The Case for Instanced Housing

[Eldevern]

Since I owned two mansions, I have some kind of experience of "neighborood". Most of time, it is dead empty. Sometimes when it is a ward with a big FC you can see a few more people but it's not what I call lively since most of time, they don't interact, they just stand half-afk, waiting a roulette to proc or are remaining here while they are gone.
People visiting house? Since I was used to craft in the house, visit are rare, maybe one a week, sometimes two but it is really rare to see more people.
Apartements? Dead empty too. I sometimes see the same and only one player... two times a month?

This said outside of an FCs. Is it different when we are part of an FCs? Not really, most a time, we see... three people and that's all.

If we talk about social aspect, I can't make another conclusion than : it's a sad fail. Many FCs are not lively either.

Considering we currently can lose house, I don't regret I gave up my mansions. I would gladly exchange the whole system for an evolutive instance where you can start little and upgrade step by step. With Wildstar, we know it is technically possible, since the game has been released in 2014 and then, based on a 2010-2012 technology, the current state-of-art allows a lot more (especially thanks to GAFA : they need both a lot of storage, a lot of dynamic memory and a high availability. Since this kind of technology is now ten years old, it is not experimental anymore but the growing standard). People who think they would lose a lot with a complete overhaul don't realize the changes in server technologies.

There is something else to consider : even if there is no new AAA MMORPG to be released anytime soon, FFXIV already somehow look outdated to compare with BDO (that can run on mobile) and it is worst with the coming next-gen. If SE wants the game to last ten more years, they will need a big overhaul.