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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."
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?
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.
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?
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
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
Well, you could as well write a TSR loader that refreshed the same memory location 60 times a second. I don't think you could spend faster than that.
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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").
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet;
A chrysanthemum by any other name would be easier to spell
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.
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.
I remember the guy that rolled over Defender : Stargate......
That used to be the supreme badge of honor, turning a
coin-op over.
Steve was a total legend at the local 7-11 for being able
to turn games over. I think it had something to do with
his talent for "stringing" machines (tape fishing line to a quarter
and collect credits while someone distracted the clerk)...
Memories.....
music lover since 1969
Heed much of what the parent poster is saying. I received a Ph.D., got married (this isn't as easy as it sounds for a slashdotter and does actually involving "having a life"), got a job as a professor at a university, received an NSF grant to do interesting research, traveled around the world, and wrote a couple research papers too. However, I also play a lot of computer games and, in particularly, I have played a fair amount of WoW (in moderation) and can honestly say that it has HELPED me keep my sanity while I've been "getting a life." People shouldn't judge others on how they choose to decompress. Ironically, this also technically applies to people who choose to decompress by telling other people to "get a life" while paradoxically trolling on slashdot. However, if you aren't doing it for entertainment purposes and actually think you are making a meaningful statement, you might want to rethink that.
Disclaimer: I cannot stand playing any MMO, WoW included, for any period of time worth the initial investment.
I have a friend who plays WoW. He tends to be the group leader when he participates in raids and instances (no, I also don't know what either of those refer to in the context of WoW, I just know that they involve groups and he leads the groups). Talking to him, I find that he has learned a lot about leadership by playing WoW and, IMO, that knowledge is far more important than physical endurance or seeing new things in the world.
Remember, open source is free as in speech, not free as in bear.
Ah, so evolution is okay as long as it kills God and lets us give in to hedonism without consequences, but it's not okay if becomes the part of the basis of the replacement ethical system, since the whole point of the exercise is to justify epicurean pursuits. Got it.
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