Over the last two days subscribed players should have received two emails with the words "Plot Condemnation" in the title. The first caused some confusion, so today a clarification was sent out. You can find the text of both below:

Amarie:
Greetings Fellow Istarians,

In my most recent "Developers' Desk" email I mentioned that while we're
working toward plot reclamation, the design team is also taking a close
look at communities where plots are "too small" to be effective. There
have been some questions and feedback asking us to define what "too small"
means and what our plans are for those plots, so I thought I'd provide some
more information. And there are ways that as Istarians you can help us
with this process, too.

Our threshold for plots we consider "under-sized" is 1600 square meters or
smaller - such as a plot that is 40x40 meters or 30x50 meters. What we
have done at this point is set any plots that are too small to a status of
"Condemned". Any plot that is Condemned is considered unworthy and can not
be purchased. It will either be reborn as a larger plot, or sent to the
eternal bit bucket.

Here's where you can help. If you, or a friend, owns one of these
unfortunate plots, we'd ask that you take the time to tear down structures
on that plot and sell it back to the community. Obviously this is not
something that we're forcing anyone to do, but it is a request. The more
of these under-sized plots that are owned by the community, the easier it
is for us to be able to work in the community - and provide everyone with a
selection of larger plots. It is often difficult, and sometimes
impossible, to modify a small plot if it remains owned by someone on any of
the shards.

If you know of someone who is currently unsubscribed and would like to
release their plot, we can certainly add a week of special "plot clean up"
time to their account. I encourage those of you who have guild communities
to try and contact members who may no longer play the game, especially
since we know that guild communities often contain these under-sized
plots.

I appreciate your help in this matter. If you have any questions, please
contact support at http://support.istaria.com and submit a ticket under
Plot and Lairs or just email us at support-landtitle@istaria.com

Thank you and enjoy Istaria.

Amarie:
Greetings Istarians,

Yesterday I inadvertently caused near mass hysteria and panic across the
land. No, I was not working as a double agent for the Withered Aegis, as
some may suspect. And so that you can rest assured that your community
manager is on your side and not "gone to the dark side", here's some
clarifications:

1) No plot is truly being "condemned". All we have done at this point is
prevented plots that were previously up for sale by the community and were
1600 sq. m. or smaller from being purchased. This is to prevent someone
from buying a plot on one of the live servers while we're deleting it on
our internal server to make more space.

2) I should have said plots 1600 sq. m. and smaller as what is affected.
An unowned plot that is 1601 sq. m. or larger will not be marked
condemned.

3) ALL owned plots are perfectly safe regardless of size. No plot will be
forcibly taken away from someone. There MAY (but have not yet) been cases
where we privately contact someone and ask if we can reclaim their plot,
and make arrangements with them to do so. We would only proceed with such
a plan if we were able to dialog with the person and know they were in
agreement. If we can not contact someone due to an out of date email
address, we will assume the answer is no.

4) None of this affects lairs what so ever.

5) It is purely voluntary and we know it won't work for everyone. Our
hope is that by having asked, some people will say "Oh, sure, I can move
out a few weeks early. I was intending to move when plots are reclaimed
anyway." And for those who have asked the follow up question to that... we
do not know how long this will take to complete. I can't tell you right
now if you'd be out of a home in Istaria for any particular length of time
because we simply don't know right now.

The last issue is not something directly related to the previous email but
something I need to clarify anyway. When we set plots on the live shards
to be "unable to be purchased" we inadvertently introduced an issue with
the selling of plots back to the community and to other players directly.
At this time it does not appear to affect the ability to mark a plot "For
Sale to Players" (plural). Only "For Sale to a Specific Player" and "Sell
to Community".

Please know that we are aware of this bug and are working on a fix. I
will post something on our log-in site when we have this issue fixed.

Thank you all for the many questions, and I do apologize for having caused
so many concerns.

Velea, one of the developers, had these tidbits to add in the thread on this topic:

Velea:
It is only plots UNDER 1600 sq. m. that are being marked as "Unable to be repurchased" if they are reclaimed or sold to the Community. And plot that is owned will not be touched at all.

Velea:
Plots under 1600 sq. m. have already been locked out of being able to be bought on the live shards. We had to do this for two reasons. One is the reason you said, someone buys up the small plot in hopes of a magic upgrade. The other, however, is that we have to know that plots we're deleting now don't end up owned by someone between now and when the delta that resizes these plots goes live.

Velea:

Mysk:
I don't want to be picky but the Email says the following: "Our threshold for plots we consider "under-sized" is 1600 square meters or smaller - such as a plot that is 40x40 meters or 30x50 meters" That means 1600 is included and not under 1600.

Well I can't help it if Amarie wrote it wrong. She should have said that it's under 1600, not included 1600. Want me to smack her later for you? [face_wink] And we're not customizing plots by shard. Can't do that. It's all or none.

Velea:
It is a bug that you are unable to sell plots to players; a bug we are working on fixing. It is not something that we've changed on purpose, in other words.

And finally, in regards to the clarification email again saying that plots with area 1600 are on the condemned list:

Velea:
LOL She did it again!

Several more developer posts on this topic today:

Velea:
As I do the work in each community, no owned plot is being removed. As I do the work in each community the "space" that a plot that is owned in the world has to be contained within the same space in a new larger plot. (Think of a piece of graph paper. If your plot starts at point 100 by 100 and is 25 by 25, when I resize the plot I have to ensure that everything from 100 to 125 on both axis is contained there in. If I wanted to make the plot 40 by 40, but there's another plot right next to it that can't be moved, I can't shift the whole original plot away from it's neighbor because there are likely structures on it that would end up bugged.) There are a great deal of restrictions on what I can feasibly change right now based on what plots are owned on the three shards.

All Amarie has been trying to do with her emails is request that anyone who plans to sell back a plot to the community (be it subscribed player, or friend of a subscribed player), does so now rather than waiting.

Velea:
If you want to keep the plot you have now, keep your subscription and don't sell your plot.

Let me put it another way and perhaps that will help. It is about 99% likely that if you look on the server you don't play on, see that the plot you own is unowned there, and so sell your plot back to the community hoping it will be resized... It won't even exist after the resizing. I've done about 8 communities at this point. There hasn't been one where I've said "Oh, this plot is unowned, but let me leave it and resize it." If it is totally unowned, it's gone.

So do not sell your plot back to the community if there is ANY chance you want to keep it, because the chance of it still being there when all is said and done is minimal.

Does that help?

Velea:
Simple and straightforward... If it is owned on any server anywhere, just assume we can't touch it.

Amarie:
Here's the final word on this "1600" issue. If a plot is unowned on all three shards, it may disappear if the community being worked on needs the space. We have pro-actively reserved all small plots since those are often considered too small and will be first in line if we need to clear up space.

If a plot is owned, it doesn't matter what size the plot is. We will not take a plot away from any current subscriber. And we will not take away a plot from someone who owns it until after we start reclaiming plots.

If you have a plot which you feel is "too small" for your needs, and are willing to be "plotless" for a time, sell it back to the community.

Ignore everything Velea or I have said about the 1600 rule. Consider it for internal development use only, if you want. If you want to remember it, then do so as the goal that we're going to try to make plots larger.

This should also clear up any confusion. Vahrokh is a player, by the way, not a dev.

Velea:

Vahrokh:
Basically, in case you decide it'd be worth enlarging it (without affecting anything nearby), would it still be needed to remove everything on it?

No, if there is room around an existing plot, it does not need to be torn down and sold back to have the size changed.

Vahrokh:
it is GREAT that you improve plots, but basically those who would like to stay in the same place (assuming their plot is not the one to be deleted to enlarge another over its area) are going to lose their buildings (not a big issue for me) and most of all, they WILL lose their plot even after it's upgraded, since it'll become more appetible and others will buy it.

This is not at all true, and I apologize that you've thought this from something someone said.

Simply put, if you want to keep your plot and structures on it, please do so, and wait and see what happens before deciding to what to do in the future.