Question regarding the fourth housing district.

[worldofneil]

Like everyone else I can only guess, but I'm assuming that it'll be located off an existing ARR area so people with only ARR can go into it still. Southern Thanalan/Ala Mhigo sounds most likely (at either the top or top-left sides).

[Alleo]

You don't completely have to unlock housing to go to the housing areas. Like if you started in Limsa, usually you wouldn't be able to leave till the 15 quest, BUT you can tele out and explore if you are in an FC in Gridania/Uldah, I imagine they'd allow it with the new housing.

The problem the OP is having is that not everyone might have the expansion and thus might not even be able to go there. All the other housing districts right now are in states that are part of ARR. You need to own the main game to even play it so its normal that you wont see any problems with reaching those districts. If you dont own HW for an example you cant go to Isghard simply because the data is not on your device. So its a good question and I fear that they might not get to it because to be able to visit it you probably need the data from the doma country. But this data is only there if you have the expansion. (Its a complete different continent with a lot of ocean between it and Eorzea, making a entrance somewhere in Eorzea might solve this problem but it would not make sense lorewise and at the same time the players would get entrance to content that is normally restricted behind the new expansion, so really not sure if they would do something like that)

[Dustytome]

But this data is only there if you have the expansion.

Again more guessing on my part, but I can only assume they'd have the data for at least the housing area as global data included in 4.0 and that's if they go the HW route again and have a separate chunk of data to download. Everyone still gets a large chunk of data without the expansion so they can see the new gear/items/etc that other bring into non-expansion areas and it's likely the housing area data will be included in that. Now if we can just get one of those once a month visits from the GMs on the forums to confirm.

[Alleo]

Well as long as people that dont own the expansion can only visit and not buy a house there. Because that would be quite bad since people would have it even easier to buy more houses on an alt character.

[seekified]

Like everyone else I can only guess, but I'm assuming that it'll be located off an existing ARR area so people with only ARR can go into it still. Southern Thanalan/Ala Mhigo sounds most likely (at either the top or top-left sides).

They said during the Fanfest keynote two days ago that it'll be located in Othard, which is an entirely new continent.

I'm guessing they'll either make this area alone accessible to expansionless players (which would be nice of them, but weird functionally and lorewise), or they'll simply lock it as a means of encouraging people to buy Stormblood. We'll find out soon enough.

[Astyrah]

If you dont own HW for an example you cant go to Isghard simply because the data is not on your device.

this is partly true. some people on trial accounts for example have to download everything to be able to display everything. say what if a DRK enters limsa and a trial account owner was there (no ARR/HW) if they didnt have HW data they'd get an error or the DRK would be invisible. same with lvl 60 gear and aura race. people who don't own HW (and then SB) will probably have some data for it preloaded to avoid potential errors.

on topic, im guessing if you don't own SB and your FC moves there i think atleast you can teleport to the ward but wont be able to leave (you're like locked to the ward and your+other's houses) to access the SB areas.

[Nighthawk4]

My guess is if you don't have the Expansion you cannot visit any part of the new areas.

I wonder how they will deal with the expanded Inventory and Armoury Chest for characters? Presumably, if you have SB your characters gain more storage space. If not then you don't.

[Malzian]

I will leave my response to questions such as this simply at: We don't know yet.