Ghost wards

Issues with housing

I am not sure how universal this problem is, because I know there are lower population servers out there that still have most of the housing zones unsold, but currently I live in a ghost town. I transferred to Diabolos and joined a friends FC that promptly died, not being that attached to anyone, I stuck around and inherited the FC house. Ward 2, great spot next to a market board, ect. But all my neighboring FC houses suffered the same fate. The first and second wards are full of housing that was purchased by FC's ages ago when the system was new, but most of those FC's in my ward have since died. Most of them aren't even left with an active player, they were left to that guy who quit playing months ago.


I know it doesn't sound like a problem, but it's depressing to see. When I started on this server the ward was an active place like a real neighborhood. There were people to talk to, you'd go and check out someones house when they built some new crazy thing, ect. One of the funnest nights in the ward was when a flash mob of dragoons entered random peoples houses and ring of thorned all over the place. Sound stupid, but if that person had a dragoon they usually joined us when we moved onto the next house. But now its just a place I port to when I need quick access to retainers and a market board.

What I propose will never happen, partially because I think its too late for one of these ideas with the implication of subdivisions to wards. But here's what I would have liked to see -

Personal housing is different from FC housing - instead of just a clone of the ward, it should have had a different layout with more spacious lots, more private housing type areas. Think of the Grid housing area, where there are a couple spots that are pretty much on their own islands. I kind of expected a lot more of that for the personal housing areas.

All wards should have a foreclosure process - foreclosure sucks, but it would enable lots to come up for sale for less than the cost of a new one in a new ward, and it would keep wards alive. Example - the house right next to mine is owned by an FC that hasn't played in well over 4 months. After a period of time, lets say 60 days, of no one from the FC logging in, the house should go up for sale at a slightly reduced rate. So lets say they bought the house for 4 mil, have it go up for sale for 3 mil, and then that 3 mil can go into the FC's vault (If the FC still exists) or into an individual players retainer (If the house is only owned by a single player). This can scale to house size, so the medium house that is abandoned in my ward could have a time of 90 days of no player activity initiating a foreclosure process.

I know it wont happen and is packed full of problems like what do you tell the guy who comes back to play after a couple months when his house is gone, or what happens to all the crafted stuff inside the house. But it's just an observation that if these FC housing areas were supposed to be hubs of social interaction, the early wards full of early purchasers are more like depressing ghost towns.