Nope you didn't add enough plots SE...

[TwistedTea]

Being able to get a house in a game shouldn't be dependent on one's ability to ignore sleep, take a day off work, sit at a placard for hours waiting for a hidden timer to end. Players in other MMOs with housing aren't expected to do this. Why should FFXIV players have to?

Amen. It's time to stop excusing SE for this poor access to something which is so basic in other MMORPGs. How many years has it been since housing was first introduced?

It comes down to a supply issue. Which would not have been a problem if SE had gone the fully instanced route for housing like other MMORPGs. Yoshi P studied the failures of Ultima Online's limited housing but still went ahead with limited housing in XIV? It's baffling.

The persistent ward system cannot cope with increasing player populations. Not asking SE to remove the persistent ward system but please at least improve upon apartments to reduce the demand on ward housing.

[Almagnus1]

Amen. It's time to stop excusing SE for this poor access to something which is so basic in other MMORPGs. How many years has it been since housing was first introduced?

It comes down to a supply issue. Which would not have been a problem if SE had gone the fully instanced route for housing like other MMORPGs. Yoshi P studied the failures of Ultima Online's limited housing but still went ahead with limited housing in XIV? It's baffling.

The persistent ward system cannot cope with increasing player populations. Not asking SE to remove the persistent ward system but please at least improve upon apartments to reduce the demand on ward housing.

Wards themselves aren't a bad thing... but I'm really coming around to the "why not both?" things.

That said, I want to avoid a WoW garrison thing where all you do is sit at your house isolated and alone. That sounds a bit too much like RL now for my tastes....

[Jojoya]

That said, I want to avoid a WoW garrison thing where all you do is sit at your house isolated and alone. That sounds a bit too much like RL now for my tastes....

Garrisons were WoW's non-instanced end game content for WoD 6.0 and 6.1. You had a single assault daily (that you still had to pick up from the Garrison) and that was about it when it came to non-instanced content to do outside of the Garrison. Everything else non-instanced was in the garrison. They tried to correct that when Tanaan Jungle released but by then it was too late - players were too used to sitting in their Garrisons, waiting on followers to bring them back thousands of gold from the treasure missions.

Any FFXIV players inclined to do nothing but sit in housing are already doing that, whether they own a house or an apartment. But unlike WoW Garrisons, housing doesn't offer much to do besides decorating and a few minutes of gardening a day (unless someone's an active roleplayer and that's not the "hermit" type of player you seem to be referring to). There's plenty of things to do in open world zones if the player is interested. As long as players have incentive to participate, we're not going to see the problem that WoW had if SE expands instanced housing from the current apartments to something more.

[Penthea]

Wards themselves aren't a bad thing... but I'm really coming around to the "why not both?" things.

That said, I want to avoid a WoW garrison thing where all you do is sit at your house isolated and alone. That sounds a bit too much like RL now for my tastes....

WoW garrisons were not housing (you couldn't even have your own bed) and they were intended to be used and then left behind. There was extremely little customisation to the point that your garrison looked nearly identical to everyone's garrison in your faction, and after the WoD expansion it became irrelevant.

Housing content in FFXIV is significantly more advanced than the WoW garrisons. But what WoW did correctly with them was having them phased so that every player could have their own on every character.