Quote Originally Posted by Jeeqbit View Post
Based on SE's perceived limits, I do not think it is feasible to have a ward for all the characters that have ever been made. Each ward is a server program. I did the maths for that a while ago and based on how many server programs they run per machine, it would require more physical space and machines than they will ever actually have. It may be easier if they used cloud servers for it and only run them if they aren't empty though.

It is definitely feasible to decouple houses from plots so that you can teleport directly inside them somehow, then make wards a reflection of active players that have logged in within 45 days. However, it is possible it would require throwing their house code away and rewriting the entire thing in a way that reuses the house data. It would require a little effort, maybe a day, or a few days, to do something like that, but they just rarely seem to touch their code at all.

Island Sanctuary is proof that they can do it, because it is effectively instanced gardens. On the technical side, it's the same thing as instanced housing. Either way, you have furnishing slots and instances are reserved upon entry, rather than remaining there when you exit like plots.
So only problem I see is se's housing wards are basically one map with certain wards decorations loaded or unloaded. The assets are all loaded client side and a housing ward is effectively a long spreadsheet with xyz coordinates, rotational data, and an item code. All wow does is load or unload server space for whenever someone goes into a shard and loads the persons spreadsheet. The individual wards take very little actual data and the server space is reserved and unloaded as required. XIV does a similar thing with instanced content. It would just be loading an instance with a saved spreadsheet of item coordinates. Adding someone to the ward is effectively the same as adding someone else to the common spreadsheet. They take remarkably little space when handled that way.