1 account buying 14 houses in 1 ward.

[Valenth]

I'm fully expecting Yoshi-P and the community moderators/GMs to reach out to the couple in question and request they give up their houses with full reimbursement. I'm guessing this is the only thing they can do now, going through the dirt and out of the way to meticulously compensate the couple for the time and money invested. And no, just adding more wards is not gonna work, it would cost SE way too many real life resources to add those wards. They simply cannot do this, especially from a financial point of view (and having a lot of money doesn't mean you should spend it recklessly). On top of that, it would incite more people to try and do this in the hopes of forcing SE to do things. It's Pavlov there really.

But let's be honest, I think we can all agree the game was definitely not designed for one person to have multiple house. It if was, we wouldn't be limited to a house per character to begin with but instead would have systems in place that actively allow for the purchase of multiple houses, at least no restrictions in place. They actively put designs in meant to prevent you from buying multiple houses, incomplete as they are. This should tell people one part of the intended design, the other being just being proper manners, ethics. SE's design leaves a lot to be desired for, sure, and that's where the big fault is, but people really can't deny it was sort of obvious what the intention of the design was. Nobody can righteously deny the intent of the design was clear and getting 28 houses through alts clearly is circumvention of said design. TL;DR - the entirety of design in place was one which inhibited the purchase of multiple plots on one character, this is all the hints you know to know about the developers' intentions of use. Circumventing by buying on alts, while possible, goes against said obvious intention. It's what's called a design oversight.

Ethics people. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. Let's work together to make this game nice for everyone, it's a massive online game after all. SE should fully reimburse the couple for reclaiming property and we should all learn to pay more attention to proper manners. Even though the situation was caused by SE, we haven't exactly been behaving properly either, have we now? Treat each other a bit kinder, not like they're after your life or trying to dismantle your raison d'etre, keep things constructive and in the spirit of co-operation. In the end it's all a videogame.