Apparently you can have too much gold
by John Himes 
Jan 16th 2008 at 3:30PM
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.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Rudolphe Jan 16th 2008 3:36PM
wanna be my sugar daddy
Camaris Jan 16th 2008 3:36PM
That's a lot of italic text.
Nails Jan 16th 2008 3:37PM
o.O
Jasperwind Jan 16th 2008 3:38PM
I'm almost at the 1,000 Gold mark. I'll catch up soon.... :D
Brian Carnell Jan 16th 2008 3:40PM
So can we assume that this is the same limit for the Guild Bank?
Steve_S Jan 16th 2008 3:42PM
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.
theRaptor Jan 16th 2008 9:51PM
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.
Trucido Jan 16th 2008 3:44PM
1024*1024*1024*2 = 2,147,483,648
Basic Jan 16th 2008 4:17PM
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)
obo Jan 18th 2008 7:06PM
@Basic
A signed integer? That's silly of Blizz — nobody or nothing has negative gold, does it?
Tetelestia Jan 16th 2008 3:46PM
I just recently got my epic flight.. now with nothing to spend my gold on I have something to worry about.
Ametrine Jan 16th 2008 4:18PM
Just buy a bunch of overpriced epics off the auction house then give them out to random passerby.
Jasperwind Jan 16th 2008 3:55PM
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
Basic Jan 16th 2008 4:22PM
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...
Joshua Ochs Jan 16th 2008 4:03PM
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
Jasperwind Jan 16th 2008 4:13PM
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. ;)
Connor Murphy Jan 16th 2008 4:38PM
Very good, sir, very good. /clap
h8rain Jan 16th 2008 5:02PM
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?
Mr. Applebutter Jan 16th 2008 4:03PM
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.
CHUCK MURLOC Jan 17th 2008 12:53PM
well the thing is u see (i am german) the german guy is alredy in a guild that has bt on farm status so wy would he buy any gear ?? on another german comunity page they had an interview with that guyso yea but it is amazing could just save anough money to buy me the regular flyer...
so long
here is that german guys armory link
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sen%27jin&n=Tyram