Quote Originally Posted by Theodric View Post
The game has a significant number of role-players who make use of their houses on a daily basis. Even when not accounting for people who role-play, there's a pretty large number of players who simply enjoy decorating their houses and seeing what sort of designs they can come up with.

You strike me as the sort of player who only acquired a house in order to show it off - especially since there's no real 'accomplishment' involved in gaining one in the first place, only a matter of luck - and now that you have one, you wish to pull up the bridge behind you and prevent others from benefiting from a more efficient system.

I own a house myself - a medium in Mist, located right on the beach. I'd be absolutely fine with switching to an instanced house, so long as my friends could visit.
They do enjoy decorating because they could show it easily to everyone, what sense it makes to decorate a house that only you could see? None.
Preventing others is a part of the system, with limited resources having a house is precious and you feel lucky to have one.
Thanks to this having a nice decorated house is a value on its own, where with instanced houses it does not.
And someone who really wants a house will get it sooner or later if he put enough effort and time into it, its not like houses are gated for everyone, its a neccessary inconvenience that makes it more spicy.