Have Blizzard lifted the Warcraft Gold Cap?
World of Warcraft Gold Cap was a traditional way of measuring gold gaming success in WoW. First set at 214,748g, then raised in Warcraft Patch 4.01 to 999,999g.
[update: Blizzard GM forgot to take his meds or something?]
According to a Blizzard GM, the Gold Cap has now raised to “unreachable level”.
I decided to move 985k across from my main to my bank char today, to store in my guild bank. I didn’t feel safe with it jiggling around in my pockets, and was worried I was so very near the cap that I might not be able to loot or pick up mail. I wanted to chat to Blizzard and make sure that if I tried to mail such a large figure across to the bank alt, then I wouldn’t be flagged as a gold seller. Â With nearly 1 years /played time on my main alone, I want to keep my account safe.
During the conversation, the GM told me that there was no longer a gold cap. With the gold cap removed and undocumented in a hotfix, it should be possible to own more than one million gold on one character.
With 975k in my bank as this is written (I invested in some very cheap ore and herbs) I can’t check if this is right. Is this an undocumented hotfix for Warcraft Patch 4.2.2? Â Or is it a mistake, and will it be a part of Patch 4.3 instead? Â Can any of my millionaire readers check for me and report back? I have 150 stacks of ore still left to prospect tonight *sigh*
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ps look out for a guest post by Gimp from Gimp’s Gold tomorrow!
pps UPDATE: it’s not true! Thank you to Faid, Flux, Brent and Sweetiebird, who help sort out the confusion.
lol perhaps the GM doesn’t actually play the game and in his mind 999999.99.99 actually seemed like an unattainable amount? More like a personal opinion on his part, rather than actual fact.
I say this because I can still remember when I first found out that the old 214k cap was going to be increased to 999999. I can remember my friend, who initially told me ” blizz is lifting it to an ungodly amount that nobody will ever obtain” and I was all “oh ya what is it?” and then we briefly discussed whether or not that was truly unobtainable or not, which basically ended in a agree to disagree type scenario. 🙂
I’ve had GMs tell me wrong information on a variety of subjects. In general, if the info from the GM would be a “scoop” it has been wrong (my experience). The one notable exception: Lil’ Timmy coming back.
IMHO it makes little difference. Not sure I’m interested in getting to 2M let alone X million. I guess it would be nice to say “I have 4.5M gold” but now that I’m capped I’m actually enjoying playing the game.
“unreachable level”
Challenge Accepted!
I’ll email you the originals so you can see what’s going on 🙂
A GM had the wrong information? That never happens 😉
The old gold cap was based on how information is stored in the databases. 214748g 36s 47c comes from an unsigned interger +-2147483647. When Blizzard raised the gold cap, they had to do a bit of reprogramming to make sure it would all continue to work.
The next size up is 922,337,203,685,477g 58s 07c based on an unsigned bigint 9223372036854775807. While it can physically go much higher, Blizzard put a cap on it at 1 mil, so it wouldn’t be a lot of work to change it from the 1 mil to whatever they wanted so a hotfix/future quick change is more than possible.
This does mean that the potential cap is 922 trillion (double that if you use an unsigned bigint) but is it likely that Blizzard raise it that high?
There is still a gold cap. i just checked. You are still told you are at gold limit.
I wonder why the hell the GM told me that the limit had been lifted then? Do you think it will be lifted in Patch 4.3?
GM’s don’t always have the correct information. If they somehow get incorrect information, they’ll pass that on as well.
It just happens sometimes. It isn’t like they’re the actual developers who are in the know.
I think it was another storage info that got changed. I noticed this sometime after Firelands got released that under Statstics -> Wealth -> Total gold acquired, and Gold earned from auctions were no longer rolling over once I reached 214k again. It used to roll over to negatives, get to 214k and roll over again. That might be the info they were relayed and misinterpreted by the GM.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/851/gold2s.png/
I can assure you that pic is not a fake, and is on a US realm.
That does sound a hell of a lot more likely!
This is news indeed!
Unreachable amount? We’ll see about that, Mr. Blue…
Mr Blue was telling pork pies! I thought I had a “scoop” there. Damnit, lol
Flux asked me to hop on and check this. I can say from personal experience that the gold cap is still 999999.99.99 both as a gold cap for the character, as well as for the guild bank, having just checked about 5 minutes ago. I’m not sure if there would be plans to increase it further, but my opinion is that if they ever were going to allow us to reach an “unreachable” amount of gold they’d have done it when they raised it to one million.
If they had the ability/intent to make a ridiculously high/non-existent gold-cap I see no reason they’d have raised it to one-million recently. Why would they give the gold cap specific attention but not “fix the problem,” so to speak?
Anyways, sad to say that more often than not GMs have no idea what they’re talking about and anything they say should be second-guessed. I kid you not, I had a GM tell me that Engineers didn’t have “tinkers” and surely I meant “trinket.” 🙁
Hey thank you so much Faid, and please thank Flux too. What an absolutely bonkers/stupid thing for a GM to get wrong. I’m completely confused now.
Perhaps my next headline should be “Blizzard program Autoresponders as GMs” ?? I feel all stoopid now!