I don't know if anyone has suggested this before but...

why not have individual residences, purchasable at a big price, but which offers some intimity ( Or maybe is this turning the game into Neverwinter Sims?)

just an idea.

*Trashes his shipwright-to-get-filthy-rich concept and goes to scetch on an estate broker*

Seriously, though, while I don't mind the idea of personal estates, I'd rather see that it was a reward for good roleplaying, rather than the result of massive quest-spamming for gold.

Well the means of obtaining the residence isn't all that important. But then do you find the idea of estates in itself good?

I oppose this idea, in any way, unless plothooks come from such a house.

May I ask as to why you oppose it? ( just out of curiosity)

#1 Creating areas, where only 1 or 2 people can do something. It's null space where nothing happens, while it eats away the server's capacity.

#2 Lack of room to place the buildings. We can't cram Upper/ Lower Sanctuary with more than 20 of these buildings, after that we're full.

#3 What fun will it add? Zero fun. What's wrong with roleplaying in a deserted part of the Rock Bottom, like the Grotto? And if you need to cyb0r your IC-husband -- Cyb0ring's forbidden.

#4 People will go on a frenzy for gold, and I fear they forget to roleplay, and just quest to amass the cash for Sims goodies.

#5 If people want houses, they want permanent chests as well. Big burden on the server.

#6 Exclusive areas. People will either A) need to get a key for the house, which they easely loose, resulting in more OOC trouble for DM's than IC trouble for the players, or B) only they are allowed to enter the house. Option B sucks, because of: no following people into the house, and because of massive amounts of wanding that needs to be done for the DM's, to wand the exclusive couple to the exclusive house.

--

I'll probably think on more, later on.

Buildings and somesuch can be earned. For instance, the House of Light was gained by players who put in alot of effort for roleplaying, working as a group, involving others and so on and as their story evolved, the project became known to certain key members of the town. For instance, due to their hard work, a councilmember (NPC) helped back the project and it ended up with a building (blown up once) with storage, and so on.

Earning residences and territory can be acheived through RP + IC actions, generally reserved for really excellent groups that involve others and pursue interesting IC objectives.

But having a bunch of empty houses that just spread out the playerbase and waste server resources definitely isn't happening (although, I understand some servers do that -- it always seemed pointless and terrible to me).

I second what Fish and Howland say.

Earn it, don't buy it.

There are already areas you can purchase, but they're so expensive you need to have a good group or a very awesome PC to rent them out, so in any case you'd have to work hard at it. :)

Coldburn #1 Creating areas, where only 1 or 2 people can do something. It's null space where nothing happens, while it eats away the server's capacity.

#2 Lack of room to place the buildings. We can't cram Upper/ Lower Sanctuary with more than 20 of these buildings, after that we're full.

#3 What fun will it add? Zero fun. What's wrong with roleplaying in a deserted part of the Rock Bottom, like the Grotto? And if you need to cyb0r your IC-husband -- Cyb0ring's forbidden.

#4 People will go on a frenzy for gold, and I fear they forget to roleplay, and just quest to amass the cash for Sims goodies.

#5 If people want houses, they want permanent chests as well. Big burden on the server.

#6 Exclusive areas. People will either A) need to get a key for the house, which they easely loose, resulting in more OOC trouble for DM's than IC trouble for the players, or B) only they are allowed to enter the house. Option B sucks, because of: no following people into the house, and because of massive amounts of wanding that needs to be done for the DM's, to wand the exclusive couple to the exclusive house.

--

I'll probably think on more, later on.

That sums it up nicely.

It's a good suggestion, but again, isn't appropriate for our server. A long time ago I played on a server where it was done, and I even managed to save up the 100k GP or so that I needed to buy the big size house (as opposed to the medium or small houses for mere peons!), but ultimately I didn't really find that it was very useful or increased my enjoyment very much. I think the best approach is the one that Howland mentioned, where locked private areas are generally reserved for excellent groups that involve others and pursue interesting objectives-- this way, I can take the time to customize them to fit the group that inhabits them, which I think is ultimately much more rewarding than just being granted access to one of a dozen nearly identical generic housing units.