Dorgabas on the official forums and meth on MMO-Champion's forums both reported the discovery today, each with a screenshot to provide veracity to their claims. You can check them out by clicking here. The shots are of two different players, one of whom is on a German-speaking server. In the shot you can read his conversation with a GM, which supposedly translates to him asking the GM about the limit and the GM scratching his head in response.
You can check out both threads linked above for more information, including a rough translation of the German conversation and an explanation of why this amount is the limit due to the game's coding.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
1-16-2008 @ 3:36PM
Rudolphe said...
wanna be my sugar daddy
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1-16-2008 @ 3:36PM
Camaris said...
That's a lot of italic text.
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1-16-2008 @ 3:37PM
Nails said...
o.O
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1-16-2008 @ 3:38PM
Jasperwind said...
I'm almost at the 1,000 Gold mark. I'll catch up soon.... :D
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1-16-2008 @ 3:40PM
Brian Carnell said...
So can we assume that this is the same limit for the Guild Bank?
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1-16-2008 @ 3:42PM
Steve_S said...
Can't see this as being a problem. Took me forever to get to 5k for my epic flyer, let alone doing the same for 2-3 more chars. Can't even imagine 200k gold.
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1-16-2008 @ 9:51PM
theRaptor said...
All you need to do is get a decent nest egg then abuse the hell out of Auctioneer. Once you have ten k or so you could probably control the price on any items you wanted.
1-16-2008 @ 3:44PM
Trucido said...
1024*1024*1024*2 = 2,147,483,648
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1-16-2008 @ 4:17PM
Basic said...
2^31
i.e. 32-bit integer with 1 bit reserved for the sign (aka a 2's compliment signed integer with a 32 bit universe)
1-18-2008 @ 7:06PM
obo said...
@Basic
A signed integer? That's silly of Blizz — nobody or nothing has negative gold, does it?
1-16-2008 @ 3:46PM
Tetelestia said...
I just recently got my epic flight.. now with nothing to spend my gold on I have something to worry about.
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1-16-2008 @ 4:18PM
Ametrine said...
Just buy a bunch of overpriced epics off the auction house then give them out to random passerby.
1-16-2008 @ 3:55PM
Jasperwind said...
Sometimes I wonder how (or if) their code is organized. If it is done properly, it shouldn't be TOO hard to change from a signed to unsigned integer data type. Sure, some class declarations, hundreds of function declarations, thousands of statements and function calls that may have to be type-casted, but nothing that's impossible. I guess all of that stuff is handled on the server (otherwise it would be hackable) so it shouldn't even require a huge client update.
But still, how big of a problem is this really? If you actually reach that limit, send a hundred G's to an alt or better yet, mail some to me. I promise I won't reach the cap. :D
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1-16-2008 @ 4:22PM
Basic said...
but the day they patch the game to change it to an unsigned int everyone will complain about only being able to have 429,496g 72s 96c...
1-16-2008 @ 4:03PM
Alch said...
I wish I had this problem.
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1-16-2008 @ 4:03PM
Joshua Ochs said...
As Jasperwind was getting at, the problem is they're using a signed long integer to store the value. A long integer can have 2^32 values, and when you take out one bit for the sign, that leaves 2^31 as the highest positive number.
2^31=2147483648, or 214748g.36s.48c
Now as for changing this, I expect it would be much harder than we think - that number is probably stored or used in umpteen places in the code, and changing them ALL could very well be a nightmare.
But look at it this way - there's a cap on how much they can charge for the next riding skill. =D
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1-16-2008 @ 4:03PM
Mr. Applebutter said...
Seriously with that much gold you could buy your way into full T6/BT gear, have the best of everything in the game without having to deal with DKP and raid BS. Just pay a guild 50K G to take you and let you have whatever loot you want.
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1-16-2008 @ 4:13PM
Jasperwind said...
Thanks clarifying my random thoughts, Joshua. As he was saying about the current cap, changing to unsigned integers would make the cap:
4,294,967,295 copper = 429,496g 72s 95c
Plus you wouldn't have the pesky problem of having a negative amount of gold. ;)
1-16-2008 @ 4:38PM
Connor Murphy said...
Very good, sir, very good. /clap
1-16-2008 @ 5:02PM
h8rain said...
When I saw that number wrote out, I was like OH! that is long variable.
Funny thing is I am a programmer and today I found a spot where I integer and I was getting an overflow error. Found it in the code, and fixed it. To change that in WoW, would probably be more trouble than it's worth. How many people have that much gold?