I must be missing something...

[CatfishCassie]

Move to one of the several servers in need of more people, where unsold plots still exist. Coeurl, for instance, still has a good 20 plots for sale. It's also important to note that Wildstar actually didn't make it work. All of Wildstar's houses are solo instances... same with Rift, Everquest II, and just about every other game that has attempted individual housing. Solo-instanced housing is an infinitely easier problem to solve than housing zones, because you always have exactly the number of housing plots needed for the players that want them. Housing zones mean you can't instance them based on demand, because people will start buying houses in their own unpopulated zone, and spool off an entirely new zone just for them, and it will waste far more resources than solo-instanced housing. Additionally, solo-instanced housing comes with it's own UI issues... issues that have been addressed and solved in varying ways, but still, issues that have to be designed around. SE wants to create an atmosphere of living in Eorzea, and housing zones were how they accomplished that... it's far more immersive than solo-instanced housing. It does have its downsides, but it also has it's upsides. We know that they're putting a lot of resources toward alleviating the housing shortage on the more populated servers, such as adding apartments in the near future and adding entirely new housing zones in the more distant future. And they've worked the housing shortage into the designs for the Company Workshop and Diadem, allowing players without a house to share Airship access with those who do. So... it is being addressed. Unfortunately, there are other issues in other areas of the game that are just as pressing, and they have a limited staff.

[CatfishCassie]

Square Enix almost literally copied a housing system that exists already in a free to play MMO. The F2P MMO can sustain it and offer houses to everyone, but SE can't. It's really hard to give any credit to an argument about technical difficulties when such a fact exists.

Which F2P MMO was that? Every F2P MMO I've played has entirely instanced houses instead of an actual housing zone with all the houses existing in more or less the same place. That's a much easier technical problem to solve, and a much less resource-intensive problem than housing zones, because housing zones run into performance issues (particularly on the still-supported PS3) since it has to load every external item, every structural component, every dye color, etc. for every house in the zone every time someone loads into the zone. Instanced housing just has to load one house for one player at a time. If you have 64 people loading into the housing zone at once, with instanced housing you have to load 64 houses. With Final Fantasy's housing zones, you have to load 1,920 houses... 30 houses per player x 64 players.

The quote in your signature line is interesting... I played Ultima Online, and housing was far more of an issue than it is in Final Fantasy. I remember when their oriental expansion came out... every housing plot was taken within 2 days of launch. There weren't caps on how many houses a single character could own, and there wasn't scaling of housing prices based on the amount of gold in the economy. So in UO, the only way to actually get a house was to get lucky and plop your house down within hours of a new expansion launch, or pay someone hundreds of real-life dollars to vacate their house and give you the plot and hope they didn't just take your money and run.

[Giruvegan]

move

so your suggestion is to leave friends, family or a combination of both, as well as having to readjust to a new market and server atmosphere, when people have already spent months saving up millions of gil to even be able to avoid a plot in the first place? not to mention the gil limitations when it comes to server transfer. you're basically telling people to start over from scratch and that's just ridiculous. there are people who have transferred for a house but that's a band-aid solution and really should not be offered or treated like it's some sort of real universal answer to an ongoing problem.

they let their vision interfere with the wants and needs of the playerbase and taking it out on a the playerbase when they express earned discontentment is a bit much.

they're fixing it in a future update but that doesn't change the fact that the system is broken now

[Neira]

Lord of the Rings Online for your answer, a nearly identical system with (wards) containing 30 houses in an instance, of three different house sizes, able to be built in four different areas(we only have three so far), but they automatically create new wards when the old ones fill up. It has the same neighborhood style of this one, and it honestly looks like that is where FFXIV got their idea from with the similarities. There is still a reclamation type of system, but your house isn't destroyed and your unmovable items aren't lost, and there is no timer to get it back, it just recreates your house when you come back since wards aren't a limitation.

I also find the quote interesting, but I think for different reasons.

[Ignacius]

Saying Wildstar didn't make housing work because they used a more efficient system seems inadequate. SE are the ones that put themselves in this position by making sure their housing plots were definitively limited, but they're also the ones keeping themselves there. Honestly, as nice as I'm sure the neighborhoods are, if Square offered me a house with its own personal instance that I could upgrade the size of instead of trying to wrangle their current system again for a larger plot, I'd take it and be happy. The immersion is worthless given the lack of availability; it doesn't matter how well developed something is if only a certain amount of us can use it at any one time. It certainly wouldn't be worth it for me. It's absolutely not worth it if I have to leave all of my friends, family, and the FC I run behind to get a house. The nicest housing system on the planet is functionally worthless to anyone who doesn't own a plot.

[MistakeNot]

Lord of the Rings Online for your answer, a nearly identical system with (wards) containing 30 houses in an instance, of three different house sizes, able to be built in four different areas(we only have three so far), but they automatically create new wards when the old ones fill up. It has the same neighborhood style of this one, and it honestly looks like that is where FFXIV got their idea from with the similarities. There is still a reclamation type of system, but your house isn't destroyed and your unmovable items aren't lost, and there is no timer to get it back, it just recreates your house when you come back since wards aren't a limitation.

There is a limit to how many housing wards there can be in LOTRO. It is high but it exists.

At one point there was starting to be a lack of available housing due to many houses being owned by people who had ceased playing, so they introduced a reclaiming system where you would lose your house if you failed to pay the upkeep for long enough.
Housing decorations are not lost however, and one can pay upkeep for up to 6 months in advance - letting you take extended breaks from the game if needed. One can even allow other people to pay the upkeep cost for you if they want to. (Useful if know you will be away for a long time, but have friends in-game that you trust.)

[Neira]

At one point there was starting to be a lack of available housing due to many houses being owned by people who had ceased playing, so they introduced a reclaiming system where you would lose your house if you failed to pay the upkeep for long enough.
Housing decorations are not lost however, and one can pay upkeep for up to 6 months in advance - letting you take extended breaks from the game if needed. One can even allow other people to pay the upkeep cost for you if they want to. (Useful if know you will be away for a long time, but have friends in-game that you trust.)

Yeah, sorry about that slight inaccuracy, I remember reading there was a cap at over 200+ "wards", but didn't think it was that relevant. Also, thank you for the additional information. A pity that it seems like people would rather shove their head in the sand than admit that a free game could more effectively do what a subscription and cash shop game can not.