PLEASE fix housing

[Jojoya]

As to why housing is this way I think it boils down to a couple of reasons. The first, I don't think SE thought there would be this high of demand for houses which from my understanding it is mostly a USA phenomenon. This allowed them to create a finite system for housing to meet another goal that the housing areas be social places fitting with the game's philosophy of player cooperation. I see nothing wrong with either of these decisions but it was obvious early on that the system wasn't going to work. There is a reluctance to admit the problem and provide a robust solution. Apartments could have been the fix and SE admits they are for all practical purposes unlimited but they did not go far enough. My belief is they really don't understand players who are into housing. If they had made the small house plot an instance over the one room apartment I think most players would be satisfied. I know I would.

Home ownership is valued everywhere. I wouldn't call it just a US phenomenon. I think the main difference in the US is that we want more square footage whether it's house or apartment. People want huge spaces even though they don't need that much to live comfortably.

The housing problem in the game became more apparent on the NA and EU servers first due to population density. We had (and continue to have) more total population but fewer servers than JP. Spriggan and Twintania's addition to EU created a little breathing room in EU for a year but even that housing is filled now.

A guess on why they underestimated the importance of housing to players is that they focused too much on WoW as a success model. WoW never added housing to the game even though a crude version of housing had been part of the original alpha files. If WoW wasn't using it, then players must not care. And yet there were constant requests for player housing in WoW going back to before I started playing WoW in TBC. Whenever discussions would get started about features that WoW lacks compared to other MMORPGs, housing would be there at the top usually right behind the lack of a dye system for gear.

You're right that apartments could have been the solution. Using house interiors as the template for apartments instead of the private chambers would have made them far more appealing. I can only guess they went with the private chambers because apartments in Japan tend to be very small and compact with some facilities shared between building residents.