So, about these custom Castle and Keep designs.....

Dev team,

I hope that you are not limiting yourselves to 1 castle, 1 keep design for this publish. Also, I'm glad it is you all choosing and not me.

After scrolling through the list of pics on the Stratics thread, I am blown away. Some of those designs are incredible. You've probably already thought of this, but maybe you could take the top vote getter and then add say 8 more to the tool.

Hell, you could probably add 24 of those designs to the tool. That could generate some variety in housing!

If you added a large number of designs, for the next publish instead of doing castle/keep, maybe just choose a different size foundation and turn the community loose on it. That way when someone clicked on a foundation size, they'd get a list of different pre-built houses for that size in addition to the basic plot.

You could use the community to really help you fill out the housing tool. That would give people who aren't into house design some ready to go architecture. Let people get a nice house without having to figure out roofing in UO. 

I think they said up to 3 of each, castle and keep. The contest is intended to run multiple times a year. Test will be wiped before each contest.

So, using the Stratics thread, I chose 26 designs to actually go look at. I followed some criteria to whittle the number down to a few I really liked.

Were tile sets complimentary?
Were transition tiles used between tile sets?
Were rooms large enough for use?
Could I figure out how to get up/down stairs/levels? (This was surprisingly difficult for some designs.)
Were all areas accessible via stairs/ladders? (If not, could a single teleporter be considered a trap door stair?)
Did stairs have railings?
Was there continuity between levels? (Did a chimney continue through upper floors? Were did that waterfall originate? etc.)
If you opened a door or placed an object, could you move past it?
Could you get to all spaces or were some tiles just inaccessible?

I absolutely love the theme designs like the Morraco town, or the Japanese compound, but voted for a simple large castle (that is not a borg box) that met all of the above criteria. Next round though, I'm totally going Morracan.

And to everyone who designed Castles/Keeps, well damn done.

EDIT: I wonder if the development team couldn't repeat this design contest more frequently, but in a more focused manner. Say, every month, but the dev's choose a single foundation size and tile set to be worked with along with a set of rules (no teleporters, or must include a water feature, etc.). 3 weeks for construction, 1 week for voting?

They could even make it a real contest and provide a prize, say 300 Sov's for 1st, 200 Sov's for 2nd, 100 Sov's for 3rd?

Collect the winning designs each month and publish when convenient.

(I'm just excited to see new stuff in the game! I'll calm down now.)