1. What's wrong with adding extra house-hooks?

I know back in my high school days (Chapman High class of 2003), server lag was a HUGE problem. Then again, server hardware was ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE slower and many of us still had the redneck's connection (a.k.a. dial-up.)

Now that the hardware, processing and connection speeds have vastly improved, being able to buy extra house-hooks shouldn't be as much of a problem as it used to be.

Maybe we should pay a good sack of pyreals, plus maybe a critter trophy for each hook. I would hope that the extra hooks become a permanent installment of the house or apartment, with the only caveat being that once the previous owner vacates, the next owner will have to pay extra-hook surcharges to own that property. I wouldn't like all that hard-earned money to go down the drain not to be of a future owner's benefit.

2. We can expand our houses to our heart's content on The Sims series of games. (Up to 3-4 floors above ground, and 1 or 2 floors below. What problems would there be in expanding our cottages, villas or mansions on AC?

The graphics engine should be able to handle it far more easily now than back when I was in high school, so it shouldn't be as big of an obstacle as it used to be.

I suppose fees for expanding a house would require a TUSKER-LOAD of Pyreals, plus some rarer or more substantial critter trophies. Fair is fair, right?

...RIGHT?

If no one thinks there's a problem with being able to purchase house-hooks and get extra rooms for houses like on The Sims, then why won't the devs put that in?

They have said repeatedly that 1) the housing code is touchy, and if they break it in any way during a patch then everyone could lose all of their hooked/chest items 2) storage space bogs down the database.

Those very significant reasons are the main ones they wouldn't implement it. Also the graphics engine hasn't changed much so saying that it shouldn't be much of a problem now isn't true.

Besides, just by subbing an extra account for only a month you can have a second house for ever. You can pay the rent with your first account and give you first account full access to the house, including hooks and chests. So you can just get two houses next to each other if you really want the extra hook spots.

Sounds like it should be two lines of code. I'll call up Andy and tell him he needs to start pressing the guys to get on that immediately.

... or it's what Wolf said.

Originally posted by SnarlingWolf

 2) storage space bogs down the database.

Why would it still bog down the database? I thought the servers hosting them would be a helluva lot faster now. Seeking/processing speeds, et al. should make the extra database entries more trivial to access now, shouldn't it?

Originally posted by shultz

Originally posted by SnarlingWolf

 2) storage space bogs down the database.

 

Why would it still bog down the database? I thought the servers hosting them would be a helluva lot faster now. Seeking/processing speeds, et al. should make the extra database entries more trivial to access now, shouldn't it?

 The amount of loot and items created/stored/tracked in AC is immense. Far larger then any other MMO out there. If you use decal you can see that roughly once a year they reset data IDs to flush out space. This started after a couple years ago when their databases got full and actually caused the servers to start crashing. Before that point I believe they had to only reset the databases once in the life of AC, now they have to do it yearly.

More items are being created and stored then ever before and there is 11 years worth of characters holding stuff clogging up their databases. It is more of a strain now then before.

They have upgraded their servers but they also run AC on fewer servers. Back in it's prime there were tons of machines running the AC servers, now there are a lot less as they don't need as many for the population sizes. It isn't like they would spend lots of money to upgrade more machines then they need to run the servers with the current pops, it would be a foolish waste of money.

People often decide "technology is better/faster now so AC should be able to do more", it already is doing more. There are more systems, more loot, more creatures etc then ever before. People often think "They should just quickly/easily change this or rewrite the graphics engine, etc." None of it is ever as simple as people think and stuff like rewriting parts of the engine is a huge money investment.