Island Sanctuary as a housing solution ?

[Jojoya]

That's 14k characters all-time that have finished 5.0, not that have finished 5.0 and are playing right now. .

What does completing 5.0 have to do with housing?

Nothing. Purchase and completion of the expansion is not a requirement to obtain housing.

Requirements for personal purchase are reaching level 50 on a class or job and having the rank of Second Lieutenant in a GC (which can be done at level 47). Requirement for FC purchase is to have reached FC rank 6 and have 4 members.

So how many active players have reached the actual requirements for house purchase?

[Arielen]

What does completing 5.0 have to do with housing?

They're the only available population statistics that allow us to estimate the playerbase: we don't actually know how many people are actively subbed, let alone playing on each server. There aren't any stats for Second LT GC, lvl 50 and 2nd LT of a GC and lvl 50 offers us no hint at all of currently playing players. Per XIVCensus we know that there are 4,885,698 characters in total, 4+ million of which have likely quit the game, and only 647,345 of those are listed as active.

tldr we can only guess how many people are on every server based on what little info we have, since SE doesn't disclose the numbers

[Jojoya]

tldr we can only guess how many people are on every server based on what little info we have, since SE doesn't disclose the numbers

We know the active population on every NA server is higher than the total houses on each world. Otherwise those who want a house would have no problem getting one.

[Divinemights]

This is probably using the same phase technology of WoW Garrison where you don't have the ability to chance the physical appearance but rather few main core buildings.

[KiKat_Coffee]

It's too early to tell, and anything can happen. But there is an excerpt from an interview with Yoshi-P that implies a slight possibility of instanced housing:

“This plan actually started a while back as we had received much feedback from players who would like to have their minions roam free in their houses and others who had wanted to raise animals in the game,” Yoshida recalls. “We reached the conclusion that we’d need to prepare a new mode to achieve this, as it was impossible for our housing features to accommodate these requests."
Source: https://www.pcgamesn.com/final-fanta...land-sanctuary

Disclaimer; these are not confirmations. But the statement implies minions roaming private housing was part of the initial request and seeing as the last bit implies the island sanctuary is an alternative to the current housing, there's a chance this might be their try at instanced housing. He also mentioned Animal Crossing in the interview, which is interesting, because each island in animal crossing is basically an instanced housing, and up to 7 visitors can visit at a time. 7 plus you is a full party. That's enough to host passing visitors or some casual friends.

As for people who have more than 7 friends to constantly lounge together with at a house, massive role play hosts, or FCs, standard non-instanced housing is still here for you, but for those people who just want a house they can call their own and bring a couple friends over, this would be a game changer.

[Jojoya]

It's too early to tell, and anything can happen. But there is an excerpt from an interview with Yoshi-P that implies a slight possibility of instanced housing:

“This plan actually started a while back as we had received much feedback from players who would like to have their minions roam free in their houses and others who had wanted to raise animals in the game,” Yoshida recalls. “We reached the conclusion that we’d need to prepare a new mode to achieve this, as it was impossible for our housing features to accommodate these requests."
Source: https://www.pcgamesn.com/final-fanta...land-sanctuary

Disclaimer; these are not confirmations. But the statement implies minions roaming private housing was part of the initial request and seeing as the last bit implies the island sanctuary is an alternative to the current housing, there's a chance this might be their try at instanced housing. He also mentioned Animal Crossing in the interview, which is interesting, because each island in animal crossing is basically an instanced housing, and up to 7 visitors can visit at a time. 7 plus you is a full party. That's enough to host passing visitors or some casual friends.

As for people who have more than 7 friends to constantly lounge together with at a house, massive role play hosts, or FCs, standard non-instanced housing is still here for you, but for those people who just want a house they can call their own and bring a couple friends over, this would be a game changer.

That's pretty clearly saying it is NOT going to be instanced housing. It's a game mode that can accommodate roaming minions, which they have repeatedly said housing cannot do.

If it was going to include housing, they would have said so. There's no reason to keep it a secret considering what a hot topic housing is for a large part of the player base.

From all the information released so far, what we're getting is WoW Garrisons. Island themed instead of fortress themed. Plots for growing things instead of plots for crafting buildings. It will still be a personal instanced space but it won't have customizable housing any more than WoW Garrisons did.