Official Void Storage preview
by Adam Holisky 
Aug 18th 2011 at 12:13PM
In the UI example above, it shows three items being deposited into the Void Bank, costing a total of 300g, or 100g/item. Blizzard notes that the final cost of depositing items is not final.
The big points of Void Storage:
- Up to 80 slots
- Access by talking to a Vaultkeeper in Stormwind or Orgrimmar
- Costs gold each time you deposit or withdraw an item from Void Storage
- Deposited items will be stripped of gems, enchants, and reforging
- Item restrictions exist (not specified yet)
- A new bag, bank, and void storage search field will appear in all inventory windows
Void Storage preview
For quite some time now, players have been asking for a location in which to store important keepsakes including treasured armor sets, unique quest rewards, and gifts from friends, as well as other valuable items they've collected on their journeys throughout Azeroth.
This is a feature we've wanted to add to the game for a while, so we're excited to announce that, thanks to the ingenuity and entrepreneurship of the Ethereals, a new long-term storage option will soon be available to completionists and collectors alike.
Void Storage
In patch 4.3, characters of all levels will be able to take advantage of a new technology known as "Void Storage," which will open up 80 slots of long-term storage space. Void Storage vaults will be available in both Stormwind and Orgrimmar and can be accessed simply by speaking with your local Vaultkeeper.
A variety of items can be placed into Void Storage -- including soulbound items and Battle.net Account Bound items -- making it the perfect location to store trophies from past conquests, as well as armor you may want to hold onto for Transmogrification. So, if you've been looking for a good home for those old tier sets or your vanity holiday items, Void Storage is it! And it's as easy to use as dragging and dropping.
In return for this unique service, the Ethereals will require a small fee for each item deposited into or withdrawn from their Void Storage apparatus. Multiple items can be added and removed at once, and the cost of each transaction will be display at the bottom of the screen, updating dynamically as you select additional items to deposit or withdraw. Once an item is placed into Void Storage, it can remain there indefinitely for no additional cost.
It's important to note that the goal of Void Storage isn't to be a second bank, but rather a place where players can safely store items they wish to keep for the life of the game, either for sentimental or aesthetic reasons. Since this particular storage option isn't really intended for belongings that you'd use on a regular basis (like your current set of raiding gear, for example), any item placed in Void Storage will be stripped of all its enhancements, including enchants, gems, sockets, and reforged stats, and some items will simply not be eligible for Void Storage at all. This will help us reduce the impact such storage can have on the game servers, and ultimately allows us to provide a lot of long-term storage space with minimal impact on everyone's play experience.
(Cost shown to unlock Void Storage is not final)
Bag Search: Find What You Need, When You Need It
Now, you might be thinking, "Alright, those Ethereals are pretty nifty, and having more storage is great! But what about actually being able to find what I own? Do you know how long I looked for that one stack of Papa Hummel's Pet Biscuits? Like, a year. Okay, maybe 15 minutes. Either way, not even a tiny, delicious fat baby raptor is worth that kind of effort, and I love fat baby raptors."
Never fear, fellow tiny-limbed-corpulent-dinosaur enthusiast! We've got you covered. In addition to Void Storage, we're also adding a bag search feature in 4.3 that will allow players to search for items within their bags and bank space, all with just a few keystrokes.
Integrated directly into the bag and bank UI, this new search feature will be incredibly quick and easy to use. To find an item in one of your bags, in your character's personal bank, guild bank, or Void Storage vault, you'll simply type the name of the item -- or a word in the item's name -- into a small search box located near the top of your main backpack, and your open inventory will be filtered accordingly. Only the items that match the word or name you've entered will display, making it easier than ever to find exactly what you need, exactly when you need it.
Please keep in mind that both Void Storage and the upcoming bag search features are still in development, so their functionality may change before release. We're very excited to be offering both of these inventory management features and will be providing more information as the development of patch 4.3 continues.
This is a feature we've wanted to add to the game for a while, so we're excited to announce that, thanks to the ingenuity and entrepreneurship of the Ethereals, a new long-term storage option will soon be available to completionists and collectors alike.
Void Storage
In patch 4.3, characters of all levels will be able to take advantage of a new technology known as "Void Storage," which will open up 80 slots of long-term storage space. Void Storage vaults will be available in both Stormwind and Orgrimmar and can be accessed simply by speaking with your local Vaultkeeper.
A variety of items can be placed into Void Storage -- including soulbound items and Battle.net Account Bound items -- making it the perfect location to store trophies from past conquests, as well as armor you may want to hold onto for Transmogrification. So, if you've been looking for a good home for those old tier sets or your vanity holiday items, Void Storage is it! And it's as easy to use as dragging and dropping.
In return for this unique service, the Ethereals will require a small fee for each item deposited into or withdrawn from their Void Storage apparatus. Multiple items can be added and removed at once, and the cost of each transaction will be display at the bottom of the screen, updating dynamically as you select additional items to deposit or withdraw. Once an item is placed into Void Storage, it can remain there indefinitely for no additional cost.
It's important to note that the goal of Void Storage isn't to be a second bank, but rather a place where players can safely store items they wish to keep for the life of the game, either for sentimental or aesthetic reasons. Since this particular storage option isn't really intended for belongings that you'd use on a regular basis (like your current set of raiding gear, for example), any item placed in Void Storage will be stripped of all its enhancements, including enchants, gems, sockets, and reforged stats, and some items will simply not be eligible for Void Storage at all. This will help us reduce the impact such storage can have on the game servers, and ultimately allows us to provide a lot of long-term storage space with minimal impact on everyone's play experience.
(Cost shown to unlock Void Storage is not final)
Bag Search: Find What You Need, When You Need It
Now, you might be thinking, "Alright, those Ethereals are pretty nifty, and having more storage is great! But what about actually being able to find what I own? Do you know how long I looked for that one stack of Papa Hummel's Pet Biscuits? Like, a year. Okay, maybe 15 minutes. Either way, not even a tiny, delicious fat baby raptor is worth that kind of effort, and I love fat baby raptors."
Never fear, fellow tiny-limbed-corpulent-dinosaur enthusiast! We've got you covered. In addition to Void Storage, we're also adding a bag search feature in 4.3 that will allow players to search for items within their bags and bank space, all with just a few keystrokes.
Integrated directly into the bag and bank UI, this new search feature will be incredibly quick and easy to use. To find an item in one of your bags, in your character's personal bank, guild bank, or Void Storage vault, you'll simply type the name of the item -- or a word in the item's name -- into a small search box located near the top of your main backpack, and your open inventory will be filtered accordingly. Only the items that match the word or name you've entered will display, making it easier than ever to find exactly what you need, exactly when you need it.
Please keep in mind that both Void Storage and the upcoming bag search features are still in development, so their functionality may change before release. We're very excited to be offering both of these inventory management features and will be providing more information as the development of patch 4.3 continues.
Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with patch 4.3. Look at what's ahead: new item storage options, cross-realm raiding, cosmetic armor skinning and your chance to battle the mighty Deathwing -- from astride his back! Filed under: News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 7)
Dude Aug 18th 2011 12:16PM
Lol, it ain't free, gold needed for storing stuff. Those cunning Ethereals. The Goblins will be jealous.
Grovinofdarkhour Aug 18th 2011 12:33PM
I understand paying them up front to hold something for me, but not having to pay again to get my own stuff back.
We call that "taking it at both ends".
The Dewd Aug 18th 2011 12:42PM
Presumably we're paying not so much for the storage but the energy/mana/etc it takes to move the items in or out of the void. I don't like it but I'm going to pay it anyways. Trophies will go into the void storage and anything that I *might* want to transmogrify will stay in my bank.
I just hope no one ever finds out how to cross-breed goblins with ethereals - they'd wind up finding a way to make us pay for the privilege of paying them for charging us money.
Daedalus Aug 18th 2011 1:03PM
@Grovinofdarkhour
And you're surprised by this because?
I mean, it's ethereals. Forget taking both ends, we should be glad they haven't decided to take out of the middle as well by charging monthly rent.
Anything for profits, after all.
Storm Eagle [Planeteer | Power of Phoenix Wrights Colloquial Catch Phrase - OBJECTION! and Captain Planets Second in Command] Aug 18th 2011 1:16PM
I don't think I'll be needing to use the Void Storage. I have plenty of regular bank space and bag space to carry a lot of things. Besides, as little time as I DO have to play, these new features are going to cost me more money to take advantage of than my toon brings in!
Dude Aug 18th 2011 1:40PM
It's basically an Azeroth equivalent of a Swiss bank account as compared to a free local current account. The lower classes need not apply, jolly good what.
Eirik Aug 18th 2011 1:44PM
@grovin: I imagine that the most common use-case will be
1) a large number of items going into storage immediately (and a million pack-rats sigh in relief)
2) a moderate number of items being pulled back out, and put back in once transmogrification is better understood
3) a continuing trickle of items going in as new keepsakes are found.
The transaction fees seem intended to enforce the "don't view this as a bank" paradigm. And as Daedalus pointed out, the in-character rationale matches!
Eyhk Aug 18th 2011 2:05PM
I'm actually glad that they decided to do this with in-game currency. What most people don't realize is that bag space, both in inventory and bank, take up huge amounts of space in their databases. Increasing that space every expansion is costing Blizzard real money to keep up with.
The short story is: Blizzard is doing more and more with the same $20 bucks per month. I'm just glad this is not going to cost real-world money.
I started to write a lot which is becoming its own blog post, which is boring for most people who probably won't read it anyway. If you are interested, please read on.
Each item you can store is specialized (made by, enchants, gems, reforging, etc) which means each item you store is a separate row(s) in Blizzard's database and cannot be shared among other characters.
Here's the numbers for the theoretical maximum they have to account for:
* Please forgive any errors, this is just a rough estimate on a rather small textbox using the latest WarcraftRealms stats which are also a rough estimate and not entirely accurate
Equipped items: 19 slots
Inventory: 16 slot backpack + 4 bag slots x (current maximum is 26) = 120
Bank: base 28 slots + 7 bag slots x 26 = 210
Bag slots (Those bag items actually take up space as well!) 4 + 7 = 11
Total per character: 360
Roughly 84 million characters x 360 bag slots = 30 billion items
That's not including the 6.1 million guilds * 98 slots * 7 tabs = 4 billion items
So the total is 34 billion items, but then again, this is not counting the AH and all the items in the mail...
If we take out the bank/guildbank slots since you don't access it constantly, it's still 143 items per character, or 12 billion items Blizzard has to track constantly. You know that time in Dalaran when you were bored, jumping around on your mammoth, and hitting the 'B' key (my shortcut to open all bags) over and over? Your immediate equipped and inventory items needs to constantly be ready to be served at high priority. Each bag increase results in a direct increase in the requirements for high priority storage access, which means more money spent on server hardware. And those things don't come cheap.
Of course there are optimization that can be done, both client and server side, but it doesn't change the fact that scaling this to 11.4 million active accounts is a nightmare.
The reason why Void Storage strips all customization from items is that then it only stores generic items, which means all it needs is an item ID and not an entire row of data. I'm guessing what they'll do is simply an 80 column row of numbers that contains item ID numbers, one row per character. The high cost(in in-game gold) will guarantee a smaller number of characters that have this feature. A single point of access (Stormwind or Orgrimmar) will guarantee that only a limited amount of people can access this at any given time. This decreases the amount and priority of the data storage hardware, which decreases real world cost to Blizzard. However, this is still an increase over not having this feature at all.
At the end of the day, Blizzard is in the business of making money. Just the fact that they are willing to do more with the same amount of money is definitely fine in my books.
Izzak Aug 18th 2011 2:44PM
@Eyhk
You say it costs blizzard more but sometimes gold sinks are needed, if players transfer between themselves then its easier for gold farmer to get their chinese hands on
If money is disappearing from the game, there is no one to get the money
and with the news about farmers using money for nukes i say good on you blizz! haha
Monion Aug 18th 2011 3:01PM
@Elrik
Actually, considering all they are likely using is an item ID, and you only ever deal with the void storage as a whole, from. DB perspective it would be better to store all 80 items in a single column as some sort of list. You always either need ALL the items to view it, or you're doing a bulk item transaction at a time. Yes, it breaks all sorts of data separation paradigms, but it would be efficient.
LeftVentricle Aug 18th 2011 4:49PM
Blizz is probably hoping that this will remove some gold from the economy thereby bring inflation down a little. I don't think it's gonna make too much of an impact, but on rp servers it might stabilize stuff.
/boggle
The Dewd Aug 18th 2011 12:17PM
Wow - just the search feature is enough to make me want this. And the fact that we only have to pay for transactions in and out is even better.
Sir Broose Aug 18th 2011 1:11PM
There are add-ons that do that now, in case you want to try one out before Blizz makes their official version. The one I have that I find the most useful works on the guild bank, where there is just so much stuff from so many sources.
Shinae Aug 18th 2011 1:39PM
Such as Altoholic's search feature. (I can't play without Altoholic.)
The Dewd Aug 18th 2011 1:43PM
I actually, currently, use Altoholic for this and other things. I agree, I couldn't live without it. But it'd be nice to have it built-in to the game's UI because that's one less feature that needs to be bolted on via addons. (It'd also be nice to be able to search via the in-game functionality anywhere, not just at banks/storage.)
Geoffrey Aug 18th 2011 2:53PM
ArkInventory searches all possible locations in one search so you don't need to be in the bank to see what's in your guild bank. If Blizz only searches your current window, meh. I can be at the AH and see what mats are in the Guild Bank, my Bank and my bags in one search.
Starsmore Aug 18th 2011 12:18PM
I like that they've taken the bag search feature from add-ons and are integrating it into the main game.
Shinae Aug 18th 2011 1:32PM
Many improvements to the default UI started out as addons. Devs at Blizzard do notice which addons are popular!
Jack Mynock Aug 18th 2011 6:16PM
It's not uncommon for Blizz to incorporate popular addons into the default UI in some fashion. Actually, it was a genius move on their part to allow addons to be used in their game. They've basically employed hundreds of coders at no cost, the players "test" the programs extensively in game, and Blizzard can cherry pick the best/most popular ones (or at least the concepts behind them) and incorporate them into the game.
B1ue Aug 18th 2011 12:19PM
Well, okay, fine. These might be better than Key storage was.
Marginally.
I look forward to cleaning out the holiday junk on my toons.