The Final Fantasy XIV team announced today that automatic housing demolition is temporarily shuttered in certain regions. The system destroyed any occupied housing plots that owners had not interacted with in some time. The idea was to allow those mostly-unused plots to be freed up for new, active owners.
In a post on the official Lodestone blog today, the FFXIV said that automatic housing demolition would be temporarily halted in a few regions. Starting on Feb. 9, 2023 at 9:25 a.m. PST / 12:25 p.m. EST, auto-demolition will be suspended on all Chaos and Light Data Center worlds. That would be all of the European Data Center worlds.
The reason behind the suspension isn’t a technical one, it’s a real-life tragedy. On Monday, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake hit Turkey and Syria, killing over 20,000 so far. The quake and aftershocks also destroyed a number of homes and key infrastructure in the region. Freeing people from the rubble and providing food and shelter is more important than worrying about a house in a game.
“From all of us on the FFXIV development and management team, our hearts go out to those who were affected by the massive earthquake that occurred in southeastern Turkey on Monday, February 6,” said the FFXIV team in the blog. “It is our sincere hope that recovery is swift, and those of you who were affected will be able to rejoin us in Eorzea soon.”
Automatic demolition was only turned back on earlier this year. The process was originally turned off during the launch of Endwalker. The server issues around launch made it difficult for players to log in, so the FFXIV team decided it was best to table automatic demolition. It was further pushed back due to the conflict in Ukraine.
