Housing Frustrations

[Jojoya]

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While I agree with the general idea that SE needs to pay more attention to housing. you've got some numbers wrong and you're making some assumptions that you shouldn't.

The game does not have 20 million active players. There have been 20 million accounts created since the game was released. Most of those accounts are no longer active (just as WoW had over 100 million accounts created as of Cataclysm even though the game only had about 10 million active subscribers at the time).

The best guess is that there's a little under 1 million active players right now. Number was higher earlier in the expansion but has dropped a bit now the expansion is more than half over (normal for MMOs).

Even if only 50% of active players would like to own a house, it means we've still got a fairly large shortfall. With Ishgard not being opened until 6.1 and the active player count no doubt increasing again with the new expansion content, there's no way Ishgard housing is going to be sufficient to fill demand if the number of wards in all housing districts remains the same. SE needs to do something else if they're serious about making sure there are enough plots for every player that wants a house.

As for 375,000 players being willing to pay $12.99/mo just to keep a house... are you nuts? This isn't a housing-centric game. There might be that small percentage of players who pay a subscription solely to keep a house but for most of the rest of us, housing is a small part of a much bigger package. If the rest of the package fails to keep us entertained, we're not going to stay subscribed just for our house. Most people are smart enough not to waste money that way.

Also, that $4.8 million a month you mention isn't solely to pay for housing. It pays for a lot of things, some that aren't even directly game related like accounting staff and maintenance staff, insurance and other benefits for employees, etc. Companies do have expenses generated by necessary operations that aren't directly related to creating the products they sell. It's naive to think those numbers are inconsequential in a company with thousands of employees.

Certainly, SE needs to do something to address the lack of supply so every player that wants a house can get one but let's not distort the situation.