A month later, Final Fantasy 14’s housing lottery is back online

polygon.com:

Final Fantasy14will once again allow you to enter the lottery for home ownership. After a month of being down due to technical issues, game director and producer Naoki Yoshida revealed that the system has been stabilized and is coming back on May 16.

For those not in the know, the lottery system is relatively new to Final Fantasy 14, allowing players to purchase housing much more efficiently — they were previously forced to stay logged in for hours, clicking on plots and hoping they’d become vacant. The new system is more elegant, with players able to purchase a lottery ticket for the plot they want and then see if they had a winning ticket five days later. The ticket costs as much as the house, but losers get their cash refunded.

However, the first lottery didn’t go as planned last month. While the background data worked for Square Enix, the lottery winners didn’t display properly for some plots, telling players “the winning number is… 0. May you have better luck next time.” No winners were declared and all players were issued a refund.

This display issue has now been resolved, and as of Monday, affected players should be able to revisit their tickets and tell if they were winners. If they did win the plot, they’ll have until May 26 to claim it — and they won’t lose their refunded Gil, meaning they’ll effectively get the house for free.

The second Final Fantasy 14 housing lottery will begin on May 26 and last the standard time. Players will have five days to enter and four days to claim a home if they win. Those who win but don’t claim their plot will lose 50% of the Gil they spent on the ticket.