Reclamation of Inactive Housing announced

[LaylaTsarra]

There is! The game can be subscribed to for up to six months at a time, and the account can be set to "recurring payment". No mess, no fuss!

I'd like a clarification. Does one have to actually enter their house or simply be subscribed to the game to maintain their housing?

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Cant they just make inns work as instanced housing...

Unlikely, since it would require a full overhaul to allow players to customize it. Because inns render the exact same static environment, it's very easy to load.

[adn]

There is! The game can be subscribed to for up to six months at a time, and the account can be set to "recurring payment". No mess, no fuss!

Unless I'm reading incorrectly, maintaining a sub alone doesn't preserve your house. You have to log in and access the house. I'm talking about situations in which that is potentially not feasible for people.

[ElHeggunte]

I'd like a clarification. Does one have to actually enter their house or simply be subscribed to the game to maintain their housing?

They have to enter it too. Which can easily be done by letting someone you trust, like a family member, log you in and move you into the house every once in a while if you're physically unable to do it yourself.

[Neira]

I wish people would realize that when you have large housing wards that take a few minutes to run through, from far side to far side, that have can have as few as 30 people in them from all over the world(potentially) with different hours and walks of life... not seeing people does not make the ward "dead". You could have all thirty people online at the same time in the ward and still see no one.

Also, something I've said many times, and will capitalize for emphasis, THIS ISSUE WILL NOT REMOVE ANY HOUSING THAT PEOPLE BOUGHT FOR RESELL. Just in case people have missed that fact or try to bring it up. Just because a plot is actually unused doesn't mean much if a person just bought the house to flip it for a profit. They can still do that, now they just need to log into their alternate characters. They may have to put a house on it to bypass that one rule about property without a home, but what's 500k investment on top of the 5m purchase when you could flip it for 10m+?

Also, to the person who said 1.8% wasn't an accurate number because it didn't include FCs... uh, yeah. That actually works in SE's favor. If we include FCs, the number will go lower, not higher. So yes, it's not taking FCs into account, but if we took FCs into account it would probably be around 1% of the total subscribers that own a personal home. Take the benefit of the doubt on this one.

[adn]

They have to enter it too. Which can easily be done by letting someone you trust, like a family member, log you in and move you into the house every once in a while if you're physically unable to do it yourself.

Except that's a ToS violation. I certainly hope you're not expecting people to violate the ToS to maintain a player house.

3.1 Sharing Account Information. You may not share your account or login information (such as your Square Enix ID and password) with anyone except your legal guardian, your minor child, or Square Enix. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account and login information, even from your friends and family. If you violate this provision, you may unexpectedly lose access to your account to a third party without recourse against Square Enix. Square Enix will not be obliged to credit your Square Enix Account with Crysta or other points or awards, which may have been used by a third party as a result of the violation of this clause.


That said, you are correct, as long as your friend/family don't obviously give it away I suppose that would work too.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Unless I'm reading incorrectly, maintaining a sub alone doesn't preserve your house. You have to log in and access the house. I'm talking about situations in which that is potentially not feasible for people.

You would be correct. In order to cancel the timer, you must log in and enter your house. FCs could get around this by having another member do that, but individually owned houses mean either you get on or you lose it.

[ElHeggunte]

Except that's a ToS violation. I certainly hope you're not expecting people to violate the ToS to maintain a player house.

Oh I know it's against the rules, but it's one of those "non-rules" that SE can't (and by extension wont) enforce if you don't tell them you're doing it. I don't necessarily encourage the active breaking of rules, it's more to illustrate that there is indeed an option for people who are forced away for extended periods instead of being completely SOL.

[Neira]

1 - Everyone having a house in a dynamic system would require thousands of times the current server capacity, unless you greatly change what a house is, ex snap to grid furniture and 90 degree rotations. It would require a substantial downgrade to what housing is.

Actually, fifty-four times the amount of current server capacity if we're going by the figure of 5m subscribers and discounting FC houses. However, even five times the server capacity(five times what we have now) would put a decent dent into the housing issue for quite a while. Not quite sure where you're getting "thousands", but if we had even one thousand times the wards we currently do, that would be 92,160,000 houses, which is pretty much overkill. Ten times our current wards would put us at 921,160, which would potentially cover every player who even wants and can afford a house.

[StrejdaTom]

Finally, SE you have my full support, don't back off because of a few people who log in once in a 3 months and want to have their house safe.