What do you supposes the actual cost of a Housing Ward is for Square Enix

As the title suggest, what do you think the actual cost to spin up and maintain a housing ward on 1 server actually costs Square Enix?

What I'm getting at is a bet it's not very much, and if the option was actually made to players to make a one time payment $10-$20 for a guaranteed plot which I suspect is WAY more then the actual cost for Square Enix to Spin up and Maintain a single Plot in their Data Center the housing issue would be completely solved.

I can only observe that they seem to have developed an implementation that is vastly more costly than any other MMO or MMO-like game's housing system I've ever seen, even those that have wards or similar systems providing neighbors. Or if not that, and a little more tin-foil-hat-ish, they want it to be elite and exclusive for some reason.

I'd rather not have official RMT involved with it, in any case.

Fixed DC costs are about $6100 per month per rack for tier 1. This is floor space, security, fire suppression
Maintenance costs are about $5000 per month on top per rack - this is power, UPS, Cooling, Generator, data (a huge ongoing cost)
Soft costs (labour) are about $4500 per month on top of that per rack

So, maybe $16000/month for 21 servers in a tier one DC. (servers not worlds... each world needs many servers - from the photos we've seen Materia's 5 worlds had 60 servers at least)

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Originally Posted by Nikito

if the option was actually made to players to make a one time payment $10-$20 for a guaranteed plot which I suspect is WAY more then the actual cost for Square Enix

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You'd be surprised at how those ongoing costs for power, cooling, maintenance, security, fire, diesel, staff, and so on add up.

People, who own a house, have to pay a sub, or they loose progress.
People who does not own the house, have to be jealous for people who own one, coz its not that simple to get one.

Each item in house has 4 coordinates, id and color, if coordinates are 64bit numbers (but I am sure its =<32bit one), it must be 64bytes for 1 item (in worse case), and 300 items gonna be ~20KiloBytes of data (u can afk in lumsa 10 seconds and receive more amount of data).
Generic forum thread weights more than generic large house. Plus u dont have to keep house loaded 24/7 inside server memory, if nobody visiting it.

So these limitations were made on purpose, to make housing exclusive on purpose, not coz its limitations of hardware/software. People can simple open a dutyfinder dungeon for one player, anytime. And have own rooms.

I don't know but I'm very sad that I still don't have a house. Even though I really want a house, I would actually prefer an instanced house with an outdoor area if that was available. Isn't it much cheaper to have instanced areas since they only take server space when someone is using them? Or is it the same whether it's instanced or not?

I think it's both server costs and wanting it to be an exclusive feature, hence why housing is set in wards and doesn't just send you to an instance with your own plot of land.

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Originally Posted by Remolia

So these limitations were made on purpose, to make housing exclusive on purpose, not coz its limitations of hardware/software. People can simple open a dutyfinder dungeon for one player, anytime. And have own rooms.

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This is false, only a limited number of instances can be opened at a time. While it is fine now, when population spikes up—such as when a new expansion launches—all the sudden queue times and errors exist for things that it normally shouldn't.

"Raubahn Extreme" is a great example as it was an early Stormblood solo duty that bottle-necked everyone due to the limited number of people that can be doing it at a time. It's why Stormblood and Endwalker splits the population into two zones early, does not have any solo duties and takes a long time before you get to the first dungeon.
Gold Saucer GATEs have no role or party requirements yet sometimes you'd be waiting a while to get into Leap of Faith or Air Force One.
Trying to enter your house would often times give you an error because the housing instance servers are full.

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Originally Posted by Remolia

So these limitations were made on purpose, to make housing exclusive on purpose, not coz its limitations of hardware/software. People can simple open a dutyfinder dungeon for one player, anytime. And have own rooms.

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Housing and wards were originally meant for FCs only. That's why it was limited. When people asked for personal access, it was already too late to change the format without having to demolish every existing house.

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Originally Posted by Shibi

Fixed DC costs are about $6100 per month per rack for tier 1. This is floor space, security, fire suppression
Maintenance costs are about $5000 per month on top per rack - this is power, UPS, Cooling, Generator, data (a huge ongoing cost)
Soft costs (labour) are about $4500 per month on top of that per rack

So, maybe $16000/month for 21 servers in a tier one DC. (servers not worlds... each world needs many servers - from the photos we've seen Materia's 5 worlds had 60 servers at least)



You'd be surprised at how those ongoing costs for power, cooling, maintenance, security, fire, diesel, staff, and so on add up.

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Assuming each plot was individual. Out of 21 wards 1260 people? Roughly $13 a month to maintain the $16000 a month.

Honestly not as bad I initially expected haha.

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Originally Posted by Axious

Assuming each plot was individual. Out of 21 wards 1260 people? Roughly $13 a month to maintain the $16000 a month.

Honestly not as bad I initially expected haha.

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Not counting inflation and a subscription that isn't rising.

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Originally Posted by Wasselin

I don't know but I'm very sad that I still don't have a house. Even though I really want a house, I would actually prefer an instanced house with an outdoor area if that was available. Isn't it much cheaper to have instanced areas since they only take server space when someone is using them? Or is it the same whether it's instanced or not?

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They would still take up a small amount of space as the locations of your furniture, etc. would need to be stored in a database.