Quote Originally Posted by tymora View Post
4) Instanced Areas - Do NOT for ANY reason, allow players to build houses anywhere in the land. Just look at Ultima Online to see the result...land rush + spoils map beauty. An area with streets, housing plots will be nice.
I agree with the post as a whole but this part in particular. While housing out in the world sounds like a good idea at a first glance the reality is it ends up pretty awful. People build houses around certain areas, populate the entire area with houses and then quit leaving a giant ghost town mark on the world. Also if the game does become quite popular how are you going to accommodate thousands (or tens/hundreds of thousands for the sake of argument) of players in the world? Every spot of land would be covered in player housing.

Instanced is the way to go. Each house doesn't need to have its own instance, they could still do towns where they have dozens of houses in place at a time split up into districts like the wards are. You'd need a boatload of districts eventually but it's better than the alternative of ugly ghost towns marring the landscape and eventually not allowing new players to gain housing.