Quote Originally Posted by Seraphor View Post
Actual instanced housing would require a duty queue and transfer to the instance servers. This would also mean you wouldn't be able to queue anything else while in your house, or access retainers.
It would kinda defeat the whole point..
... what? This is complete and utter nonsense.

We already have a form of instanced housing in Apartments, which you can queue from. Inn Rooms, The Rising Stones, the side room in Sharlayan and the Grand Company Barracks are all instanced "zones" that is readily available to every single person without issue. Even at full server capacity like we've seen with Endwalker, none of these areas even remotely struggled to load. So the technically not only exists is readily being utilized.

The whole point of instanced housing is it alleviates server space as these zones only load when players are actively present inside them whereas the current Wards are constantly maintained regardless. There's a reason pretty much every other MMO opted for instanced housing. It's widely superior in terms of practical use of space. The only disadvantage for better functionality and infinite housing is you lose the neighbour feel Wards provide. Which is why a lot of people have suggested they do both. Or why so many hoped for Island Sanctuary to fill that void.

Why they haven't gone for instanced house boils down to the sunken cost fallacy. The dev team has stubbornly put so many resources into one band-aid fix after another, they don't want to develop a whole new system. Not to mention, for a business perspective, the current system ensures players with a house will keep their sub active indefinitely as they know their odds of getting another are virtually none.