Quote Originally Posted by Pixela View Post
The housing destruction is the single worst thing I've seen in an mmo, they designed the housing system to be limited in a subscription based game and knew full well that if someone ceases their sub they will lose it. This would be annoying enough on its own, but when the lead developer tells you to just go play other games if you're bored with the lack of content, knowing full well your house gets demolished if you ubsub is terrible.

On one hand it's predatory behavior to blackmail players this way, on the other hand I know people who haven't played for years and retain the sub to keep a fake house so it obviously works. Smart buisnessman.

This would be like if the developers made prime weapons have an afterglow, but limited it to 50 per server and to retain it you had to talk to an npc once a month in the game. If you unsub you lose the glow and all the gil / time you spent to get it in the first place.
Actually most games with housing that has a publicly accessible element (i.e. exterior) has limitations like this.

The housing system in FFXIV was originally designed for free companies (guilds) only. During the time that it was like this, there wasn't a major capacity issue. But then they opened it up for individual purchasing and th at's when the system could no longer handle it. The deomolition timer is necessary to ensure that people who want and are actually going to use housing can get access to it when there is limited capacity available. Each ward of housing needs another server machine so it isn't a trivial matter to expand the capacity, which is why it only happens every so often.

Meanwhile in XI, there is no exterior element to mog houses and it's just a zillion copies of the same identical room. The game only needs to load in your personal furniture layout data when you enter, and other people can't enter without invitation. XI's system is simpler and doesn't require anywhere near the same level of resources to operate as XIV's.