Two reasons why an eviction system is INEVITABLE.

[StouterTaru]

My original point, that the kind of content getting locked behind FC home ownership in 3.0 will be enough to bring the housing issue to crisis, remains supported by this document, I think. The document itself is a compilation of forum post, live letter and interview tidbits, sadly without citations.

And what happens when it's realized that FC airships and workshops are just housing glamours and glorified treasure maps? Will being able to further customize your house skyrocket the demand for housing? Or will being able to fight dungeon boss level mobs for new glamours and minions be the deciding factor?

Yes they will need to reclaim houses from unsubs eventually, but only because of the server resources they continue to use up after they have stopped paying.

[Madjames]

And what happens when it's realized that FC airships and workshops are just housing glamours and glorified treasure maps? Will being able to further customize your house skyrocket the demand for housing? Or will being able to fight dungeon boss level mobs for new glamours and minions be the deciding factor?

Yes they will need to reclaim houses from unsubs eventually, but only because of the server resources they continue to use up after they have stopped paying.

They will need to reclaim homes from ubsubs because it is the right thing to do. A limited resource in a game such as housing should be for PAYING SUBSCRIBERS only! Ultima Online did this as well as limiting a house to one house, per account, per server and it opened up homes for tons of people It worked well to also open up the housing market and let us real-estate agents do our jobs

[m3eansean]

The best part is they were ready to implement this as a thing a couple patches ago. The timer was 30 days for the auto-relinquish, I believe, and a vocal minority of the forums freaked out, so they pulled back.

[Madjames]

The best part is they were ready to implement this as a thing a couple patches ago. The timer was 30 days for the auto-relinquish, I believe, and a vocal minority of the forums freaked out, so they pulled back.

Which is a total mistake. Housing should be for paying subscribers only!

[MsCroc]

I think they could probably do housing relinguishing in a number of ways.
Why not boot housing from inactive accounts but in the process give them a refund so they aren't deprived of all their hard work and can get back on their feet easily when they do re-sub?

[m3eansean]

I think they could probably do housing relinguishing in a number of ways.
Why not boot housing from inactive accounts but in the process give them a refund so they aren't deprived of all their hard work and can get back on their feet easily when they do re-sub?

IMO - they need to take the kid gloves off. They just need to boot people out of their houses. If you can't be bothered to log in for 30 day, sorry, but that is ample time to log in JUST ONCE to keep your house under your onwership.

Stop worrying about people who un-subbed and might possibly return to find out they have no house, big deal, that's their issue for not playing for so long. They need to free up space for active players.

If word gets around to new players that housing is a disaster, outside of the reach of a normal player and that they shouldn't even bother, it will sour potential new customers. From a business standpoint, as is pointed out perfectly in the OP's first post. Not having an auto-reliquish is an indefensible position.

[MsCroc]

I realize it's a highly contested subject. I have some thoughts on this:

I work in business as a living so I am familiar with the importance of new customers. However, screwing over previous customers is not the way to do it. If we're going to come at this from a 'business angle' then SE should accept responsibility for advertising housing as a main feature and not being able to live up to that promise.Due to how it was advertise, we were all expecting it to be more accessible than it is.
It is their own problem that they created and the best business option would be to fix their horrible tech.

Dulling out punishments does not create happy customers. The problem with saying that "it's their fault for not always subbing" is that 'taking the kids gloves off' also has the side effect of preventing past customers from turning into returning customers.

[StouterTaru]

They need to put a time limit on someone's account not being subscribed and limit the housing to one house, per server, per account. This is ONE fc house OR ONE personal house per character, per account. Homes should be for paying subscribers only and should be limited to give everyone a chance to get into these features.

If you want to limit them to one FC or personal house, why not just remove personal houses altogether? One per server also makes no sense, if it's for the space, it's still one person taking up multiple houses. Also, people with multiple characters on one server are paying more each month for their subscription.

[MsCroc]

That's not to say forced house relinquishing should be entirely off the table but it should be done in a tactful way. I realize a refund could have significant economic problems for the server, but what if they created an item called a 'voucher' that would give you a hefty discount off your next housing purchase if your house ends up being relinquished?

[Yeldir]

I realize it's a highly contested subject. I have some thoughts on this:I work in business as a living so I am familiar with the importance of new customers.

However, screwing over previous customers is not the way to do it. If we're going to come at this from a 'business angle' then SE should accept responsibility for advertising housing as a main feature and not being able to live up to that promise.Due to how it was advertise, we were all expecting it to be more accessible than it is.
It is their own problem that they created and the best business option would be to fix their horrible tech.

Dulling out punishments does not create happy customers. The problem with saying that "it's their fault for not always subbing" is that 'taking the kids gloves off' also has the side effect of preventing past customers from turning into returning customers.

Majority rules, Croc. They're going to go with whatever decision gives them the most subscribers - and when the rain of tears begins, it's going to be the group that cries the most. It should be obvious which group that's going to be.