Housing System Changes
After much thought and gathering feedback from @everyone in the community regarding the statue of the housing market on the server at the moment, a number of changes currently in the works will be coming to the server soon. The goal of these changes isn't to try and negatively impact anyone, but to instead just provide a more fair ground regarding house ownership on the server. These changes will be aimed to be implemented by February 1st.
To purchase a house, you will require a premium account. Small houses with 1 or fewer beds and 25 or fewer tiles will no longer be available to free account players. A new limit will also be introduced that prevents the purchase of more than 3 houses on a single account. In theory, this would allow for up to 1 guild hall, 1 house on the mainland, and 1 house on Rookgaard, but the houses you choose could simply be 3 mainland houses. This will not impact any existing houses that are owned but will prevent the purchase of more on characters within that account. Sleeping in beds will require a premium account. If you are a free account player, you can still have access to house/guildhall beds by being invited to the respective house, but you cannot sleep in them. The premium account feature of being able to eat extra food will remain unchanged. Players who currently own more than 3 houses per account are encouraged to begin organising sale or transfer of some of these houses to an alternate account. If assistance is required transferring the houses to alternate accounts you have, you can contact me for assistance.
The [!buyhouse] chat command will be removed, and instead, houses will be purchasable using an auction system from the House/Houses section on the website. This will prevent people from sniping/hoarding houses for a low cost and will instead provide a fair option for all who wish to bid on a house. A house auction end time will be at server save 5 days from when the auction began. If a player bids on a house but fails to pay the auction price and the first month's rent when the auction ends, the account will receive an account ban for 7 days. Excessive abuse/interference of intentional auction spoiling may result in further action. Similar to how rent is paid, the money for the auction and the first week's rent will need to be in the depot of the town the house belongs to.
The [!sellhouse] chat command will also be removed, and instead, an option to transfer/sell houses from the House/Houses section of the website will be available. If you look up the house you own on the website, you will be able to see a section to specify a character you wish to transfer the house to and a price if you want to sell the house. You will be able to transfer houses to other characters on your own account as well. When creating a house transfer request, the target player will have until server save 3 days from when the request was created. If the house transfer request is not accepted, the house transfer request will be canceled. The owner of the house and the target player will both have the option to decline the offer; however, if the offer is accepted, there will be no way to cancel the transaction from that point on.
Some fixes to how rent is paid have also been made. The rent due date will now be 1 month from when rent was due, instead of when rent was paid. This closes an abusable 7-day window of being able to pay rent on the last day of rent payment warnings, effectively getting up to 7 days of free rent. Furthermore, if a player loses premium account time, the rent due date for any houses they own will be brought forward, and the player will begin receiving rent warning notices. This will give you 7 days to add more premium time to your account or otherwise lose ownership of the house.
