New Housing Scam: Beware.

[Siniztor]

Im one of those for years...keep your damn wards but offer isnanced to (EQ2 has both)..which i have a feeling the island is ..its just in beta stage.. were testing it now.. I so wouldnt be suprised if in 7.0 if you island maxed and you meet the ranks you can add a house you can deco 4mil-20mil-60mil s/m/l only reason i see to have the island hooked into the housing server and not the normal open world or duty server

[Jojoya]

The scammer is now advertising in PF on Primal servers. If you see the PF, report it. If you see shout chat about it, report report report.

Warn friends and family not to fall for this scam, their discord is already getting new members.

I hope those that have already been scammed are reporting the server to Discord. Using Discord to run scams is very much against their ToS, just as it's against the game's ToS.

Im one of those for years...keep your damn wards but offer isnanced to (EQ2 has both)..which i have a feeling the island is ..its just in beta stage.. were testing it now.. I so wouldnt be suprised if in 7.0 if you island maxed and you meet the ranks you can add a house you can deco 4mil-20mil-60mil s/m/l only reason i see to have the island hooked into the housing server and not the normal open world or duty server

Nothing to stop the wards from being the portal to the instanced house plots. They're already the portal to the instanced apartments.

The game can have both if SE would choose to make it happen.

[Nepentha]

I hope those that have already been scammed are reporting the server to Discord. Using Discord to run scams is very much against their ToS, just as it's against the game's ToS.

Been encouraging people to report to Discord and SE. Who knows what'll come of it.

[worldofneil]

However, there is just no reason for SE to not create more wards in each district. These are imaged on virtual servers and implementing more wards isn’t a a daunting task and could be done rather easily.

I agree that adding more wards would be ideal, but unfortunately it's not as easy as you're suggesting. Each ward is a zone that is active and running all the time* and on any one server that means there are always 240 housing zones running, which is considerably more all the other zones combined.

Even though the wards are all 5 basic designs, they're all different because of customisation of houses and gardens so although they might look the same, from a technical viewpoint they're all separate.

We're up to 77 worlds now so that's 18,480 zones that are running all the time, just for housing. Even if they just added 6 more wards (12 with subdivisions) that's 60 more zones to run per server and 4,620 more zones over all the worlds.

Now I don't know how many wards they can run per server, but they've said in the past about optimising the servers to fit more wards on so clearly they're at the current capacity or close to it. Could they put in more hardware? Probably. Do they want to? Probably not. It's not just the initial cost of the hardware/installation, but ongoing cost of maintaining and even things like electricity usage will factor in.

Unfortunately the reality is that they'll drip feed in extra wards over a period of years because they know that whatever they put in will never be enough, but that they still have to make some effort.

*Even if they shut the zones down when not in use, there's likely at least some people going in and out of them regularly that the performance hit for continually starting up/shutting down is worse than just leaving it running,

[SweetestLily]

The scammer is now advertising in PF on Primal servers. If you see the PF, report it. If you see shout chat about it, report report report.

Warn friends and family not to fall for this scam, their discord is already getting new members.

Genuine question. How are people still selling housing? Didn't they implement a 30 day wait time to be able to transfer the ownership of the house to someone? (I'm not in the housing market as I already have my plot and don't know how these things work anymore.)

[Nepentha]

Genuine question. How are people still selling housing? Didn't they implement a 30 day wait time to be able to transfer the ownership of the house to someone? (I'm not in the housing market as I already have my plot and don't know how these things work anymore.)

The way sellers have adapted is to have the potential buyer join the FC and wait the 30 days out. Payment varies. Some sellers require a down payment of some sort (10 to 50%, some sellers will say it's non refundable if the buyer decides to back out), others don't.

Once the 30 days is up, it's the same as it was before the change. An in game contract is stated and agreed to, payment is made, FC leader passed over to the new owner. Done.

Note: I know this by observation. I do not buy or sell houses.

Edit: So I figured I'd explain how people are being scammed by this discord.

1. There are no channels where public discussion is allowed. You cannot speak to other members of the Discord. (Make new friends they advertise, lol. How? You can't talk to anyone!)
2. You have to interact with their ticket system. Which is not public, no one can see it outside of you and the scammer.
3. They will not give you any information on the location of the house. If you ask for a ward they'll claim they can't because people will report them to get them banned. You will not be invited to an FC. You cannot see the house in person. They will not be able to provide you with any proof there's any house at all. You're expected to just trust them.
4. They will request a down payment. In the case of one person who was scammed, they wanted 175 million as a down payment on a large house.
5. Once they've gotten you this far, they'll have you go to a mannequin and purchase an item for the down payment amount.
6. When the down payment is made in game, they will then remove you from the server. The scam is complete.

[Themarvin]

Everyone who put in a ticket for the scam also admits to that they are willing to go around SE's system to buy property, and technically in conflict with the ToS.

THERE IS no easy way to get a house.

[Nepentha]

Everyone who put in a ticket for the scam also admits to that they are willing to go around SE's system to buy property, and technically in conflict with the ToS.

THERE IS no easy way to get a house.

There's nothing in the ToS that says you cannot buy or sell housing. You just can't buy housing with the intent to resell it.

[Jojoya]

Genuine question. How are people still selling housing? Didn't they implement a 30 day wait time to be able to transfer the ownership of the house to someone? (I'm not in the housing market as I already have my plot and don't know how these things work anymore.)

Just as a general response in addition to Nepentha's more detailed explanation:

In what way is a 30 day wait a deterrent? That's still getting the house on their current home world where their chances of getting a house via the lottery are virtually none and they have no desire to move to a new world to get a house.

There had been hope that maybe SE would finally start enforcing their rule about intent to resell by tracking suspicious FC activity and that held back some of the resellers when the lottery was introduced. Now that it is clear SE is still hands off when it comes to abuses of the housing system, the resellers are back to near full steam with only the need to beat the lottery standing in their way.

The 30 day wait might cut down FC losses due to compromise of member accounts (that had been a serious problem) but in the end it's had the lack of effect on housing resells that some of us predicted prior to the lottery and 30 day wait being implemented. There is something that players want and only a limited number is available. Those who enjoy profits moved in to become the sellers of said item. As long as the system limits access, it's not going to change.

[Nepentha]

Just as a general response in addition to Nepentha's more detailed explanation:

In what way is a 30 day wait a deterrent? That's still getting the house on their current home world where their chances of getting a house via the lottery are virtually none and they have no desire to move to a new world to get a house.

There had been hope that maybe SE would finally start enforcing their rule about intent to resell by tracking suspicious FC activity and that held back some of the resellers when the lottery was introduced. Now that it is clear SE is still hands off when it comes to abuses of the housing system, the resellers are back to near full steam with only the need to beat the lottery standing in their way.

The 30 day wait might cut down FC losses due to compromise of member accounts (that had been a serious problem) but in the end it's had the lack of effect on housing resells that some of us predicted prior to the lottery and 30 day wait being implemented. There is something that players want and only a limited number is available. Those who enjoy profits moved in to become the sellers of said item. As long as the system limits access, it's not going to change.

It's slowed things down, which was really the only intent behind it. Before then, you could easily get a house, sell it that very same day and then rinse and repeat 24 hours later.

Now with lotto taking away the bot aspect that increased chances of winning a plot, plus the 30 day wait, sales have pretty much been a crawl. You wait 30 days, finally sell off the house and then have to wait another 30 days to opt into the lotto and pray you're the winner. Some have thrown in the towel. Others are muddling through which is to be expected. The only thing that'll actually put a stop to housing sales is if SE provides enough housing to meet the demand.

Until then, the housing market will continue to be a thing.

I mean, let's take Reseller Abba. Abba has 12 characters on two accounts they use to create Free Companies, buy houses on them, and then resell them.

They make 3 FCs in a day, level them up to 6 in about 30 to 40 minutes. Prior to the changes, they'd just use some automated bot tool and send their characters out to placard click. With the bot, their chances of winning an open plot are almost 100%.

A house comes open in the Goblet. They win it using a bot. Remove all but one character. They advertise it somewhere for sale. Find a buyer immediately. The buyer pays either as RMT or gil, FC master is transferred to the buyer, the deal is done and money in the bank. Abba then waits 24 hours to form a new FC. Meanwhile they have two others waiting in the wings to keep this going. (I watched this happen in real time with a certain RMTer who stopped selling houses after the changes went into effect.)

Now let's take Abba again, with the 30 day and lotto in effect. Abba still has 3 FCs ready to go. He wins the lotto on all 3 in the early stages because there's a lot of houses open. Can't find a buyer. Too many houses are still up for lotto, no one is yet interested in his houses.

Months later, housing is dwindling and now Abba manages to find a buyer for one of his properties. Probably not for as much money as he used to get before these changes. He has to wait 30 days and pray the buyer doesn't back out before then. The buyer stays, pays him in whatever they agreed to, he passes over FC Master. The next day he forms a new FC, levels it to 6 and... sits on it. He has to wait 30 days to re-enter the lotto on that new FC. He still has 2 other properties to sell. Waits, goes through a few buyers starting a sale and then cancelling it cause 30 days is a long time for a person to sit and think about what they're doing. Or possibly win a house on an alt somewhere. In this same time period he might have already won and sold some 15-20 houses before the changes, but now he's only managed to sell 1 successfully.

So yeah, it's a definite deterrent. But again, nothing short of making sure housing is plentiful enough to meet demand is going to stop reselling.