Well… this is a wonderful question and I hope I don’t get in trouble for this, but I have been watching Tram for 10 years. I was still new back before AoS, when the house decay freeze drove prices into orbit. Even a small marble house was extremely hard to get on Atlantic shard.
I’ve noticed “suspicious” house placement in a few different spots. Square cut-outs of trees so a house will fit… houses in spots I could never place when housing was hard to find. Now, those small houses are long gone… but you have to wonder how much was player cheating and how much was staffer cheating. I’ve noticed on test shards… and sometimes in traveling, where a single tree is missing that would make a difference between many smaller houses and a keep placement. Who’s to say what modifications made the transition from the old staff when Fel was copied to Tram, depending on shards. All I know is that 10 years ago… there was no big space for a full tower next to the Tram brigand camp… and now there is a full tower. hehe. Near my house/town is a very clear square cut out for a house. I’ve never seen very sloppy work in the original design of our land, so I have to wonder. Sloppy, being lack of attention to detail. They did good work back in the day.
Oh, and those few small houses that I was wondering about, bad then… I checked many other shards and none had those houses in those spots. Never thought of wasting time and energy in checking Atlantic Fel.
I’ve also seen tricky castle placement with trees inside… something I could never even stomach the idea to attempt, even if I had the opportunity. I also passed on a suspicious keep once… that had a tree sitting in the north 2nd level floor. That couldn’t have been a legal placement.
