Please add more wards

[mjorge1991]

Theory 1: SE is using horrendously underpowered servers. My cost estimates are based on the cost of AWS servers, so if this is the case, the fix is as simple as renting a few.

Theory 2: SE fundamentally wants housing to be a limited resource. In this case, the fix is going to involve a ton of people making a ton of noise.

Theory 3: They will release more wards (hopefully a ton more) with Shadowbringers. Personally, this is where my money's at.

There are, of course, many possibilities, but these are the few that seem most likely to me.

I have always believed that they want houses to remain a limited resource. Sonething in my brain told me that if they released a bunch of wards it would remove the demand. I might be speculating but the demolition timer also forces ppl to be subscribed every month.

[Dustytome]

I have always believed that they want houses to remain a limited resource. Sonething in my brain told me that if they released a bunch of wards it would remove the demand. I might be speculating but the demolition timer also forces ppl to be subscribed every month.

Originally there was no demolition timer though. That had to be added because they'd end up with a neighborhood half filled with people no longer playing. You're left with wasted limited resources at that point. We aren't likely going to get more wards until the possible new housing zone has been released and given time to fill in.

[Kirajah]

What might help is separating private housing and free company housing. I like the neighbourhood and seeing what others do with their homes, but maybe private houses should be instanced and keep the free company ones public. More wards would help, for a time, but it wouldn't be enough on its own.

Even if you cant get a FC house, at least you would get an instanced private one.

[GomJabbar]

Theory 2: SE fundamentally wants housing to be a limited resource. In this case, the fix is going to involve a ton of people making a ton of noise.

This isn't really a theory. They have pretty much stated this in the past. I'll try to find the quote from Yoshi, but housing being exclusive is by design.

[GomJabbar]

I have always believed that they want houses to remain a limited resource.

You are correct! But maybe with all the new noise, they will rethink that? I still have a feeling that whatever they implement in Ishgard will be fully instanced. I hope not - I actually really like the open-world ward system - but they need to listen to the playerbase at least somewhat. And it certainly wouldn't be unprecedented for something Yoshi has said in the past to change later lol

[worldofneil]

Believe me, the servers absolutely can handle enough wards for everyone. Some back-of-the-envelope math suggests that an entire datacenter worth of housing wards would fit on a ten dollar flash drive, and even if people accessed their homes near-constantly, the end cost would be about 0.2% of the sub costs gained from all those players. Also, I grossly overestimated everything wherever possible.

You're assuming it's a disk capacity issue, it's not. It's a resource issue.

The housing wards are zones that are always running. Each server has 4 housing areas, each with 18 wards and 2 subdivisions and that's a total of 144 zones that are always running, all the time. That's more than every other zone combined.

But then multiply it by 66 servers... that's 9,504 zones they have to keep running all the time. It's not even a one time hardware purchase, but ongoing maintenance and support too.

I'm not saying I agree with how it's done, but if they could realistically add more for the cost of a "ten dollar flash drive", it seems pretty obvious they would have?