Final Fantasy XIV Is Bringing Back the Housing Lottery

Final Fantasy XIV players who've been waiting for their chance to purchase a house may finally be able to do so soon now that the game's Housing Lottery system is returning. Square Enix and Naoki Yoshida, the producer and director of Final Fantasy XIV, announced the next steps for the Housing Lottery in a blog post shared this week and confirmed that those affected by the errors the last time the lottery was around will have a shot at claiming their prize next week. After that, another Housing Lottery will get underway 10 days later for yet another chance at obtaining some land.

This Housing Lottery was introduced alongside the Endwalker expansion released previously, but the lottery didn't work as intended. Players who were the only ones in contention for a specific plot still didn't win, lottery numbers were being pulled that showed nobody had won, and so on. Thankfully, Square Enix plans to restore the data from the previous Housing Lottery on May 16th to "properly relay lottery results for affected plots to the appropriate servers."

"If you have a winning lottery number, please be sure to finalize your land purchase by Thursday, 26 May at 14:59 (GMT) / 15:59 (BST) / Friday, 27 May 00:59 (AEST)," Yoshida said in this week's post. "The next lottery cycle will begin promptly on Thursday, 26 May at 15:00 (GMT) / 16:00 (BST) / Friday, 27 May at 01:00 (AEST), at which point you will lose the ability to claim land you won during this lottery. We will announce this deadline again as it grows closer, so please do not forget to claim your land."

After this restored lottery session goes live and Square Enix has deemed everything is working as intended, there will be another Housing Lottery cycle on May 26th to give more players a shot at obtaining a house.

Those who tried to enter the last lottery may recall they had their gil refunded. Yoshida said there are no plans to perform a data rollback to take away that gil, but an NPC will be added in the 6.2 patch for players to speak to in case they want to voluntary refund that refund.