I need an official ruling from a developer.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that breaking out of a prestige home has always been categorized as an exploit. However, since it does not negatively affect other players' game play, SOE has always turned a blind eye to what is now considered a standard practice.

I need some OFFICIAL ruling on overbuilding. Although this too would fall into the exploit category, but like break outs, it does not negatively affect others' game play.

Just what is SOE's position on the practice? I have heard nothing of an official nature, only other players' opinions and rumors. Everything from tales of being perma-banned, to warnings, to tacit approval and acceptance.

Since I have a number of homes that are overbuilt, I would really like some official ruling be made by the developers.

Rumors and anecdotal stories from fellow players has only muddied the waters and added contradictory information about the practice.

Could you please clarify your official position, and sticky your ruling to the top of the Homeshow forum?

Thank you.

I don't think they ever classified break-outs as an exploit. I think they filed it under things they didn't know we could do. I remember reading something on this a while back, and I'll try to find the actual post. I wouldn't want to force an official statement on break-outs because it might result in something we decorators don't like, like losing the ability to break out all together.

EDIT: Here's the EQ2Wire article about it. They make reference to where devs have talked about the subject, but they don't link the dev posts.
http://eq2wire.com/2011/01/24/guide-breakout-locations-for-housing/

2nd EDIT: As for overbuilding... Do you mean fitting more items into a house than what you're actually allowed?

Domino's response on the breakout subject - the only Dev commend I remember seeing.

Officially, breaking out is not an exploit. It's an unsupported, unanticipated feature of layout editing. This has been confirmed to me personally by multiple devs (and if the fact that they now ensure that most new homes with "breakout" capabilities have solid ground to build on doesn't cinch it, I don't know what does!).

I spoke to Kaitheel about overbuilding very briefly at SOE Live. It's something that the devs honestly don't care about, and it's not something they can (currently) "fix" to not have happen. I think it would depend on a) whether your home is reported to a GM, and b) how lenient that GM is feeling that day.

At worst, they'd tell you to trim the item count down. At best, they'd look at your home, and then send you a compliment.

However, an official word from the devs wouldn't go amiss. I'll see if I can rustle up some answers on Facebook... (I doubt it'll be stickied, but at least having it in writing would mean that we can search for it and have an official record of the statement.)

I always take those stories where someone got banned for such and such silliness with a grain of salt. Personally I don't see any need to have a ruling on this.

Side note, GM confirmation that they don't consider breakouts exploits.

"We don't enforce breakouts as exploits. At the worst, I may tell a player that could be the cause for their house acting oddly. If it were against the rules, I would have to find and warn about 1000 decorators, which wouldn't make a lot of business sense."

No word on the overbuilding so far, but I don't think that it would be a bannable offense. As I said before, the worst that would happen is probably a GM asking you to cut back on your item count voluntarily.

Pretty sure some of the dev pick homes are breakouts

#Kander2016

And there's the reply from both a GM and a dev

My takeaway from this is: "We'd really prefer you not do that..."

Thank you all for the replies.

An ominous warning to be sure. It will probably mean that future overbuilds for me are not in the cards, and past overbuilds will be reduced. But having literally spent years (on one in particular), I will keep it as is and take my chances, though I have been warned. I will take plenty of screenshots just in case.

I can understand fixing this. And I would like to confess I too have been guilty of overloading a zone with items but it was not so I could build something truly crazy, It is because I, Jesder, am a hoarder. It is not really my fault, it was so I could store all the thousands of items I was forced to hoard over the years in less spots. All those holiday tiles, city event items and moonlight enchantment items that if I did not get the while they were in season, I would have to pay outrageous prices or go without them. Storing house items is a chore and trying to remember what zone you put your green stained glass in was never fun. Sure I can inventory it all with layouts, but that is actually a tedious process even for me and no matter how you try to organize things you end up hitting a limit somewhere and then move to overflow and ... OMG

Sadly I don't think there is an easy solution to the hoarding problem. I know we decorators take up a huge amount of database records but it isn't really our fault. We are playing with the systems we were given and attempt to limit those things that are not fun...

I would like to point out that if I had not been able to overload the crate in a zone, It would not have reduced the items I was storing, it would have just encouraged me to create more alts with more houses which really just adds more database overhead. If you want to solve that issue, you need to fix the way items are stored "at rest".

Actually, breaking out of prestige homes and overbuilding are related.

Take for instance the Hua Mein Retreat prestige house. Zam lists over a dozen breakout locations. Upon breaking out you have literally a large ZONE to decorate. A zone that will eat up item count *real* fast.

Or the Mistmoore Craig Estates, or the Freeblood Lair, or the Tenebrous Island Refuge. or any one of the several LARGE breakout areas of other prestige homes, you can even breakout of city housing and guild halls. The Isle of Refuge will be no different I am sure.

We, as decorators, *like* a large palette upon which to paint. However, the item count requirements needed to decorate such large vistas are* very* high. Hence the overbuilds.

SOE has tried to accommodate us. They have increased item count, and have divided it into building block limits and non-building block limits, effectively doubling the total item count.

But I, (we), have a monkey on our back. We want bigger!, larger!!, more!!!, until we have decorated ourselves into lag-ridden, half-rendered prisons of our own design.

Is the solution to reduce the breakout areas of prestige houses? Is it to prohibit breakouts and overbuilds altogether? Or is it to let the chips fall where they may, until we reach a spot where the lag and slow rendering is simply not worth the increased detail by continuing to add more and more items?

I don't know, but I think I need a 12 step program.

------> To everyone in the know... I have a few houses in the Hall of Fame that I did breakouts on, only because it was okay (not an exploit) with SOE, and was fun being able to do something more creative. Decorating is my favorite thing to do in EQII, although I do bounce back and forth from questing...having both keeps away the boredom that can come from being too much involved in just one thing. That being said, I do not breakout of all my houses.

However, I am not familiar with the term "overbuilding," "exploiting past your item limit", or "duplicating", nor does it even sound legit in my minds eye view. To me, the way it was worded, as well as the way SOE Kander replied, seems that those 2 terms mean something different than "breakout." ...but then again maybe somehow related?

------> To Kander... You said it would be fixed in the future, but not sure what you are referring to as "being fixed," and hopefully, you did not mean our breakouts were going to go poof and up in smoke. Many of us would be very unhappy indeed after putting a lot of love, work and time into our homes. This is one of the things that makes EQII so unique compared to other games, and to be honest, was the deciding factor for me choosing EQII over non-SOE games. ...and I have been here many years as a paid subscriber after making that decision. With all respect intended, Kander, please clarify the "being fixed" thing.

The reason why the EQ2 team put house item limits is that otherwise, someone can visit your house and their computer can't handle thousands of items and so they cannot zone in and they have to contact customer support to rescue their character.

I don't know all the rules of house item limits, but my understanding is... If a house has a limit of 1,000 items, and you have 1,000 items, plus 1,000 books (which don't count), plus 1,000 building blocks (which don't count), plus the moving crate, and you still find a way to add more items, then at some point in the future, that's going to be stopped somehow. People are using tricks to put thousands and thousands of items in houses way beyond all the limits that have been set.


To my knowledge, nothing is changing about breakouts (placing items outside the geometry of a house).

Edited to accommodate the desires of other posters

Breakouts have been deemed acceptable by SOE, overbuilding has not. You should never post details on how to exploit on these forums and by your own post you consider this an exploit. The fact that many of us (SOE included) have known about this for years does not matter.

By drawing even more attention to this, she's going to force the developers to take action.

I wish people would realize that it's better to leave well enough alone than to repeatedly poke the bear.