As it stands, premium locations and large house plots are heavily concentrated among long time players, many of whom are probably inactive. No one knows how many towers - keeps could be used as someone's main home but instead are some old-timer's 15th investment property. The forest of houses in some areas is also unsightly. I propose housing slots where a particular IP has enough slot space for 1 large house, 1 medium house, and 1 small house. I'll let others speculate on the amount of slots each housing type would take up. After an amount of time accounts with excess would not be refreshable and they would have to sell them off or let them go back to nature. This decay would create a new legitimate land rush where optimal locations and large plots are suddenly democratized and new players have a chance to get a decent spot without having to play the Ultima Online: Tamers of Trammel meta. Thoughts? Amendments?
Some time ago, I met my new neighbor while I was frolicking outside of my newly placed (first) small house. I was celebrating and he thought he'd come over and let me know that the tower next to me was his... ... he then went on to give me his full dossier about every house he had throughout Sosaria. He gated me around and showed me a few. Vacant caves they were... vacant caves. I asked him what one of his large towers was "used for". "Oh, nothing really... I just saw the spot and placed it. It's a pain in the ass to log into every character and refresh them all" TL/DR - Although this proposal will never see the light of day, SIGNED "YES"
I'd be into it but I'd add one more small house to the slots available. there's a lot of room on this server for them, still.
To some degree I kind of like this idea. Also I don't know if possible but still a good idea, is the ability to have a guildmaster have one extra housing slot, but it must be allocated on a guild stone as a guild house. I think that would allow players who are running guilds the ability to not have to give up one of their personal houses in order to be utilized by the guild. Just my two cents. I personally never see the need of owning anything larger than a large brick myself.
I don't think this is that big of a concern, honestly. Personally, I own 13 houses. I use 3 of them daily. The rest are used to either block land somewhere or around my fort so I don't get unwanted neighbors. I can run around for no more than 5 minutes and find a tower spot. If there are still tower spots, heck, if there are still large brick spots, then this is nothing to be worried about. If you're looking to be able to place your own keep or fort, too bad. I'd love to have been around to scoop up server births, but I wasn't, too bad. The large homes in prime locations are all mostly used, I can count on one hand the homes that are in prime locations that are just sitting. Keeps and Forts sell at a premium, and they should. Homes in rare spots, regardless of size or style, sell at a premium, and they should. As an aside: I was all over this anti-tamer crusade you're on way before you started here, take if from me, you're wasting your time. My tamer is one of my least played toons, I'm filthy rich. There are plenty of ways to make gold/platinum here, you just need to find your niche.
If the server sees another big chunk of growth, I could see the housing situation being a problem. I like the proposed solution. Maybe just make it a flat 3 homes to ease the coding effort.
I would still think regardless of something new being implemented that there would be grandfather status to anyone owning more than the allotted house slots on an account thus not really pacifying the issues most are having with not being able to place the house of their dreams in a desired location. As has been said the land rush is done and gone and is not coming back. I missed it too. That is a benefit anyone playing a server since or near its inception get to have and I say good for them!
Anything is for sell at the right price, try buying a larger house, but vet players shouldn't be loosing housing because someone doesn't think "it's fair" because they don't use them.
Personally, I would prefer for some areas to simply have less houses because it's **** ugly. Yes, I came to the game late and missed the housing rush. Sure, it'd be nice if there was more housing spots up for grabs to welcome new folks to the server - but I can continue living in my log cabin just fine. However, some areas like ice island and marsh near trinsic feel like the ghetto and it would be nice to see more "wilds".