Quote Originally Posted by Hoaxtopher View Post
I'm no game developer but I imagine more complexity and customization does come with some sort of cost to system recourses.
It does and Yoshi's hinted at that, when responding to comments on Island Sanctuary. There's a limit to how much custom data can be rendered before the user starts to have issues. This is why everyone's Island is very static, as well as being mostly closed off from the rest of the island. Go on a hunt train, turn up your settings and you'll start to see the same result.

EQ2's housing has a limit of about 900, which they effectively doubled by creating very simple building block items with very basic textures. It was a nightmare walking through some guild halls where people dumped as much as they could in the front courtyard. Animated items and pets were the worst culprits.

Getting back to XIV, the problem is that housing wasn't even intended for private ownership. It was intended for FCs. They've been stuck with the original layout since. This whole indoor / outdoor layout isn't something that can just be converted into some other kind of instanced housing. Players would likely lose something in any kind of process and I think we're up to half a million that would be affected.