WoW:API UnitGUID: Difference between revisions

{{wowapi}} __NOTOC__

Returns the GUID of the [[unitId|unit]] specified. Works on both players and NPC.  

UnitGUID("[[unitId|unit]]")

== What does it all mean? ==

The GUID is a unique hexadecimal string for each unit in the game. Just how unique are they? Slouken[http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=2968233433&postId=44201363100&sid=1#231] has this to say on it:

 

The strings always begin with '0x', which is the normal prefix for hexadecimal numbers. The '0x' prefix isn't actually part of the string, it's just to say "this is a hex string."

 

 

=== Determine if it's a player, pet or NPC ===

* It's a player if the upper bits masked with 0x00f = 0x000

* It's a creature if the upper bits masked with 0x00f = 0x003

 

 

 

 

Renaming and transfering to another server, or to another account gives your character a new GUID. Slouken confirms[http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=2968233433&postId=44201363100&sid=1#231] that player GUIDs are unique even in crossserver battlegrounds, which strongly indicates that the GUIDs are stored globally, either per region or per datacenter.

 

If you take the 'NPC id' and convert it to decimal you can check wowhead and see what NPC it is. See examples below.

It's possible that the seven digits that at this point are unknown are split into smaller pieces. I couldn't find any structure among them, but looking at non-pet NPCs, I can imagine that the NPC id is there somewhere but I couldn't find it. You must log out before the pet gets this GUID, if querried during the same session that you tamed it, your pet will have its pre-taming GUID.

 

== Spawn counter ==

 

Spawn counter is a unique number given all non-player mobs. It's a simple incremental number, instances and outside world are probably handled differently. The number in itself is not relevant, but combined with the rest of the string it always give this exact mob a unique identifier.

 

 

First of all, let's find out what kind of unit it is. Take the first three digits in the GUID, ie "F53" (or 0xF53 to show it's an hex value) and apply an AND mask of 0x00F.

 

 

This GUID is for a normal NPC, not a pet and not a player.ts.

We can also extract the Unit ID by taking the sixth to tenth digit and converting it to decimal form: "4D2B", or converted to decimal form "19755". A quick visit to wowhead shows that the NPC with that id is "Mo'arg Weaponsmith", [http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=19755]. All "Mo'arg Weaponsmiths" will have that id to identify them.

== Speculations ==

The value returned from players is how recent the player have been created. Someone with the number 1000 would be the 1000th created character on the server, a NPC would simply count up. Each NPC that respawns adds a number higher, so 4294967295 means that there have been 4294967294 NPC before that one that have respawned. Renaming does not change the player UnitGUID value so you can track players trough renames using this, unfortunately if you transfer you're character obtains a new GUID, the last value obtainable (as creating a new character). In instances spawned NPC/mobs return the same value, unlike outside a instance. Player pets keep their value when you despawn then spawn them back, so pets appear to have their own GUID counter like character GUID (creation) counter.

<!-- List each return value, together with its type -->

:;GUID : Returns the unit GUID in hexdecimal.

 

 

 

GUIDs are 64-bit numbers, and are far too long to convert to decimal numbers using lua's libraries as a whole. E.g. running tonumber(guid, 16) will produce erronous results.