Two players buy dozens of homes, players debate over housing shortage

[Lone Wolf Leonhart]

Final Fantasy XIV players are having legitimate arguments about capitalism vs socialism in regards to in game property.

This Kotaku article is a fascinating read:

http://kotaku.com/two-final-fantasy-...par-1796692020

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Frustration over Final Fantasy XIV’s housing shortage has come to a head after two players angered a lot of others by buying up 28 homes in the land-strapped massively multiplayer online game. Now, players are questioning whether virtual housing is an equal right or a privilege meant for the rich and over-dedicated.

The two players bought their homes in a formerly vacant corner of the game, a server called Mateus, where they could pursue dual ambitions of opulence and privacy. Their critics say they’ve hoarded land from dozens of FFXIV citizens, who feel they deserve a chance at housing. That criticism has gotten ugly as players hotly debate whether their elitism—or desire for mass amounts of property—has any place in a game where everybody pays the same fee.

On a now-viral Tumblr post in response to public outcry, Altima wrote, “Many people feel entitled to own a house. They feel that even knowing there are only 2,160 plots (soon to be 2,880) on any given server, they can and should be allowed to go at their own pace and have free access to any content they like, including housing. They want a house of their own, but they don’t want to accept that lots of other people want it badly enough to work harder for it than they did.”

I think general consensus is that buying 28 homes is patently ridiculous as a concept, but they aren't technically doing anything wrong, and they even moved to an unpopular server to do it. It would be more of an issue if they tried to do it on an overcrowded server. But at the end of the day, it's on Square to make more plots of digital land.

[Jinx]

It's exactly that. When they bought all of the houses, no one was around or cared. And honestly it's a bit troutty that they're now expected to give up the fruits of their hard work because people think they deserve houses*. They put in the time and effort, they are theirs. And yeah, they're not doing anything that's against ToS. In fact, the way SE has set up housing has basically forced players to buy multiple houses if they decide to have alts (in this game you can "share" your house with other people, but not your alts. You cannot mail your alts either). And considering you have to be level 50 (THAT'S A TON OF GAMEPLAY HOURS, MIGHT I ADD) to even buy a house...holy trout, the amount of dedication that went into this. Literally no one cared about Mateus until three weeks ago. No. One. These women are ridiculous, but housing really serves no useful function in this game. You can garden, and you can buy some crafting stations (which can be helpful), but at the end of the day it's all completely frivolous.

*if this were a real world scenario where people were being forced to live on the streets because two smurfwads bought up all the houses, I would feel very, very differently. But it's not, so I don't.

[KleinerKiller]

I have no horse in this race because I don't play XIV, but I always find it incredibly interesting when real-world issues and situations make their way into fantastical MMOs. Things like the Corrupted Blood Pandemic in WoW or practically anything that ever happens in EVE Online. This is far more mundane than those examples, but just as fascinating for me to watch play out.

[theundeadhero]

They're doing nothing wrong. Housing was available, and they put in the work needed for enough gil to buy them. It doesn't matter how empty the server used to be or how much it grew because of free transfer services. The people complaining are just whining because they didn't do their research to see if any housing was available before transferring their characters.