Announcements Concerning Plots

[Amarie Ancalimon]

Over the last two days subscribed players should have received two emails with the words "Plot Condemnation" in the title. The first caused some confusion, so today we sent out a clarification. You can find the text of both below:

Greetings Fellow Istarians,

In my most recent "Developers' Desk" email I mentioned that while we're
working toward plot reclamation, the design team is also taking a close
look at communities where plots are "too small" to be effective. There
have been some questions and feedback asking us to define what "too small"
means and what our plans are for those plots, so I thought I'd provide some
more information. And there are ways that as Istarians you can help us
with this process, too.

Our threshold for plots we consider "under-sized" is 1600 square meters or
smaller - such as a plot that is 40x40 meters or 30x50 meters. What we
have done at this point is set any plots that are too small to a status of
"Condemned". Any plot that is Condemned is considered unworthy and can not
be purchased. It will either be reborn as a larger plot, or sent to the
eternal bit bucket.

Here's where you can help. If you, or a friend, owns one of these
unfortunate plots, we'd ask that you take the time to tear down structures
on that plot and sell it back to the community. Obviously this is not
something that we're forcing anyone to do, but it is a request. The more
of these under-sized plots that are owned by the community, the easier it
is for us to be able to work in the community - and provide everyone with a
selection of larger plots. It is often difficult, and sometimes
impossible, to modify a small plot if it remains owned by someone on any of
the shards.

If you know of someone who is currently unsubscribed and would like to
release their plot, we can certainly add a week of special "plot clean up"
time to their account. I encourage those of you who have guild communities
to try and contact members who may no longer play the game, especially
since we know that guild communities often contain these under-sized
plots.

I appreciate your help in this matter. If you have any questions, please
contact support at http://support.istaria.com and submit a ticket under
Plot and Lairs or just email us at [email protected]

Thank you and enjoy Istaria,

[Amarie Ancalimon]

Greetings Istarians,

Yesterday I inadvertently caused near mass hysteria and panic across the
land. No, I was not working as a double agent for the Withered Aegis, as
some may suspect. And so that you can rest assured that your community
manager is on your side and not "gone to the dark side", here's some
clarifications:

1) No plot is truly being "condemned". All we have done at this point is
prevented plots that were previously up for sale by the community and were
1600 sq. m. or smaller from being purchased. This is to prevent someone
from buying a plot on one of the live servers while we're deleting it on
our internal server to make more space.

2) I should have said plots 1600 sq. m. and smaller as what is affected.
An unowned plot that is 1601 sq. m. or larger will not be marked
condemned.

3) ALL owned plots are perfectly safe regardless of size. No plot will be
forcibly taken away from someone. There MAY (but have not yet) been cases
where we privately contact someone and ask if we can reclaim their plot,
and make arrangements with them to do so. We would only proceed with such
a plan if we were able to dialog with the person and know they were in
agreement. If we can not contact someone due to an out of date email
address, we will assume the answer is no.

4) None of this affects lairs what so ever.

5) It is purely voluntary and we know it won't work for everyone. Our
hope is that by having asked, some people will say "Oh, sure, I can move
out a few weeks early. I was intending to move when plots are reclaimed
anyway." And for those who have asked the follow up question to that... we
do not know how long this will take to complete. I can't tell you right
now if you'd be out of a home in Istaria for any particular length of time
because we simply don't know right now.

The last issue is not something directly related to the previous email but
something I need to clarify anyway. When we set plots on the live shards
to be "unable to be purchased" we inadvertently introduced an issue with
the selling of plots back to the community and to other players directly.
At this time it does not appear to affect the ability to mark a plot "For
Sale to Players" (plural). Only "For Sale to a Specific Player" and "Sell
to Community".

Please know that we are aware of this bug and are working on a fix. I
will post something on our log-in site when we have this issue fixed.

Thank you all for the many questions, and I do apologize for having caused
so many concerns.

- Amarie