So, what now? Lotteries with 150+ bids until... when?

[Sairys]

I think the lotto system is probably the most fair of the two systems we've had so far. It gives more people an opportunity to participate. And I say this as someone who works from home and is currently on medical leave and therefore COULD sit and click a plot for hours under the old system (but there hadn't been any houses available on my server in the entire time I've been playing until the new district was added).

But ultimately though it's still a bad system because of the supply and demand issue. And will continue to be a problem until they make it so that everyone who really wants a house is actually able to get one. As it is, hundreds of players on busy servers will never be able to get one no matter how much they want one, ESPECIALLY with demolition still frozen.

They either need to keep adding more districts/wards until demand is more reasonably met (or even use a LotRO type system that auto-creates new wards when all existing ones are full), or add instanced housing.

If they can't do that any time soon then at minimum I really hope they turn demolition back on so active players at least get a chance vs. people who quit years/months ago, and I really wish people who had cheated the old system to buy multiple houses/entire blocks in a ward hadn't been grandfathered in considering how limited supply is already. Those people should have to pick one house to keep and the others go back on the market (refund them the full price even, that's fine).

Amusingly, one of the reasons the lottery could have been a bad idea is that the old system could encourage apathy because it was too much effort.
Once auto-demolition goes back on the lotteries mean that it's pretty trivial to check every lottery period, so anyone who even casually wants a house has a reason to check in and then experience disappointment either because nothing is open or because something did but the majority lose the lottery. There'll still be people that give up but it seems like more will hold out hope and be disappointed because it's easier.