Thread: Foreclose on player homes already!!!

Originally Posted by Mircea12345

Have you taken a look at the housing in Bree and in the Shire? Most of them have maybe one house left. Yet no new housing areas have shown up since I resubbed the game 6 months ago.

But how many total houses? That matters more for the formula I think than whether or not someone can fit their kin or friends into the same neighborhood.

Originally Posted by sedlar2006

Which server?

Arkenstone.

Originally Posted by Halcyon8

I don't get it.
If you don't log in within 6 months, why should you get to keep your house? You left the game that long, I think it's fair to say your house should be available to other responsible players who actually pay their upkeep and regularly log into the game.

If you come back after 6 months to a year and you start complaining on the forums how your house was taken, you deserved it.
The servers can only spawn so much space to store all the data.

Why should a house become a lifetime trophy when the player will not play for their entire lifetime?
I mean really, at what point will that house become available? When the servers close down and LOTRO is finished?

Turbine please reconsider this.

Why do you care? I live in an "active" hood, where only a couple of homes are abandoned, and I still have seen other players (not counting my wife, who is my neighbor) maybe 10 times in 2 years. Folks hit the house, hit the chest or vendor, and are gone, and the odds of seeing each other are slim to none.

Also, data. The size of the home or hood in the graphics engine is not important. Data like this tends to be fairly compact: ID of owner, Table of the housing hooks & ID number of what is in each one + rotation variable, and a vault data structure for the chests. The whole thing can probably be stored in a couple of kilobytes, and that can probably be compressed using standard zip algorithm (and this is a poor algorithm for compression) to 50% or less of THAT. The entire playerbase for all the servers and all the players could probably fit onto a single pen drive with room left over.

Now, the why. One of our kin is in a program aboard ocean going vessels; 6 months on 6 months off is one of the options he can take. While at sea, he has very, very limited network and cannot play a game like this, he is doing well just to do some quick email. Others in the military are in similar situations: one of my RL friends is about to leave on a 1 year deployment. Still others are in school and only play over the summer or off semester/quarter. Others are adults that have other real life things that force a break from the game. Others get bored, play another game for a bit, come back, over and over. The why does not matter, what matters is that taking their stuff away is wrong. There is no in game option to pay a year in advance: its only about 1 month's worth of prepaid rent. If you are gone for more than that, too bad, you lose all your stuff in the chests, all the decorations, the house itself, etc?!

It makes no sense to treat people that way. Its not the real world, its a game, its supposed to be fun. When someone comes back and 50% of their stuff is gone, thats not fun. I went thru this when they did it your way, and it was not fun, thankfully it was a small house so I only lost my decorations, home, and 1 chest of stuff. You do know that escrow also times out and is deleted forever, right? It was uncool. If I paid for the game, I would have called it quits right there, but as a lifetime sub I just went to work, earned some cash and when the rule changed so that we could not lose the home again, I bought a new one (and a kinhouse too).

To do it your way, the following things would have to be offered to those of us who would not own a home under your rules:
1) refund of the price of the house.
2) refund of all rent paid, up to 1 years worth.
3) extended vault space of 100 spaces to hold the things that were in our home.
4) the items in the home(s) moved into the extended vault (NOT ESCROW) for perma storage so nothing is lost.
5) reduced cooldown on our racial port to make up for loss of home.
6) vendor prices at our racial town == to the combined kinhouse/house discount

Otherwise, it is unfair to the folks who own a home, esp folks like me who bought one after the rule change that PROMISED it would not be taken from us a second time.

Here are the whys on the list.
1) We paid this gold with an understanding that the home could not be taken away if we have to leave the game for a bit. A full refund is fair because of broken promise.

2) Same as #1, we paid this rent in good faith, yet the promise was broken, so a refund is due.

3) As we were promised a place to keep our goods forever, and it was taken away, space must be provided to account for this.

4) Escrow destroys the items shortly after they enter it. This cannot be allowed, the items must be preserved for those who were out of game when the rules were changed.

5) as we were promised a home forever, and it was taken away, the benefits of a home must be provided in another way.

6) same as #5

With those changes, I will accept losing the home if I must again put the game aside for a time. Without them, if the rules went back to the old way, I would feel that turbine robbed me or lied to me -- esp since I was victimized by the old system once (fair enough, the rules were clearly stated, but it was still very unpleasent).

----------------
At the end of the day, the only real reason you can give to be so harsh is going to be selfish. Any agrument you list can be solved another way. You say you cannot get the specific housing location you want, I say turbine can change the algorithm for creation of new neighborhoods to accomodate that. You say the empty, locked homes are a problem, I say you never see anyone ever even in active neighborhoods, unless you roleplay a town cookout or something that is player organized -- which almost no one did even when homes were under the pay or lose it scheme. You say the server is full, I say its a tiny amount of data. Any supposed problems caused by empty homes can be solved without taking the home from the player by some work by turbine, which means that the take the home solution is designed to punish other players. I cannot see it any other way, for some reason you want the other player to suffer and the only acceptable solution is one that hurts them, because that is your goal. I challenge you to name any goal that cannot be solved another way, something that can only be solved by taking the house away and destroying the player's items. I will counter each one with a simple change that turbine could make to the current system tha allows both your goal and the other player to keep their home.

I hope they never foreclose houses. I think it's perfectly normal to scroll through 5000 empty neighborhoods.

Originally Posted by Smorgheim

I hope they never foreclose houses. I think it's perfectly normal to scroll through 5000 empty neighborhoods.

Just like how it's normal to scroll through the 5000 lines of your post? Over-exaggeration is silly when it's the main point of your argument.

Originally Posted by forusrname

To do it your way, the following things would have to be offered to those of us who would not own a home under your rules:
1) refund of the price of the house.
2) refund of all rent paid, up to 1 years worth.
3) extended vault space of 100 spaces to hold the things that were in our home.
4) the items in the home(s) moved into the extended vault (NOT ESCROW) for perma storage so nothing is lost.
5) reduced cooldown on our racial port to make up for loss of home.
6) vendor prices at our racial town == to the combined kinhouse/house discount

LOL. You know we often write LOL, but it's few times that we've actually DONE SO. And your post my good man has qualified as one of those times.

How about this:

1. After 6 WEEKS of not logging in (or when your pre-paid rent runs out - whichever comes first), your house is locked out and immediately put back on the market.
2. Your items are kept in Escrow for 1 WEEK before being deleted.
3. 50% of the cost of the home is removed from your bank for housing authority administrative fees.
4. If you didn't have enough gold stores to cover that fee, when you next log in you are restricted from entering any instances or doing skirmishes until you've paid off your debt. Stable horses and vendor prices are doubled (50% of the increase pays down your debt).
5. Unless you've paid the fee, you are restricted to the Title "Dead Beat", which you cannot turn off, until you've paid back the fee.
6. You are disallowed from purchasing a new home for 90 days.

Okay then... Let's take your idea and mine, and see if we can meet somewhere in the middle.

Originally Posted by Smorgheim

I hope they never foreclose houses. I think it's perfectly normal to scroll through 5000 empty neighborhoods.

This one made me literally laugh out loud too, but at least in this case the poster was clearly being facetious.

Originally Posted by FoxFire

How about this:

1. After 6 WEEKS of not logging in (or when your pre-paid rent runs out - whichever comes first), your house is locked out and immediately put back on the market.
2. Your items are kept in Escrow for 1 WEEK before being deleted.
3. 50% of the cost of the home is removed from your bank for housing authority administrative fees.
4. If you didn't have enough gold stores to cover that fee, when you next log in you are restricted from entering any instances or doing skirmishes until you've paid off your debt. Stable horses and vendor prices are doubled (50% of the increase pays down your debt).
5. Unless you've paid the fee, you are restricted to the Title "Dead Beat", which you cannot turn off, until you've paid back the fee.
6. You are disallowed from purchasing a new home for 90 days.

Jesus dude, did you even experience the original housing before Turbine changed the rules a few years back then completely gave up on housing altogether?

Even THAT wasn't as draconian as your suggestions here to "fix" things..

Good luck with tilting those windmills and all, though.

Originally Posted by FoxFire

LOL. You know we often write LOL, but it's few times that we've actually DONE SO. And your post my good man has qualified as one of those times.

How about this:

1. After 6 WEEKS of not logging in (or when your pre-paid rent runs out - whichever comes first), your house is locked out and immediately put back on the market.
2. Your items are kept in Escrow for 1 WEEK before being deleted.
3. 50% of the cost of the home is removed from your bank for housing authority administrative fees.
4. If you didn't have enough gold stores to cover that fee, when you next log in you are restricted from entering any instances or doing skirmishes until you've paid off your debt. Stable horses and vendor prices are doubled (50% of the increase pays down your debt).
5. Unless you've paid the fee, you are restricted to the Title "Dead Beat", which you cannot turn off, until you've paid back the fee.
6. You are disallowed from purchasing a new home for 90 days.

Okay then... Let's take your idea and mine, and see if we can meet somewhere in the middle.



This one made me literally laugh out loud too, but at least in this case the poster was clearly being facetious.

You simply made my point for me: the goal of these threads is punishment, not resolution of real actual problems. Answer my challenge or don't, I care not, but you made my case for me otherwise.

Originally Posted by forusrname

You simply made my point for me: the goal of these threads is punishment, not resolution of real actual problems. Answer my challenge or don't, I care not, but you made my case for me otherwise.

You should be a comedian. I haven't laughed this hard in a while.

Foreclosures would be lame. It is already lame that you have to pay upkeep and yet you can not pay it any farther in advance. You should be able to pay a year in advance or more.

Originally Posted by TimorousBalrog

Foreclosures would be lame. It is already lame that you have to pay upkeep and yet you can not pay it any farther in advance. You should be able to pay a year in advance or more.

Yup. And the only reason it was ever there was to be another money sink. It helped to keep kinships honest in that they needed to be active to be a kinship. But now that LOTRO is F2P, it really isn't necessary anymore. Players complain about it in this thread because the empty houses owned by someone else are visible to them. But instead of asking Turbine to help them, they lash out at other players. Typical.

Originally Posted by cipher_nemo

Yup. And the only reason it was ever there was to be another money sink. It helped to keep kinships honest in that they needed to be active to be a kinship. But now that LOTRO is F2P, it really isn't necessary anymore. Players complain about it in this thread because the empty houses owned by someone else are visible to them. But instead of asking Turbine to help them, they lash out at other players. Typical.

Actually, it's MORE necessary now, as well as more feasible.

It's more necessary, because as more players play for a short while, enough to purchase a home, and then leave the game for extensive periods of time, the housing instances will not only dramatically increase in number, due to homes never being foreclosed on, but many (if not most) of those instances will be entirely filled with abandoned homes. Dead neighborhoods where nobody ever goes (maybe one player) and the homes and yards never change. Even if Turbine never expected neighborhoods (as they exist now) to be full of simultaneous player activity, they certainly never expected them to be full of static, abandoned homes.

AND... it's more viable now, since if there are the few players who are TRULY interested or concerned about keeping their home, then they can log into the game free of charge. No need to wait for an inconveniently timed welcome-back weekend. I'm willing to even go so far as to say Turbine should permit simply logging-in and logging back out, as evidence of activity and continued interest, and therefore reset their foreclosure clock, regardless if they paid to unlock or pay upkeep on the house.

Originally Posted by FoxFire

Dead neighborhoods where nobody ever goes (maybe one player) and the homes and yards never change. Even if Turbine never expected neighborhoods (as they exist now) to be full of simultaneous player activity, they certainly never expected them to be full of static, abandoned homes.

How is that any different than it was a year ago? Housing is dead-end content. It doesn't go anywhere except for the few-and-far-in-between RP events.

Originally Posted by cipher_nemo

How is that any different than it was a year ago? Housing is dead-end content. It doesn't go anywhere except for the few-and-far-in-between RP events.

Again this is not simply about how many players you bump into while inside an housing instance. It's also about dynamic housing neighborhoods that while you may not physically see your neighbors there is evidence of their active presence, and/or evidence of old neighbors having 'moved out', and new neighbors moving in.

This, in the very least, would make neighborhoods A LITTLE more lively.

I have frequently said I'd never buy a house because there's no real reason to. However, I was toying with the idea the other week and decided to go shopping.

I visited 15 different neighborhoods, looking for a small house. I found only TWO for sale, neither of them in particularly pleasing locations. However, I did see several houses in nice spots, and I noted the addresses.

I then went through EVERY neighborhood and checked those houses. Every single one was closed because the rent wasn't paid. EVERY ONE. That's dozens of houses.

The result was that I gave up on the idea of buying a house.


Now, having been Navy, I'm sympathetic to the plight of those in the military, but come on. You CAN pay a year's rent in advance if you're going away. You CAN access the internet and the game from elsewhere in the world if you have to.

Paying, playing customers HAVE to take priority over non-paying, non-playing or absent customers.

Go to any store and ask them to set something aside for you, and they'll tell you there's a limit to how long they'll hold onto it before putting it back on the shelf. If it goes back on the shelf, you take your chances that it won't be available when you come back for it.


Houses MUST be freed up if the rent isn't paid. Items IN the house can and should be stored in escrow indefinitely, but if you haven't paid the rent, the house should go back on the market.

Originally Posted by Tiamo

I have frequently said I'd never buy a house because there's no real reason to. However, I was toying with the idea the other week and decided to go shopping.

I visited 15 different neighborhoods, looking for a small house. I found only TWO for sale, neither of them in particularly pleasing locations. However, I did see several houses in nice spots, and I noted the addresses.

I then went through EVERY neighborhood and checked those houses. Every single one was closed because the rent wasn't paid. EVERY ONE. That's dozens of houses.

The result was that I gave up on the idea of buying a house.


Now, having been Navy, I'm sympathetic to the plight of those in the military, but come on. You CAN pay a year's rent in advance if you're going away. You CAN access the internet and the game from elsewhere in the world if you have to.

Paying, playing customers HAVE to take priority over non-paying, non-playing or absent customers.

Go to any store and ask them to set something aside for you, and they'll tell you there's a limit to how long they'll hold onto it before putting it back on the shelf. If it goes back on the shelf, you take your chances that it won't be available when you come back for it.


Houses MUST be freed up if the rent isn't paid. Items IN the house can and should be stored in escrow indefinitely, but if you haven't paid the rent, the house should go back on the market.

Even though not worded as such, I will accept this in my challenge. Instead of destroying existing homes or putting them back on the market, turbine can change the software. How about having the new neighborhood creation algorithm pop out enough new zones to ensure that each location is always up for sale in some neighborhood? If all the locations except 1 are so bad that each new instance would only have 1 player buy a house, then change the way the houses look or whatever to make them more popular. I do not think that would happen, though, I think most new neighborhoods will have a lesser liked location or 2 that do not sell, but most will.

As you do not own one, you may not know, but you can only pay a few weeks in advance in LOTRO. Not a year, for sure. There are options, of course, you can have a buddy pay it (you can give permissions to someone for this) but that also creates problems, what if that person quits.... etc. You may be able to access the net in your job, but can you log into the game? Some folks away from home only get to use public computers that do not have the game installed, and do not have permission to install it, and may not have the computing power to run it, etc. Here again a web site interface to pay the rent, or a way to pay automatically (deduct it from the owner-character's funds), or other options could be implemented to make this nicer.

If the locked houses bother folks, I am OK with neighborhood shuffle. IE put all the locked homes together in locked neighborhoods (a sort of storage) until paid off. If paid off, it gets moved to an active neighborhood (this works nicely with the idea of always having each location available...!). At some point a small issue is OK to burden those who did not pay up: here, if they were in a hood with their kin or friend etc, and were shuffled due to nonpayment, too bad. If they have not been paying for a year, being next to some other person really did not have any meaning anyway.

Its not real life. There is no limit to the number of homes that can be provided. The limited supply is simply the result of a computer algorithm which could be changed. Its not holding something at a store that takes up real space and puts a real burden on the store (keeping track of the items, paid in full or downpayment, etc?). Its a small amount of data on a huge server with totally automated systems doing the bookeeping.

Remember, I am not saying the current system is great; I am all for improving it. I simply do not see the leap of logic between the issue (the location you want is not up for sale, ever) and the final statement (they MUST be put back on the market) because, in a virutal world, there is nothing to prevent creation of the home in a new instance, nothing at all, so there is no logical reason to take it from somone else. You can both have it at the same time!

I do not know what to say about the other guy's complaint that the yard never changes. The last time I changed my LOTRO yard was when I won the flowers in a lottery, back in early mirkwood. Before that, I changed it when I got an item out of one of the instances in moria. So my yard changed twice in over a year's time, and I keep it paid up etc. There are not enough yard spots to put in new stuff and I like what I have better than anything else, so its not going to change much in the future either.... this seems like an odd complaint. IRL homes rarely move their trees across the yard, or install new fountains, these things happen very slowly for most people, once every 5 years would not be uncommon for a real home to have a massive redo of the yard. I did change my kinhouse yard some not long ago, but I don't think anyone will notice as there is a bit of a wall and hill that block the view, people have to GO to the house and yard to see the changes, and why would they... (I am the only member of the kin..).

Originally Posted by forusrname

Even though not worded as such, I will accept this in my challenge. Instead of destroying existing homes or putting them back on the market, turbine can change the software. How about having the new neighborhood creation algorithm pop out enough new zones to ensure that each location is always up for sale in some neighborhood?

Indeed. Everyone is complaining about others who have housing taken, when in reality Turbine can just add more neighborhoods. It's sort of like complaining that your neighbors bought up all of the Doritos at your local grocery store when it's the grocery store's responsibility to keep them stocked.

LOL. You guys are hopeless. Do you really think Turbine should just wind up with 500 neighborhoods, half of which are entirely abandoned homes?

You KNOW they're not going to do that.

Tiamo makes a very valid point. No store is simply going to hold onto an item for ANYONE for an indefinite period of time, EVEN if they're in the military. I'm beginning to believe you are simply trying to use the troops as an excuse for you own ends, and they're hardly your main concern, if any real concern at all.

The fact of the matter is there is little to no harm done in foreclosing on an absent owners home and maintaining their items in escrow until they return. Of ALL the abandoned homes out there, of the FEW that might have a player return to the game after an extended absence, there are even FEWER who would be markedly upset to find their house foreclosed on and their items in escrow, and hardly any who would say SCREW IT the only reason I returned to LotRO was to find my house exactly the way I left it, I'm quitting before I even re-begin.

The primary problem that players had before was that their items did not remain in escrow indefinitely, they were deleted after a period of time. I think we can all agree that THAT is unacceptable.

At any rate, I am confident that when Turbine again addresses housing they will institute a foreclosure policy, one where a players items go into indefinite escrow, and it's not difficult to refresh one's claim to a property.

I'm curious as to how the adamant nay-Sayers here will react to that. My suspicion is they will make a lot of bluster, insist they are going to quit (despite the policy having yet affected them - except they may no longer have an entire housing instance to themselves), but ultimately accept it and move on.

Originally Posted by forusrname

Its not real life. There is no limit to the number of homes that can be provided. The limited supply is simply the result of a computer algorithm which could be changed. Its not holding something at a store that takes up real space and puts a real burden on the store (keeping track of the items, paid in full or downpayment, etc?). Its a small amount of data on a huge server with totally automated systems doing the bookeeping.

If only if it was that simple of a fix. You can change the algorithm all you want to increase the number of houses, but you have to at some point upgrade the servers to deal with more housing. You can only upgrade servers so much before you reach their hardware limits.

Originally Posted by FoxFire

You should be a comedian. I haven't laughed this hard in a while.

Awwww.. Apparently I hurt forusname's feelings with the above comment. He gave me negative Rep for it. (Or so I'm assuming it was him as he's one of the only recent posters with enough Rep to -Rep someone, and the comment was directed toward him.)

And AGAIN he's got me LOL. Dang YOU forusname!!!

Originally Posted by FoxFire

LOL. You guys are hopeless. Do you really think Turbine should just wind up with 500 neighborhoods, half of which are entirely abandoned homes?

A bit of an exaggeration. At least on Landroval, my server, the neighborhoods would be more like 50 to 75 each racial housing area if they added a few dozen or so.

Originally Posted by FoxFire

At any rate, I am confident that when Turbine again addresses housing they will institute a foreclosure policy, one where a players items go into indefinite escrow, and it's not difficult to refresh one's claim to a property.

LOL. Probably won't happen. I'm not really against your proposal for a secure escrow of their housing items and items in the chests. I'm just much more in favor of Turbine revamping the whole housing system instead of trying to fix things by foreclosing on houses. But then again, my suggestion probably won't happen either. Turbine knows the housing is dead-end content and will probably do nothing either of us propose (doing nothing = less work). Or they won't get around to doing anything for a long time.

And I'll emphasis that adding neighborhoods wouldn't be a permanent solution, just as foreclosing is not a permanent solution. An actual revamp of how housing is structured would be better. After all, they have this new dynamic layering mechanic they can leverage.

Well.. i attempted to read all the posts in this mega-thread but naturally failed. However, I would like to toss in my opinion that any house that hasn't been kept up for 3 or 6 months or so, SHOULD go back on the market for active players to enjoy. Foreclosed items landing in an escrow... in the event that the lost player return. (they can then buy another house somewhere) Simple and fair for everyone.

If a player has to leave the game for a while, (for whatever reason, lost job, bills, war, apocalyptic asteroid heading towards middle earth that NASA has recruited you alone to destroy, whatever.) and really wants to hold onto their LoTRO real estate. Get a friend to pay upkeep for you till you return... no problem... you can even configure it so that they can pay upkeep and still not access your chests. I am doing this very service now for a friend on a sabbatical from the game as they want to stay my neighbor.

The number of people complaining about losing their house because they had to leave the game and could not pay their upkeep would be dramatically less than the number of people currently complaining about the system in its' current state.

(as a war veteran myself, i have to toss in this final statement)
In real life, if you are in the military and head off to war. If you do not take care of the rent payments on your home, you WILL be hanging your campaign medals in a hotel room when you return, should be the same here. Yes it's only a game, get a mate to pay your rent or suck it up and get another house.

Originally Posted by FoxFire

Awwww.. Apparently I hurt forusname's feelings with the above comment. He gave me negative Rep for it. (Or so I'm assuming it was him as he's one of the only recent posters with enough Rep to -Rep someone, and the comment was directed toward him.)

And AGAIN he's got me LOL. Dang YOU forusname!!!

It was not me. I am not really that fired up about housing and, until just then, you were not offensive. I just fail to see any logical reason to destroy people's stuff and enjoyment of a game when there is no reason to do so.

Someone mentioned the servers again. Now, turbine's programmers have made some odd mistakes, so I have to say its possible the housing takes up a few gigabytes per person if they let a noob just out of jr college program this part of the game. However, if it were programmed carefully it would not. I could fit the data needed for a house for every account onto a single thumb drive from wallmart at a cost of $20 --- and thats before using any compression algorithms.

And, turbine already has hundreds of houses that are empty/abandoned. Why not more? Again, its virtual, all it costs is disk space, and, again, only a very small amount of that. In for a penny, ...

I would almost be ok with the indefinate escrow account. However that is exploitable -- you could get nearly infinite storage this way by buying homes, filling the chests, and selling the home. So the storage space argument that is used against me comes into play here, as the bulk of the data stored for a home is the items in the chests and in the hooks, not the name of the home's owner (a single unique ID). All it saves is the orientation of the decorations which can be stored (maybe it is not, but it could be) in 1 extra byte per hook (2 degrees per click, 360 degrees of rotation fit in 180 values which fits into a byte). So this solves nothing except to reduce the number of locked homes that players can see: from turbine's server's perspective its about the same amount of data. The only way to reduce the data significantly is to destroy the stuff.

With some extra work indefinate escrow could work: it would have to be limited in size to the amount of stuff that can be in 1 kinhouse and 1 deluxe house. Which is still nearly 200 item slots, and still somewhat exploitable. It seems like a decent approach, given that for some strange reason leaving the home alone is unacceptable (which I still do not see, so I have to give you that for escrow to make sense). It could also be made so that if a player buys a home and a storage chest, the chest is auto-filled from escrow if any items are in escrow, making it difficult to exploit.

At the end of the day though, it still feels like the bulk of the pro-forclose argument is that some nosey hobbit is running around all the homes clicking on them to see if they are locked, rather than minding his own business at his own home. Its a strange sort of virtual tresspassing. IMO the only real problem menioned so far is still the lack of quality locations available and the slow creation of new areas, everything else is players choosing to be offended by the actions of others, IE virtually going around peeping in the windows of other player's homes then being offended by what they see.

Just a word on the indefinite escrow for foreclosed homes.

I would expect this escrow to ONLY be indefinite for as long as the person does not log back in to the game. So if they are gone for a year, and their housing items are put into escrow, those items will remain in escrow even if that person is gone for several years.

The moment they return to the game and log in, the escrow expiration clock starts to tick. I would place this at 30 to 60 days. So the person has up to 60 days to remove their items from escrow otherwise they are permanently deleted.

I don't know if you've ever had an item go into escrow (it can if you return a bound decoration to another character), but the current clock is 30 days. You are given an obvious notification icon staring you in the face saying that you have items in escrow which need to be claimed. If you don't claim those items in the 30 day limit they are permanently deleted.

Originally Posted by forusrname

At the end of the day though, it still feels like the bulk of the pro-forclose argument is that some nosey hobbit is running around all the homes clicking on them to see if they are locked, rather than minding his own business at his own home. Its a strange sort of virtual tresspassing. IMO the only real problem menioned so far is still the lack of quality locations available and the slow creation of new areas, everything else is players choosing to be offended by the actions of others, IE virtually going around peeping in the windows of other player's homes then being offended by what they see.

This.


The worst thing they ever did to housing was not take them away originally, or flip-flop based on the ginormous outcry on the forums after people lost everything after a few weeks of being stupid and promise to make them where they will never be taken away, but allow others to see whether it's locked or not while at the same time still be able to lock out everyone or turn off your owner's name tag.

It's really not anyone's business other than the owner, and Turbine themselves.

People keep tossing around the 'real life' argument.. how many here arguing for "Screw them! Take them all away!" actually roam their neighborhoods in real life poking their noses in other people's mortgage payment history? (protip, do that around my ranch, and you'll end up nomming on a 12 gauge sandwich)

It's virtual pixels that Turbine owns. Period.

I'm sure once at some point when they actually need to do something about it they will, but by my count, most servers still have about 200+ neighborhoods in each racial area to fill up before it's an actual problem they will care about. going on 4 years of housing and they're not even 25% filled of potential capacity.

History has shown in these forums (especially housing) that they really don't give a fig about it.

Quit the whining and go buy a house somewhere that's available now or do like everyone else has in the history of housing, be patient until another neighborhood opens... because they will open a new one again eventually.

Originally Posted by Stilgaard

People keep tossing around the 'real life' argument.. how many here arguing for "Screw them! Take them all away!" actually roam their neighborhoods in real life poking their noses in other people's mortgage payment history? (protip, do that around my ranch, and you'll end up nomming on a 12 gauge sandwich)

Hahaha! Indeed.

The only argument I need is that while shopping for a house, it's been almost impossible to find one because so many are tied up by people that aren't playing or aren't paying for the house anymore.

Yesterday, there were NO small houses in Bree, and only TWO small hobbit holes, both at the same address (in a less than desirable spot). This while dozens of houses stand abandoned. I visited a neighbourhood a couple of days ago that was 100% abandoned. EVERY house was locked out.

Something has to be done.

Originally Posted by Tiamo

The only argument I need is that while shopping for a house, it's been almost impossible to find one because so many are tied up by people that aren't playing or aren't paying for the house anymore.

Corrected to...

Originally Posted by Tiamo

The only argument I need is that while shopping for a house, it's been almost impossible to find one because Turbine hasn't added enough neighborhoods yet.

The reasons for this are obviously a combination of both. Why blame other players when Turbine is holding all the cards for adding neighborhoods or re-vamping the housing system?

While they CAN add new neighborhoods, I think it demonstrates a larger problem that there are so many abandoned houses. I mean, one of the neighborhoods I visited had 100% abandoned homes! Other neighborhoods were well over 50% abandoned.

I even went to the Elvish and Dwarvish homesteads to look around, and I found that nearly all the neighborhoods consisted of occupied or abandoned deluxe houses and a great many empty small houses. This demonstrates a different problem, with the design of the houses in that area (the deluxe elvish house is very nice, but the small one is a joke).

Housing in the game needs to be revisited, it simply isn't satisfactory in its current state.

Originally Posted by Tiamo

This demonstrates a different problem, with the design of the houses in that area (the deluxe elvish house is very nice, but the small one is a joke).

Housing in the game needs to be revisited, it simply isn't satisfactory in its current state.

I completely agree. This is why I don't think foreclosing on homes is going to help much. I don't think adding new neighborhoods is going to help much in the long run either, but at least it's the short-term path that doesn't infringe on anyone else.

If we want a working housing system Turbine will need to revamp the entire thing. Unfortunately, I don't think that will happen anytime soon.

Originally Posted by daneyul

... a voucher to get another house...

I like that idea as well.

- A persons gone 1-2 years from game.. comes back... Gets house voucher, buys same house in new area & has all of their stuff in escrow. Spends some time relearning how to decorate their house (since they've been gone so long), invites friends over to see it, maybe even a welcome back party. Gets in a fellowship and let the fun begin! Sounds like a good compromise between both camps.
- Less game resources spent on tons of empty housing instances (maybe a touch of less lag if where lucky! hehe)
- Members can buy Houses by our Kin house that have been closed down for years.

No money lost, no items lost.

I have no problem with giving those with foreclosed on home's a voucher to buy a new one. Although I think it could potentially be abused by those who want to avoid having to pay their unlock fees to get their house back.

Still we have those who would rather there be thousands of never-to-be-used-again abandoned homes in dozens of completely abandoned neighborhoods, with dozens more neighborhoods having one or two active players occupying them, just to appease the concerns of the tiny fraction that might be gone for a year or longer and decide to come back, but would ONLY decided to come back to LotRO if their house is found exactly the way they left it (except of course for now being inside a completely abandoned neighborhood.)

Truly their case is VERY weak. And the fact that NOTHING will appease their 'deep' concern for the long-lost LotRO returnee, including things like 18 month absentee periods before foreclosure, indefinite escrow, and giving housing vouchers to such returning players, suggests to me that they are not only unreasonable, unyielding ideologues, but might actually have ulterior motives for their stance.

Those of us on the 'Foreclose already' side have bent over backwards to suggest ways to mitigate the impact of a foreclosure policy on the long-lost LotRO returnee. Yet, they won't even entertain the idea of there being a foreclosure policy in order to say what would appease them if one were implemented (except for the one dude who basically would want a year long VIP membership for those who had their house foreclosed on. That's only being slightly hyperbolic.)

Anyhow, Turbine will likely address this at some point. I don't think their solution will involve an unending creation of new neighborhoods while more and more sit completely abandoned or otherwise dead.

Originally Posted by FoxFire

Truly their case is VERY weak. And the fact that NOTHING will appease their 'deep' concern for the long-lost LotRO returnee, including things like 18 month absentee periods before foreclosure, indefinite escrow, and giving housing vouchers to such returning players, suggests to me that they are not only unreasonable, unyielding ideologues, but might actually have ulterior motives for their stance.

Their side's points don't have to be strong, nor does it have to be a "side" at all. Turbine is interesting in making a profit in r/l dollars, not in-game gold. Telling ex-subscribers that they get to keep their house and everything in it when they come back (after paying past upkeep) is incentive for those players which gives Turbine an option to earn more revenue in the future.

And I already got my house back out of this situation when I came back on September 8th after paying 4GB or so to unlock it again. So I have no personal vested interest in the concept of preventing foreclosure. If I knew I couldn't get my house back I would have thought twice about coming back. Not because of the house itself, but because of how my previously accomplishments and unlocks were treated by Turbine.

But I still believe letting them keep their house is the right thing to do in order to bring back more players. Why? Because neighborhoods are 1.) duplicates of each, and 2.) Turbine can always add more. Ultimately they should revamp the system, but in the meantime option 2 doesn't require much work from Turbine and it doesn't take anything anyway from players.

Originally Posted by FoxFire

Those of us on the 'Foreclose already' side have bent over backwards to suggest ways to mitigate the impact of a foreclosure policy on the long-lost LotRO returnee.

I think you forget that Turbine makes the decisions here, not the community. You're trying to appease the community instead of appeasing Turbine. Who cares if you "bent over bakcwards" in an attempt to reach a compromise with other community member opinions? They have their opinions, and you have yours. This isn't a discussion to find a mutually agreeable solution. That will never happen with a large community like the one we have here on the forums. Let alone a huge chunk of LOTRO players never read/post on the forums, so there is no way to reach an agreement among the community at large.

Originally Posted by FoxFire

Anyhow, Turbine will likely address this at some point. I don't think their solution will involve an unending creation of new neighborhoods while more and more sit completely abandoned or otherwise dead.

And it won't involve adding some complex foreclosure system either. Turbine will most likely opt to do nothing here for a long time because they know housing as it stands now is dead-end content.

I think I have to agree. The players that are present in the game have to have priority over those that are not.

I can sympathize with the desire not to annoy people who are not playing, but we need neighborhoods to be more active.

Leaving abandoned houses abandoned means largely empty neighborhoods. We want active players there, not empty houses. Forclose on the empty houses. If one of the owners decides to return, create a neighborhood for HIM, THEN. Until then, let those of us still playing enjoy the features of the game.

I'm pretty sure I'm stabbing a dead body here, but I have to agree with a lot of people here when I say that upkeep is pretty damn useless, for all the reasons listed in posts up to this point. But as a player that frequents my house, and one that likes to visit others', its a real bother when every house in my neighborhood is closed indefinitely. As stated before by someone, only the owner knows if they're coming back or not, but I think that being a free player or a premium or member is a decent enough indicator when it comes to this topic. I've had friends that played, bought a house, and left forever. Not one of those had ever payed, and not one of my friends who's payed has left. Escrow banking, having as short of a span as it does, is ridiculous. Why should some of your stuff be taken away because you didn't take it out in time? Anyway, I disagree with the policy that neither you, nor anyone else, can enter your house while foreclosed. It devalues the neighborhood (if you care about that stuff), and it makes it hard for new homeowners to find examples as to what they want their house to look like.

Although it would take a lot of effort on Turbine's end, I think that we need a neighborhood reform. There need to be fewer neighborhoods and fewer houses and a bid-based housing market. A competitive market, even though it makes it a bit harder to be a homeowner, would also make it more exciting and less empty. In addition, we need upkeep to be cut (it accomplishes nothing) and a greater variety of things to do in housing areas, ie. seasonal events, vendors/crafting, skirmish camps, reflecting pools. We also need a better travel situation (mostly swift travel TO the homesteads.) A mustering horn would be great. If you're going to put something in the middle of nowhere, you might as well make it be accessible. Also, less important but still preferable, exclusive vendors or activities that are a cannot be found elsewhere.

That still leaves the main matter, foreclosure. When a house is foreclosed, it should be to inactivity, not money, and should also be unlocked without money, as this makes it undesirable to own a house in the first place because of the risk that you could end up paying just as much for keeping your old one as buying a new one. Once you reach a certain point of inactivity, an email would be sent out to the owner that their house will be foreclosed in 2 months. To unlock a house that is between email-stage and foreclosure, it would only be necessary that they enter their house to reclaim it. This email point should be different between member/premium/f2p. F2P players, being the least dedicated and most likely to quit the game with no investment in it, would get 6 months (in addition to the 2 after the email). Premium players get 10 months (a year including the email time) and members, having a current investment in the game, will have their house removed after 2 years, though it is doubtful that they would continue paying for the game after not playing for 2 whole years. Once the house is gone, your items get moved into an INDEFINITE escrow, and you get a 15% discount on the next standard or deluxe house you buy. And please, keep the houses open to visit for the owner and his compatriots, instead of making it a vegetable.

I'm not usually this idealistic, for the record, and if you read through this whole thing, thank you very much.

Personally, I think houses should be foreclosed on after six months, with two caveats --

* A player has to actually "boot" the previous owner by visiting the house, clicking a button, and paying a fee. That fee would refund the purchase and chest money to the previous owner. In this way, they're not out anything. If they want that exact address later, they can buy it after they return, at the creation of the next new neighborhood. If nobody is interested in the house, they'll never get foreclosed upon.

* We have the ability to pay more than 6 weeks in advance. I'd like to see an 8 or 12 week cycle.

Let's remember that if a player is going away for a long time, they have the ability to give Maintenance permission to their friends and kinship. Send someone a few gold and ask them to drop by once a month to pay your rent!

I would be willing to bet that 99% of inactive houses are owned by players who have gone off to another server or retired from LotRO to play one of the newer MMOs. I'm not sure it's fair to design a system to support the 1% crowd.


On a side note, it seems like most neighborhoods linger with a number of unpopular Standard homes, with all the Deluxe homes sold. Perhaps it would encourage the creation of new neighborhoods at a faster rate if kinship homes had 4 chests, deluxe had 3, and standard had 2. They would be bought faster, thus creating new neighborhoods. Alternately, perhaps the prices of the least popular homes could be reduced to the point where they tempt buyers again.

Originally Posted by XinaLotRO

Personally, I think houses should be foreclosed on after six months, with two caveats --

* A player has to actually "boot" the previous owner by visiting the house, clicking a button, and paying a fee. That fee would refund the purchase and chest money to the previous owner. In this way, they're not out anything. If they want that exact address later, they can buy it after they return, at the creation of the next new neighborhood. If nobody is interested in the house, they'll never get foreclosed upon.

* We have the ability to pay more than 6 weeks in advance. I'd like to see an 8 or 12 week cycle.

Let's remember that if a player is going away for a long time, they have the ability to give Maintenance permission to their friends and kinship. Send someone a few gold and ask them to drop by once a month to pay your rent!

I would be willing to bet that 99% of inactive houses are owned by players who have gone off to another server or retired from LotRO to play one of the newer MMOs. I'm not sure it's fair to design a system to support the 1% crowd.


On a side note, it seems like most neighborhoods linger with a number of unpopular Standard homes, with all the Deluxe homes sold. Perhaps it would encourage the creation of new neighborhoods at a faster rate if kinship homes had 4 chests, deluxe had 3, and standard had 2. They would be bought faster, thus creating new neighborhoods. Alternately, perhaps the prices of the least popular homes could be reduced to the point where they tempt buyers again.

While I'm sure more storage would make houses more attractive, I'm not sure it's really what's needed here. Neighborhoods are largely deserted because there's no reason to go there, nothing to do. I visit my kinship's house from time to time, wander aimlessly for a bit, sit in a chair and with a sigh, I leave again. There's simply nothing to do there.

Originally Posted by Tiamo

While I'm sure more storage would make houses more attractive, I'm not sure it's really what's needed here. Neighborhoods are largely deserted because there's no reason to go there, nothing to do. I visit my kinship's house from time to time, wander aimlessly for a bit, sit in a chair and with a sigh, I leave again. There's simply nothing to do there.

Sure, those suggestions aren't the end-all, be-all solution, but they're pretty simple to implement. It seems like we aren't getting any major housing system upgrades, but perhaps Turbine would make small changes.

My kinship has 4 officially organized neighborhoods and about 4 more casual neighborhoods. We use the heck out of them. They're used for roleplay, kin meetings and events. Perhaps even more importantly, they're used as a massive kin bank. There are a dozen homes filled with shared cosmetics. There is a house full of dyes. There are several houses with food and potions. One entire neighborhood has organized craft item storage. There's a deluxe home where furniture is shared. There is even a standard house with every single Fortune from the spring festival, in order, so that everyone can get all of the fortune deeds. I can't count the number of homes with recipes. I think there are 3 kinhouses now with all of the maps for those deeds.

I would really prefer that kinships had a bank tab, but this will do in the meantime.

what about the players that havent been on in like year? also you know they dont play anymore. it would be nice for that house be made available and their stuff sent to them...

Originally Posted by XinaLotRO

Sure, those suggestions aren't the end-all, be-all solution, but they're pretty simple to implement. It seems like we aren't getting any major housing system upgrades, but perhaps Turbine would make small changes.

My kinship has 4 officially organized neighborhoods and about 4 more casual neighborhoods. We use the heck out of them. They're used for roleplay, kin meetings and events. Perhaps even more importantly, they're used as a massive kin bank. There are a dozen homes filled with shared cosmetics. There is a house full of dyes. There are several houses with food and potions. One entire neighborhood has organized craft item storage. There's a deluxe home where furniture is shared. There is even a standard house with every single Fortune from the spring festival, in order, so that everyone can get all of the fortune deeds. I can't count the number of homes with recipes. I think there are 3 kinhouses now with all of the maps for those deeds.

I would really prefer that kinships had a bank tab, but this will do in the meantime.

Guilds in DAOC actually had a bank built in. You could even set a guild tax so that 1-10% of all money earnerd by the members automatically went into the guild account.