While the recent news on expanding the current wards and the repeated intention to add housing to Ishgard is good news, the additional news on apartment housing is very disturbing.

To me, that's a sign of Square washing their hands free and clear of the whole housing shortage fiasco once and for all. Because once there's enough apartments available for everyone they'll be able to claim they've resolved the issue, despite the fact that they know only a small percentage of players will actually have an in-game house with a yard that is physically placed in a neighborhood (which I suspect most will prefer to some instanced tiny room in an apartment building).

I really wish rather than wasting development resources on this disappointing "solution" they would invest that effort into making the current type of housing available to everyone.