Who are these people?

I`ve just reinstalled GW after not having played for more than 18 months, and after logging in I was quite shocked to see that not one single character of mine "looks" anything like they used to?
Hair colours, hairstyles, and on 4 of my characters their Elite clothing has disappeared.
Ive checked my chests, and my items are all there as are my Plats and gold, it just looks like someone, somewhere, went into my account, messed with their "look" and trashed their hard earned armour.
I`m running all campaigns, all add-ons, extra slots, ect etc, and I`m running in max resolution on a beefed up computer. (I wont bore you with stats as I`m pretty sure this has nothing to do with the problem)
Any help here?
Has ArenaNet changed the graphics?

Thanks

select one of the characters you've created, enter game. they will/should update to where you left off (looks etc. etc .etc.). you'll have to do this for each character. I forget why/when/who/what.

Yep, Thanks Flubber... my stupidity got the better of me. I completely forgot about the game having to install updates for every area, and once I`d visited each of them, the graphics all updated in-game, and subsequently on the selection screen. Apologies for a useless post.

if you use the -image switch in your game shortcut you can d/l all of the areas/updates at once. it will take awhile but well worth it. just gotta remember to remove it after it's done d/l'ing. trust me, after months of inactivity, I was like WTF as well ;-P

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Command_line

Not useless. When A.net added the ability to pay to change your character's name/looks/gender, there was a patch that screwed up everyone's character appearance at login, but logging in to each character will fix it.

There was an update that messed up everyone's char screen a few months ago
and we all had to load/unload them to get them back the way they were.
Also to save downloading areas as you enter them try the -image command
Example "C:\Program Files\Guild Wars\Gw.exe" -image
There is a space between " -image
That will download ALL files then if you want you can backup to DVD for transfer to
another compy or as a safe backup if you reinstall your compy the size will be around about 3.5gigs
Sorry if you already know the last part about -image
Edit too slow Flubber posted the same info a I was typin lol

thats arenanet. After a update so you can buy makeover credits. :P 4th years bday.

Thanks guys, all good advice and all sorted now.
Before reinstalling, I`d looked around the website to see what they`d done in the last 12 months or so (cough...not much..cough) and had read about the re-imaging purchase, and thats why I got all bent outta shape... because I installed , got to the Char. screen and thought "what the...?? who the hell are all these low-grade , badly drawn eejits? All my guys and gals were hunks and babes!!!" hehehe.
I`m basically just running it as a nostalgia trip now and giving away weapons and mats to to the more active players whilst i await GW2

Anyway, thanks again for the swift and detailed help you all offered!

Glad we could help. Welcome to Guru, btw! ^^

I remember when it happened, two of my characters at the time had Elite armor right on the character screen and when I logged in they were wearing blue pre searing armor.

I almost shat my pants.

There was also an update for faction points and they changed some of the accounts from character to account. Make sure you access all your PVE
characters (if you have them).

I beg to differ.

They have done far more than even funcom has for its p2p AOC.