Based on the Live Letter, it looks like we're definitely stuck with the lottery.
The lottery periods are way too long though given OCE is starting from zero with no players grandfathered into owning multiple personal houses. This wouldn't be as awful if the lotteries were done in a day or a shorter time period.
You could get stuck retrying the lottery for weeks on end if you're unlucky and fail multiple times. Then you could get stuck in the same loop trying to get the FC plot after you or a trusted FC member finally get their personal due to the one bid restriction (and as another user mentioned, this benefits the shell FCs and people with alts).
Meanwhile, a lot of plots will sit empty during those lottery periods, when we could have just fallen back to them immediately with FCFS if we didn't get our first choice.
All this ceremony and bureaucracy just seems like a pointless barrier for us for no benefits.
Everyone who wants a house will probably get a house given the low population, but some will just be forced to wait longer than others...
For what?
To appease the players that aren't even on the OCE data centre?
To ensure furniture sales stay near zero longer?
To make sure the Oceanians don't have too much fun too quickly?
Every housing district on OCE is a new ward. New wards open up immediately with FCFS and don't have the invisible timer.
Botters would have no advantage with FCFS. In fact, real players are much more likely to reach a housing plot to snap it up before a dumb bot can. The lottery just gives these RMT and bot users equal (or better) odds with a normal player who can only make one bid.
The relocation rules have also changed so home owners can't bypass the restrictions for first home buyers.
I think using the lottery makes a lot of sense for relocations later on when the housing districts are more stable, but FCFS seems to make way more sense for the initial opening of housing districts in a DC starting out with 0 houses and probably the lowest population a new DC will ever have.