Instancing Solutions
Feel free to add your own.
Inverse Sky Wrapper
To have a credible instancing just use the sky wrapper idea (*)the other way round: Have houses placed in a mine UNDER the ground. The first level is a cave map, there is a gnome that sells houses in his desk, and another gnome that offers you to take you in his cart (he is a clerk gnome) Imagine you live in house number 384: 1.You speak to the gnome, you tell him you live in floor 38 2.You enter his cart, and you see an animation in the animation you go through a series of passages and labyrinths underground. 3.you arrive at a cave which YOU ASSUME must be floor 38, in this cave the gnome is on an edge of the map so you can go back (or to another floor), there are 10 houses on the cave, you enter number 4 (remember your house is 384), you have a key to enter.
You need a key only if the door is locked, if you leave it open your friends (or anyone) may pass to see you whenever they want, of course you can borrow or copy the key.
In this system floor 38, would actually exist, and floor 38 always has the same 10 houses, so you can get to know your neighbors or cross them by, the only thing that is fictional is the path to floor 38, which is the same path for all the 100 or 1000 floors.
It would be better if players DIDN'T chose their house number and got consecutive ones in order to have less floor maps.
At first you would only have floor one, then as players started requesting houses, gnomes would start caving more and adding levels downer and downer.
NOTES: (*)Anarchy Online - a science fiction themed MMO - solved the problem with instances and "Hilbert Hotel Skyscrapers". There are high-rise apartment buildings in the game with elevators. When you step into the elevator it brings you to the floor with your flat. Every floor is one instance. But because you never know on which floor you are you never know how many virtual floors the building really has. But this solution to explain instancing is not suitable as skyscrapers are quite misplaced in fantasy themed MMORPGs. (Posted by Crush on the Forums)
Property Issues
The property is based on a special paper not on the key, the idea is that this paper is not sell able to a NPC but you can sell your house to another person, the owner of the paper has the right to ask for more keys of the house to the gnome, and has the right to ask admins to take keys away from other players in game that may have keys of the same house.
