Simply making the house private, while leaving the access list alone, would accomplish this just as handily...and without all the gnashing of teeth.I am a little confused by why people are so upset about the change about the friends list being wiped.
I imagine it's to prevent an illegal program from targeting specific items to be "picked up" which is what we all want to do... thwart the scripters!
This argument gets a bit silly. Storing something in someone's house isn't a bad thing, as an avid shard hopper, I'd think you'd be especially aware of this. I know many people who store things in a home that doesn't belong to them on shards they don't play regularly. I know plenty of people who keep accounts open but don't play regularly, if at all (Yes, I think its a bit silly, but whatever). I also know a few of these people who have randomly had credit card issues with the account mismanagement site and never received an email alerting them as much.Shouldn't we as adults be able to make intelligent decisions about where we store our items? If a friend hasn't played in 3 months assume that their house is going to fall and relocate your belongings.
With the new changes, those people are screwed as soon as the house hits decay (usually the first indicator to the non-house owner that something is amiss). As we've seen in the past, a week may not be adequate to reup the subscription for whatever reason.
And yet, its not so cut and dry either.It's really not that difficult.