads the necessary content. Even then, once finished, the size is relatively small due to the fact that the player has yet to visit any location and when he does so more content will be streamed.