then scrap the ridiculous wards system for the personal housing. XI's system worked just fine. We didn't need FC houses with rooms inside fc houses and then player houses in the same wards so they have to add more wards (to the tune of what, a thousand at least per server?). People asked for a FC house, and a personal house.

The FC housing system remains as it is. The rooms inside the FC houses were not needed.
The player housing system should have been the room system, entered from some origination point, purchased from an npc, and created on demand.

They need to hire a consultant, because they are doing everything in the most resource-intensive way possible. You can't do that and then cry "but server capacity!"... especially when your decade-old mmo somehow managed to accommodate all the players on hamster equipment.