Okay, thanks a lot for the replies explaining. And SE, I know it's resource intensive, but make the effort. You can make it cost a lot, make it available at level cap, but make it available to every player who works for it. Make each plot their own instance and let them buy neighborhoods if you'd like. I give SE more credit than NCSoft, and even Wildstar made it work. Housing in other games has proven that you can retain subs forever by giving player-made houses, then giving them a ton of things in those houses to waste their time on.

But whatever you do, it has to be more than putting in enough plots for a few hundred more people. If it's literally only available to less than two thousand people+guilds per server then your development of housing is literally going to earn you zero new subscribers and retain less than two-thousand. That's just not economically feasible for something you're spending design money and system resources on.