Quote Originally Posted by Penthea View Post
Or SE could give us instanced housing so we can have as many plots as we want without interfering with anyone else's chances for a plot. But the likelihood of that is very small. SE seem disinclined to let go of the ward system
They wouldn't necessarily have to throw out the ward system in order to add instanced housing. IMO personal housing should've been instanced, and wards left to FCs. We wouldn't have had multiple ward increases if that were the case, but we have what we have. There are a number of small ways SE could start to ease the housing crunch on larger servers, including but not limited to:

- allowing more tenants per house
- allowing alts to share the main's house without taking up tenant slots
- adding access to crossbreeding gardens via apartments and company rooms
- adding access to company workshops via something other than housing

In the long term, I'd be happy if I heard they were working on an instanced housing system that would run in parallel to the current wards, offering incentives for any FC or character who chose to move their house from the wards to the instanced system (purchasable upgrades would be one possible perk that I think a lot of people would go for). But again, I'm not sure if SE cares enough to do any large overhauls. I get a kind of "good enough" vibe from them right now. Which is a shame.

That aside, my suspicion is that if we had unlimited instanced housing, there would be less of these empty "placeholder" houses. When a resource is limited, it seems to encourage this kind of "I'd better get one now, even if I don't need it, because soon I WON'T BE ABLE TO". I wouldn't be surprised if the player with those alts fully intends to decorate those houses "someday, when I have time". They just grabbed them to hold onto in case they want to decorate them later. If housing were instanced and they knew their alts could get houses whenever they wanted without difficulty, they probably wouldn't have bothered.