Automatic Housing Demolition - A Suggesstion, a Compromise. Let's talk about it.

[MomomiMomi]

1) Let's say your house is in cold storage and you come back to the game and there are no plots anywhere at that time. Can you get access to the items associated to the house while they're in this cold storage state to, for instance, use them in your FC house or in an apartment? If you can get items out of the house's cold storage without placing a house, what impact is that going to have to the layout of the house that you're trying to preserve "as is" for relocation?

2) Relocation has different rules than purchasing related to relinquished plots. Let's say you return to the game after a long break and your house is in cold storage. Should you get priority access to housing plots the way a relocation would (and thus go ahead of the line compared to new players who want the land), or should you really be in the same queue as other new purchasers (and people who have "active" houses are the only one who have priority for relocation)?

3) At the end of the day, the reclamation system is also an incentive for people to remain subbed to the game. Bluntly, what motivation does SE have to spend money on making it more attractive for people to stop subscribing to the game, when the alternative is that people just stay subbed and login periodically even when they're on break? (You could argue that this would make it more attractive for people who have to go on break to want to come back, but at the same time it would also make it more likely that people who might not otherwise go on break do since they know all the housing items would still be there whenever they get back.)

1. For simplicity's sake, and knowing how Square Enix tends to do things, I would say probably not. Ideally, it should be possible. But I'm being realistic here. We can't even take items out of our retainers when they're inactive, and that's a feature players pay for.

2. I don't see why the rules should be different even in the current system.

3. You already stated it makes it more attractive to come back. There are also more complex benefits, such as not having your players hate you.

There's also the fact they can save face every time someone brings this back up:

Q: Will there be any maintenance fees or other costs for housing, besides the cost of the land and house?

A: In older MMOs, such as Ultima Online, there was a house maintenance fee you had to pay weekly, but in FFXIV: ARR we decided against this system. Similarly, these older MMOs also had a system where your house would break down if you didn’t log in after a while in order to have you continue your subscription, but this is a thing of the past and we won't have any system like that.