New Ward Classifications are out!

[justausername]

If you only seeing around 700-800 bids per lottery cycle, you have nothing to worry about. There will be 1500 out of 1800 available for you to bid on in the new wards, plus whatever becomes available through demolition once that's resumed for a few weeks.
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700-800 CURRENTLY. CURRENTLY. This will grow exponentially when new plots are added. Because many have given up for the time being. If my own little FC is anything to go by, 700-800 is only 1/5th the number of people who ACTUALLY want to bid, but have not found it worth it to go against 150+ people each time and have decided to wait for the new wards and stopped bidding until then. This means the actual bids could be closer to 3500 when the new wards come out, WAY more then there are plots. Enough for all plots to have 2+ bids. Now not all will, Larges and Meds will have more, meaning some smalls will in fact end up with 0 or just 1 due to limitation of 1 bid per character regardless of type, but it wont be 700-800 when the new wards come out, noooo way.

[DeNada]

700-800 CURRENTLY. CURRENTLY. This will grow exponentially when new plots are added. Because many have given up for the time being. If my own little FC is anything to go by, 700-800 is only 1/5th the number of people who ACTUALLY want to bid, but have not found it worth it to go against 150+ people each time and have decided to wait for the new wards and stopped bidding until then. This means the actual bids could be closer to 3500 when the new wards come out, WAY more then there are plots. Enough for all plots to have 2+ bids. Now not all will, Larges and Meds will have more, meaning some smalls will in fact end up with 0 or just 1 due to limitation of 1 bid per character regardless of type, but it wont be 700-800 when the new wards come out, noooo way.

I seriously doubt that the actual demand is 5 times the number of bids we have been seeing over several lottery rounds which have been pretty consistent.

Imo, the actual demand is more likely to be just a few hundreds on worlds outside of Balmung based on the number of bids when there are only smalls available since we'll have to include relocator bids as well whenever there is a medium or large up for bidding. Which means that 4 mixed wards plus 1 private ward in 6.3 is definitely more than enough for everyone to get a house.

Despite all the complaints and gnashing of teeth in the forums, I do sincerely believe that the addition of wards plus auto demolition on 6.3 will finally solve FFXIV housing woes once and for all.

Though good luck if you are a fellow Balmung denizen lol!

[justausername]

I seriously doubt that the actual demand is 5 times the number of bids we have been seeing over several lottery rounds which have been pretty consistent.

Imo, the actual demand is more likely to be just a few hundreds on worlds outside of Balmung based on the number of bids when there are only smalls available since we'll have to include relocator bids as well whenever there is a medium or large up for bidding. Which means that 4 mixed wards plus 1 private ward in 6.3 is definitely more than enough for everyone to get a house.

Despite all the complaints and gnashing of teeth in the forums, I do sincerely believe that the addition of wards plus auto demolition on 6.3 will finally solve FFXIV housing woes once and for all.

Though good luck if you are a fellow Balmung denizen lol!

HA! Must be nice to be so blind. Last time when they opened 10-18 for personal, there was thousands on bids on Midgard where I am. There has not been 1000s of people getting houses since then. People haven't been bidding because they believe its hopeless. They wont believe it was hopeless with the new wards, bids will go WAY up. Triple++ Just like they did the last time they opened more wards to personal. They have only been 'consistent' because people have given up trying a long time before new wards were announced. And now that they are here, they will be coming back to try again. If I know so many people like this, I know I'm not the only one who knows people like this. They have been disheartened and driven away. They will be back for the new wards.

[Pablomaldito]

HA! Must be nice to be so blind. Last time when they opened 10-18 for personal, there was thousands on bids on Midgard where I am. There has not been 1000s of people getting houses since then. People haven't been bidding because they believe its hopeless. They wont believe it was hopeless with the new wards, bids will go WAY up. Triple++ Just like they did the last time they opened more wards to personal. They have only been 'consistent' because people have given up trying a long time before new wards were announced. And now that they are here, they will be coming back to try again. If I know so many people like this, I know I'm not the only one who knows people like this. They have been disheartened and driven away. They will be back for the new wards.

Yep, when Empyreum was launched with its laughable 300 personal houses up for grabs, not a single house had fewer than 10 bids on Balmung. That gives us an absolute floor of 3000 people bidding on a house. Many houses had well over 10 bidders, but let's just make a conservative estimate of 3000 new bidders to account for relocators. 2700 of those people did not win a house. Later on, when some wards were reclassified from FC to personal, that added nearly 200 more houses to bid on. So that leaves roughly 2500 Empyreum round 1 bidders without a house. On smaller servers, I saw houses with bids as low as 6, but that still means nearly 2000 bidders.

On crowded servers like Balmung & Mateus, these new wards are gonna get eaten up instantly (hopefully I get a bite :P ). On servers with established populations (which is all of NA except Dynamis), these new wards may last a while, but they aren't going to solve the housing problem once and for all.

[Shibi]

Yep, when Empyreum was launched with its laughable 300 personal houses up for grabs

Well, 360.. but yep laughable Pablo, SE were real weird with the high number of the FC ward numbers they decided on pre-zero bug.

They should have hard metrics and factual data to back up their descisions. But it still seems they just throw at a dart and use the number it hits.

Game needs a dedicated housing developer to take control and do it right (doesn't feel like they have one right now, for sure)

Dynamis, the place where dreams come true.

With only me in my maddy FC ward, it's so empty. My Materia FC at least now has someone way over on the far side.

Feels weird when I do my Aether FCs, those are packed tight.

Still I'll be doing multiple bids I think on the Aethers (officers, alts and trusted members) to move to a more prime spot. If we win, we win, if we don't we don't. Doesn't really matter too much.

[Jojoya]

HA! Must be nice to be so blind. Last time when they opened 10-18 for personal, there was thousands on bids on Midgard where I am. There has not been 1000s of people getting houses since then. People haven't been bidding because they believe its hopeless. They wont believe it was hopeless with the new wards, bids will go WAY up. Triple++ Just like they did the last time they opened more wards to personal. They have only been 'consistent' because people have given up trying a long time before new wards were announced. And now that they are here, they will be coming back to try again. If I know so many people like this, I know I'm not the only one who knows people like this. They have been disheartened and driven away. They will be back for the new wards.

Where he is being overly optimistic, you're being overly pessimistic. The outcome will lie somewhere in between (except for those on Balmung and Mateus). The majority of those still looking for a house will end up with one between the ward addition and demolition resuming. Will some worlds still have players looking for a house? Sure, but it will be a small fraction compared to the number that want and have been able to obtain a house.

Things that people are forgetting to consider: a lot of players did transfer to Dynamis to get a house there. That is helping to reduce demand on other NA worlds.

We're also halfway through the expansion now and many players have quit to do other things before they return just before the next expansion is released. They're extremely unlikely to return just to get a house then feel like they're tied to a subscription when they don't want to be playing. That is reducing current demand even more.

While some players who want a house did give up because they hate feeling like constant "losers", the majority are continuing to enter because it's almost zero effort to do so and there's no chance of winning a house if they aren't trying.

You can walk into this as a doomsayer and make yourself miserable, or you can walk into it with a positive attitude and see how things turn out. Unless your deadset on getting a prime plot instead of going for one of the less desirable plots at the outset, your chances of getting a house over the next 2 months is good.