World of Warcraft Gold Limit Reached, It's 2^31

Mitch writes "Blizzard apparently used signed integers for their World of Warcraft gold values as some people have recently hit the limit of 2^31. "Apparently that amount is 214,748 gold, 36 silver, 48 copper. After you reach that lofty sum, you'll no longer be able to receive money from any source in the game. While some responses to the original posts claim that this exact limit had previously been theorized to exist, there have been no reports of anyone in the game actually achieving this amount via legal means." I guess Blizzard didn't expect anyone to ever get close to that much gold in game."

Duh

2^31 should be enough for anyone...

Re:Duh

The range for a signed integer is 2,147,483,648 to +2,147,483,64_7_ (not 8).

The negative range always extends one higher, since zero uses the first "positive" value.

I call fabrication. And I call O.o for slashdotters not realizing this sooner.

Re:Duh

Signed integers are used all the time for strictly positive values. For most purposes it is more convenient to just utilize the standard signed integer, and perform range checking to ensure it's positive.

(You need to range check unsigned integers too, it's not as if switching to an unsigned integer relieves you of any problems, other than that it increases the 2^31-1 limit to a 2^32-1 limit.)

The player should be thankful that the only consequence is they can't receive more gold from other players, rather than finding they have a _VERY_ negative amount of gold (less than zero).

In many C based programs, your gold would overflow and drop to (-2^31+1), -2147483647, since the C programming language doesn't offer the programmer any exception handling mechanism for overflow detection (overflows are silently allowed to happen), and game developers don't necessarily anticipate such extremes.

Re:Duh

The reason why int is often used instead of unsigned int in C/C++ is also because of its weird mixed arithmetic rules which require that result of any unary and binary operator is unsigned if at least one of the operands is unsigned, which makes very little sense for common (small) int values - e.g. on a typical 32-bit platform, (4u / -2) == (4u / (unsigned)-2) == (4u / 0xFFFFFFFEu) == 0. These sort of mistakes can be hard to spot and catch, so it's often safer to just do everything in signed. See here [google.com] for more examples.

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Somehow I think only 'News for nerds' apply for this one.

Ron Paul!

As the good doctor never gets tired of pointing out, the problem with World of Warcraft currency is its artificial manipulation by the Federal Orlock reserve. This is why I support RP in his longshot bid for WoW sysadmin.

So, how does one accumulate that much gold?

On three level 70s and one level 61, I still have trouble breaking 3,000 gold between them. How does one get that much gold together in the first place?

Re:So, how does one accumulate that much gold?

I know, I consider myself has good at playing the auction house because I can make 100-300G per day just buying and selling stuff but to reach that amount I would need to play every day for three years at an average of 200G per day!!!! o_O That guy is pretty much hard core.

Re:So, how does one accumulate that much gold?

Why would a commercial farmer would be hanging on to gold rather than selling it for $$$? If it's not worth selling at its current price, why keep farming at all, as it's unlikely to rise in future.

Re:So, how does one accumulate that much gold?

Of course, it's work, and I don't do it too much I prefer my WIFE, and my RL toys. They blow away a naked night elf and a steam tonk controller any day!

We get it. You're married. You get laid occasionally.

Every geek who gets some for some reason always feels the need to broadcast it every chance they get.

News story: Russian scientist figures way to make food from air and feed starving children everywhere.

Response: Yeah I like to eat food with my WIFE. And sometimes, when going to the store with my WIFE, we buy food. And then occasionally we go home and I eat this food with my WIFE. And then she touch my pee-pee.

Re:So, how does one accumulate that much gold?

I pity your bitter lonely life.

At least that's what my wife tells me to do.

Re:So, how does one accumulate that much gold?

Do you have any gathering professions? I can make 100+ just buy selling a few stacks of adamantite ore (plus the eternium and gems) that I get from mining in a short amount of time. When my first (and only) toon hit 70, he already had about 3000g mostly from the quests going from 60 to 70. On top of that, factor in daily quests which give you ~12g per quest, which you can do up to 10 of per day; 12g * 10 = another 120g per day per character.

Re:So, how does one accumulate that much gold?

At level 8, my char, Lardbutt, had around 3500 gold -and- almost all the Epics/Rares you could trade. This would probably amount to 10.000+ in total gold value.
I played him until I got to Ironforge, after that he NEVER left the auction house. Just bought up things I thought were cheap and put them back in with a more expensive price. Most people don't check the market price for an item and when they found a rare/epic item they didn't need, would just sell it to the highest bidder at their first attempt to sell it. The ignorance of a weapons true worth was also something to take advantage of. Like the value of Julie's Dagger and Hanzo Sword, which on paper didn't really have über stats, but were perfect weapons for some types of warrior and rogue classes. Buying them for 10-20gold was quite possible, earning a profit of 50+ gold whenever you sold them to someone who "knew" their real price.

After a while I could by everything of some specific item and control the price. I often did this with the better types of bags :)

It took me about 3 months of regular playing to get there. This was the three first months after the release. I don't think you can pull it off that easily now, because most items are no Bind of Pickup, instead of Bind on Equip as they were earlier and the economy for items more or less crashed after 5-6 months.

I stopped playing after about 3-4 months.
  Then I had probably a 100 complains posted against me, because people was 100% sure that I cheated and every time I logged on I got 15+ tells from people talking trash about how I cheated them/the system/the auction house/etc. Almost wish I kept on playing a little longer. =P

Could be worse

It could have rolled over :)

What the point of having gold...

if there's nothing to spend it on! That's the reason why the cap was hit, there's no large mansions, yachts, or expensive prostitutes.

Seriously though, since all the beset equipment is earned, not bought (and usually bind on pickup/equip), there's little point in money in WoW in the late game.

Fiat money causes inflation in WoW?

Since the money is fiat, i.e. not backed by a fixed standard in the game, have people seen monetary inflation causing price increases in the game, or has the population of players offset any growth in money?

I don't play WoW (played it a few times and have watched some addicts^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hfriends play it), so I'm not familiar with how pricing works.

I would assume, though, that if money growth exceeds population/player growth, prices would tend to rise. Is this the case?

Are there any online games that have a relatively fixed amount of money in the game?

Re:Fiat money causes inflation in WoW?

Are there any online games that have a relatively fixed amount of money in the game?

The stock market?

Re:Fiat money causes inflation in WoW?

The stock market is far from a zero-sum game... otherwise the indexes wouldn't change.

Re:Fiat money causes inflation in WoW?

There's only so much wealth in the world. Wealth is not "created", it merely exchanges hands

Okay, I'll bite. If wealth is not created what happens when:

• I discover a previously-unknown deposit of gold/oil/uranium and start exploiting it?
• I invent a more efficient solar panel that allows me to generate cheap energy from my previously-worthless land?
• I build a tractor that allows a farmer to increase the yield from his fields without hiring more employees?
• I learn something new and gain new skills?
• I create a piece of software?

I don't know how you define wealth, but it doesn't seem to be according to the same definition anyone else uses.

Re:Fiat money causes inflation in WoW?

There's not a real economy in WoW, per say. You get most of your money from quests and kills, which is pretty well-regulated (in the sense that lower level mobs and quests give lower amounts of money, and there's a limit to what you can kill and loot), and you spend most of it in NPC shops. The only semblance of an economy is the auction house and trade channels.

The fact that most of your money disappears into NPC shops with set prices keeps inflation from happening.

Re:Fiat money causes inflation in WoW?

I also don't play WoW, so I'm not sure how (or even if) they combat inflation, but I know other games get round it by removing wealth from the game in the form of wear and tear on equipment. Anything consumable would also allow wealth to be removed from the game, although if it's easily created (food growing on trees, say) it won't make much difference.

There are all kinds of other ways you could remove wealth - NPC's charging tolls to cross bridges, say. Anything where something of value disappears from the came will compensate for the increase in money supply caused and equipment caused by new players and monsters.

Re:Fiat money causes inflation in WoW?

Gold only works as a store of value in the real world because the amount of gold being mined is such a tiny proportion of the total gold in circulation - there is pretty much a fixed amount of gold in existence. That's not the case in a game like WoW. A gold standard in WoW is meaningless, you would need a standard based on something fixed (is there any such thing? Land maybe? I'm not sure how Wow handles land, or how often new areas are opened).

Thats worth around 6500$

At market value of 1000G for 31$ he can sell that amount for 6657.188$.

http://sparter.com/web/shop.jsp#market=WWU01A&quantity=500 [sparter.com]

Re:Thats worth around 6500$

So I wonder... how long does it take to get 6500$'s equivalent in WoW gold? I.e. how many hours do you have to work for that money and how does that compare to a normal job? Are you earning like an executive or are you on minimum wage or less?

Re:Thats worth around 6500$

Selling WoW gold is against game policy. Blizzard can take it all away from you if they want to.

It'd make a risky day job.

Civilization I

Reminds me of when I was using a hex editor to "help myseslf" to some extra gold in Civilization I - I remember I could only up my gold to 3000 pieces, that was the Civ Is upper limit. Very off-putting, when you have to leave the game and start the hex editor just to replenish your reserves!

How short-sighted of Sid ;o)

Re:Civilization I

Well, you could as well write a TSR [wikipedia.org] loader [wikipedia.org] that refreshed the same memory location 60 times a second. I don't think you could spend faster than that.

This is good!

At least it means there won't be a "Who wants to be a millionaire" in WOW.

Not really correct

A signed 32-bit integer can not store 2^31, but 2^31-1, which would be 214,748 gold, 36 silver, 47 copper.

SIgned ints for cash

This isn't the first time a signed integer has been used to store the amount of money a player has (and I suspect it won't be the last, either) - years ago when I played MicroProse's Railroad Tycoon, I found an interesting bug (feature) with the way cash was stored:

For the game, a negative cash made a small bit of sense (overdraft) and so a signed integer was used. If you just bought up >50% of the shares in your railroad company (to ensure that you couldn't be fired), and then ensured that you had lots of expenditure but no income every financial period, you would end each financial period with more negative cash until it eventually overflowed and became positive. Once positive, with lots of income, it refused to overflow back negative.

I found it interesting, that although a positive overflow was checked a negative one wasn't. The assumption must be that the programmer never really expected the limit condition to be met and so only put a cursory check in - checking for a positive overflow to prevent sudden negative cash (in both games) and the problems that could cause the program and game play, but in MicroProse's case, not bothering with the negative overflow as it was an extreme case not expected - the game play was possibly meant to prevent it and I found the 1 in a whatever chance to get it to happen (I was trying to see how negative a rating I could achieve without being "fired").

Game Economics

Warning: Geekish Post Ahead

If you put a lot of emphasis in controlling inflation in your game then you can keep a game going with the ability to bring new players in cold and they have a better chance of staying. Economics of a game needs to have more of a priority than just killing mobs, crafting new items and completing the quest. Here's why.

I've been an avid gamer for a long time and have always found that economics within the game are never up to par with any standard, let alone a true economic standard. While I understand that there would be too much work in maintaining a true economy in many cases, the fact that the developers of each game don't bother to put in enough money sinks to keep the flow of money in game vs. out of game in check is astounding, especially in the case of WoW with n million players.

One exception to this rule is CCP Games "EVE Online". The game is fundamentally an economics simulator in a space setting. While this sounds about as fun as counting grains of sand on a beach on a windy day, don't knock the premise until you try it. The whole game revolves around the flow of money into and out of wallets via new ships, replacement equipment, massive costs for new skills and upkeep costs for space stations etc. CCP even has an economist on staff to give reports on how the game economics is doing.

Again, this sounds like no fun at all, but EVE has been running for over 4 years, is still increasing in population (albeit slowly) and I still did not have trouble getting started in the game and buying new equipment without it being ungodly hard to make the money to buy it. Oh and it's a fun space simulator too.

What kind of person...

Blizzard Exec #2: What kind of person would do this?
Blizzard Exec #1: Only one kind... Whoever this person is, he has played world of warcraft nearly ever hour, of every day, for the past year and a half. Gentlemen we are dealing with someone here who has absolutely no life.

I don't get it

What is the War of Worldcraft thing? I've seen it mentioned here a few times, but nobody actually explains what it does.

Is it a book?

At least it bounds, rather than overflowing

At least they handled overflow right. I'm impressed. If it wrapped around to zero, or went negative, some small number of users would be screaming.

Back in the 1980s, the number of ticker symbols for stocks and funds passed 32767, and for a few days, no new companies could get on the exchanges.

Re:Get a life

To everyone saying "Get a Life": What have you done lately that's worth a shit? This doesn't apply to anyone who didn't say it, by the way. Only those who think they are so special that they can tell others to 'get a life'.

I'll give you a hint of things that aren't worth a shit: Playing video games, playing real life sports, drinking, partying, watching tv, watching sports, upgrading your car, buying new toys, buying a new car, hiking, camping, getting married, having a baby, buying a house, and much more..

In fact, anything that doesn't improve the life of the world in general, you can pretty much put in the 'not worth a shit' category.

That seems harsh at first, but playing WoW is how these people have fun, and everything listed above is how other people have fun. Unless you've donated significant money to charity, donated your time to charity, cured a disease, or otherwise improved the world in general, you have no business acting all high and mighty.

Do I claim to fit in the 'worth a shit' category? Not at all. But I don't go telling others how to have fun, either.

Re:Get a life

Dude, I'm sure he didn't mean to hurt you. Take it easy.

Re:Get a life

Euh.... get a life?

Re:Get a life

But...
Playing sports improves your physical endurance.
Working on a car improves your knowledge of mechanics, electronics, etc.
Hiking a new trail every week lets you see new things in the world.
Getting married and having a baby is procreation (do I need to explain how that is useful?).
Going to school and getting a degree means being smarter, richer, better of in all ways. (I know you didn't mention this one, but this is the #1 thing I see people screw over for MMORPGs)

Self-improvement is not worthless to one's self. Sure it's worthless to the world, but you have to balance civic "worth" vs. personal worth. WoW offers almost no chance for self-improvement. While you can argue the social aspect of the game gives you a way of meeting new people or interacting with old friends, it turns out that most people when offered an anonymous mask act like drama queens and morons, so even that aspect is quite limited.

But I'll agree with you that WoW has about the usefulness of watching TV.

Re:Get a life

It used to just annoy me until someone suggested I should actually go take a hike instead of playing games. Not like 'get lost, loser' but actually take a hike. Like that's somehow better for -anyone- if I do. That's when I realized that entertainment is entertainment, no matter what the form. (Assuming it doesn't actively hurt others, of course.) Why should some hiker feel special because he hikes instead of playing video games?

FWIW: I played D&D twice and found both groups to be complete morons. (I know there are non-moron D&D players out there, but I have yet to actually see them play.) I played WoW for about 2 months before I got bored of it. I'm a gamer, but I can't stand to sit in front of the same game for months at a time grinding. The game has to be interesting, not just a time-sink.

I'm just bloody sick of people getting all high and mighty because they don't play games, and then going and sitting in front of the TV and watching Friends or football.

Re:Get a life

Well said, you fat bastard!

Re:Get a life

I met my GF, and the woman I plan to spend my life with, thru WoW

How do you prevent them getting jealous of each other?

Re:Get a life

If you think WoW is better than making babies then you clearly need to get out more.

Re:Get a life

clearly you've never played a gnome...

Re:Umm

i know someone who will buy your baby for 214,748 gold

Kids are overrated

I'm a parent of a 1 year old boy. Let me tell you that I'd rather be gaming (or anything, really) than change his diaper or try to keep some food in him while he thinks it's funny to spit it through the whole room. Having a kid changes your life drastically.

If I fully realized the impact of kids on my life, I would never have had him. I'd cut off my dick with rusty scissors first.

Not kidding, either.

Re:Umm

Well yeah, it's illegal for a start...

Re:Umm

Ob: None of you guys are parents, are you? I have a 2-year old son, and yeah, kids are expensive, and you lose sleep. but I wouldn't trade him for anything in the world

Bah! That's just your biological programming telling you to protect the next iteration of your genes. The rest of us can see that the little monster is just a stinky, screaming terror that that you think the rest of us should go out of our way to protect!

Now, my precious little spawn, she's important...

Re:Get a life

Will WoW take care of you when you are old?

Will our kids?

Re:Get a life

Will WoW take care of you when you are old?

Will our kids?

Have you been in a nursing home lately? They just lie around and watch TV, or have the same boring conversations with each other over and over. By the time I'm in a nursing home, I expect to have a PC with a large selection of multiplayer online games. I expect games like WoW to take care of a lot of my social and entertainment needs when I'm old.

Re:GuildWars Limit: 1000p + 100p per Character

It took me > 2400 hours of casual gaming to (...)

I'm not sure spending 2400 hours on any one activity can be referred to as "casual"...