We really need new Wards in the existing housing areas.

[InkstainedGwyn]

Auto-demolition should still be there. A friend of mine received a mail from SE last week regarding his inactivity online, or doing anything regarding his plot. They would demolish his house if he does not follow the steps (given in the mail). But still I think they should indeed increase the houses available. who knows maybe SE will do that again like a few patches ago..

Auto demo has been off since October, 2018, on NA servers. As noted there (and as has happened with previous suspensions) they will notify us before they turn it back on. JP's auto demo was reinstated back in January, I believe. EU was not paused.

They've already stated that they don't plan on adding more wards in the forseeable future (other than, of course, on the new servers.) Regardless, new wards aren't the answer to the housing shortage, they'll help ~2k players per server immediately and then once they're full on the handful of servers that fill up, there will just be another request for more. Meanwhile, when Auto Demo is actually a thing, most low-mid pop servers have quite a few empty houses in all zones (I was even finding Larges on our server a few times a week before the halt of auto demo). It may not be the exact house someone wants, but that's what you get for having non-instanced wards with a few "prime" locations - we can't have 15,000 wards because all 15,000 people on a server all want Shirogane 8 or Goblet 19 or Lavender Beds 11, with the rest of each ward empty.

If you want to solve the problem, you need instanced housing or all-sizes of apartments. We'll see if that ever happens, though.