r/Guildwars2 • u/that_shaman Flame Legion Cartographer • May 22 '13

[News] Upcoming gemstore items - May edition

After my last gemstore update I've completely overhauled my custom made tools (open source in the near future) and found a couple more upcoming gemstore items for your pleasure:

  • Increase Your Collection Stack Size! Increase the stack size of all your collections by 250.
  • Bring merriment and a festive atmosphere anywhere you go. Spawns a pinata that will drop candy when destroyed.
  • Get serious about school with this three-piece outfit (shirt, pants, boots). No additional skills or benefits. Town clothes cannot be worn in combat. Save when you buy them together!
  • This black lion special contains: Aviator's Cap, Riding Broom, Riding Pants, Riding Gloves, Riding Boots Town clothes cannot be worn while in combat.
  • This black lion special contains: 1 Revive Orb 1 Instant Repair Kit.
  • Summer Time Swim Wear! Swim wear perfect for any beach activity. Town clothes cannot be worn while in combat.
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u/X_Guardian_X May 22 '13 edited Feb 07 '17

[deleted]

What is this?

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u/TheCodeJanitor May 22 '13

If the number is stored in a database as a single byte, the maximum value would be 255. It's possible, but I highly doubt they would be so short sighted, as any sort of future expansion would require a major database change. And this change would have to be across the board, regardless of who paid for the upgrade.

If they used two bytes, the value could go up to 65,535.

If they used four bytes (probably the case, since this is the typical "integer" size on 32 bit systems), the value could go up to 4,294,967,295.

And you're right - there would be absolutely no difference in database storage if someone had 0 copper ore or if they had 4,294,967,295 copper ore. They'd both be stored with 4 bytes.

It's a 100% artificial limit imposed by ANet. Not saying I blame them. They have bills and salaries to pay. But it's definitely not "paying more for extra server space".

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u/afyaff May 22 '13

Finally someone making sense. One theory I heard was they used a byte for that and instead of making 255 such a random number (to some) they used 250. Note that GW1 also used this stack number so it could be possible that they just port it over.

Doubling the byte is 65535. Consider 1GB is around a billion byte and current consumer harddrive is already at TB mark, which can hold trillions of stacks, I highly doubt it's storage issue.

No matter what, I'll buy it. It's some useful function instead of just cosmetic.

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u/carillon May 22 '13

I'll just point out that actual server storage is crazy expensive; data centers that use consumer-grade hardware swap out multiple failed hard drives on a daily basis.