Quote Originally Posted by Catwho View Post
The resale situation doesn't apply to any of the abandoned FC houses in my housing ward. I researched them for my panel at AWA when I discussed this topic. They're all dead FCs. All of them. One with a single member. She might log in to keep the house, or let it get reclaimed and take the money.

Personal houses? Perhaps. But I'm in a main ward and the majority of the abandoned houses are FC houses. (Heck, one is a lot without a house on it at all.)
This is still a bad fix compared to instancing. FFXI had instanced housing in its own way, Mog Houses. Not nearly as large of scale but instanced with customization so everyone could have one. WoW recently added instanced based housing with the war garrisons or whatever they are called. This if anything will keep players who had homes from coming back to the game if they decide to take a break because they will know a house the worked hard for/decorating will be reduced to 80% gil and the loss of rare furnishings.

With player retention the way it is, changes like this are making it easier and easier for players who were on the fence about leaving to just leave. And anyone who says just to leave and play something else, that isn't the answer SE should be looking for. They should want to encourage old players to come back into the game and get that sweet, sweet sub money again as well as creating content that keeps people subbed year long instead of subbing every 3rd month based on the patch cycle to see the new stuff. My fiance and I are caught up in the EU data center migration and at this point if the latency is too bad during peak hours, we will most likely end up quitting and giving the gil from the house to existing FC members. The thought of having to transfer to another data center and lose the money and items we invested, along with the gil transfer cap we just cannot get motivated to go back through all that again.

It's poorly implemented and I think is causing many people to question developer competence seeing them opt for such systems over additional instanced housing. Solracht's solution to housing was probably the best I have seen, physical wards for active communities, inactive moved to instanced for retention. P.S. I stalk your posts on BG. And Cat I was at your panel.