I think storing it in the blob was just the most efficient way to do it at the time when that whole system was created. That was years ago when PCs were probably 1/5th the power they are now or less. It has already been discussed to move the entire player profile into it's own table, but that would mean a huge load of work. It would also mean something would have to be written to convert all existing PPs from the blob form into the new table form. And, anytime you are doing massive conversions like that, there is a high risk of running into an issue that could cause both you and your players big headaches. There is a ton of code built around dealing with the PP (player profile) as a blob, so if we changed it, every bit of code that currently uses it would have to be adjusted.
There are some definite benefits to changing it into a table format, but the work required to do so makes it hard to justify. The most obvious benefit is that any data such as coin could be very easily accessed and adjusted on the fly right from the database, or whatever. Another benefit is that we currently only use about half of the PP Blob right now, but we still allot the same amount of space for each blob, just half full of empty data. So, we could essentially cut database sizes by nearly 1 half, which would not only be nice on queries, but would save a ton of space for servers with a large player base (for regular DB backups).
It would be nice to see the player profile converted over at some point, but there is no telling if/when it will ever happen.
BTW, do you have an actual reason for replying to this 3 year old thread? You never actually specified why you were inquiring about the money stuff.
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