Thought they just bought it off a dead server and were treating it like some form of grand achievement that they managed to get one?
Both are still weird flexes either way.
I'm utterly convinced people who find the gameplay loop of island sanctuary so utterly captivating don't have a great deal of experience with the life-sim and colony management genres of games in general.
It missed the mark by quite a margin from what the concept of settling and developing an uninhabited island could've been, it's more like Tataru tricked us into running her off-shore mammet sweatshop for her.
You will enjoy your apartment and you will like it
Moving to new server worked great, basically all of my FC got houses without competition.
Moved to Alpha. Got a personal medium house and FC mansion. After I finished decorating... housing is dead to me as well. For some reason most of fun is the goal of trying to get the house. Earning gil, looking at plots, praying to win the lottery and so on. Once you get the house and decorate the content is kind of meh? Only matter of time before I let the demolition eat the plots like all the times before. Island Sanctuary even while being a mammet sweatshop has at least some interactivity. Housing is cool goal, but once you achieve it, there is not much point in it.
I think you're misreading things. People don't find it captivating. They find it satisfying in its simplicity and general peacefulness. The type of game you're talking about likely wouldn't translate well into XIV. There's only so much that can be adapted. That's why they went a simpler route and used what makes some of the browser games popular.
A lot... of people really really overestimate the value of a personal house, there is down right nothing beyond decorating and rp with it... Its one if the main reasons why FC tend to get priority, workshop, fc buffs, extra apartments, and a greater chance at a community...
Thats the entire reason people want a house: decorating, a place to bring home people they pick up at the club and the feeling of owning something exclusive. I don't think many care about past that if they're going for a private house. If they do, they go for an FC/become involved in their own FCs stuff.
Hell, I think you can even throw owning one just to own one into the reasons why because of how hard it is to get one in the current times. Some plots are still sitting claimed but undecorated and you never see the owners.