We Apologize for the Inconvenience

I found the one house that was pending sale. I got up in the wee hours of the morning yesterday, parked my character there, and waited till we all got kicked off the server. I noted the time maintenance would be completed, set my alarm to get up early for the second day in the row, and prayed for the best.

I woke up fifteen minutes before my alarm went off, 45 minutes before maintenance was supposed to end. Plenty of time to download the game and join the throng of players queuing to get in. No guarantee of a house, but at least I'd have my shot. And as I'm sitting there, bleary eyed, waiting for my download to complete, I see the following message in the portal:

"Maintenance will finish an hour early. We apologize for the inconvenience."

That was posted ten minutes prior to the hour-early release. Naturally, by the time I logged in, the spot was already taken.

I'm tired. I've been at this for two years now. This is a physically painful process that needs to be immediately addressed, because even when we put in all the necessary work, the goalposts keep changing.

If you've been at this for two years, then buckle up. This is going to be the worst time of your life because there has been no worse time to buy a house than now. Maybe spend the next two months, or years, farming the gil to outright buy the house of your choice so you can move on with your life.

I feel your pain, I am so fustrated by housing as well.

If you've been played the game as long as you have, perhaps you would know that occasionally maintenance can finish earlier than expected, in which case you could have set the alarm much earlier to avoid something like this. This isn't intended to be snarky but maintenance times are seldom absolutes, unless it is confirmed beforehand that it won't be finished early (i.e. when housing was opened up in Shirogane).

How DARE a company allows it's users to take advantage of a service they pay for ahead of the expected downtime. THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.

A couple of things that you should already know if you have been playing for some years:
1) Maintenance finishes early more often than not. One hour early this time, which actually was a bit later than I had expected.
2) You can usually start downloading the patch some time before the servers open. In this particular case the dowload could be started about 5 hours before the maintenance ended.

In short, this was a perfectly normal update in all aspects, including the early finish of of maintenance.

I bought a house in the goblet first then eventually transferred to a house I liked in the beds. Idk what server or data center you're on but on mine there is far less competition in the beds. It definitely cost more to do but totally beats camping plots.

I'm sorry to hear the housing struggle is hurting you so keenly.
I hope you can get one soon, and I hope SQEX addresses the unpopular housing system even sooner.

I have nothing offer but condolences. The design of acquisition of houses is awful and SE being unwilling to let go of the ward system guarantees there will always be players in your position. I wish they would at least upgrade apartments to have the same features as houses, as well as make them larger, then it would be less upsetting to miss out on a house because at least your apartment would be really good.

OP I hope your long quest to get a house will end soon.

The camping system does seem brutal. I get why they did it, but I feel like a captcha system or even a solo duty would have been a better way to combat automated play than the timer is.