Housing & Leaderboards

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The Housing and Leaderboards is both a User Interface (UI) window used for many functions related to player housing and the name for the system by which decorating enthusiasts tour and rate each other's homes. If you are looking for info on player-made dungeons, which also has a similar UI window and separate Leaderboards for rating them, see the page for the Dungeon Maker System.

Note to fellow editors: the page title and the early descriptions in this article follow the exact naming convention for this UI window as it appears when opened in-game. It may be referred to on other pages, the forum, or websites as "Housing and Leaderboards" rather than using the ampersand (or without the s at the end of Leaderboard). The in-game name is used initially and is shortened to Leaderboards after the Overview.

Overview

The Housing & Leaderboards features can be summed up as a way to do everything you might want to do that involves housing while outside of a house. When you are inside a house, the window you use is somewhat different and is typically called the Housing window.

In some rare situations, other UI elements and windows will open the Housing & Leaderboards window for you, including the Housing window inside a house, but for the sake of avoiding the confusion that between the Housing & Leaderboards and the Housing window, the focus of this article will be referred to as Leaderboards (shortened) from this point on.

The main functions and features that can be accessed using the Leaderboards can be summed up as:

Traveling to housing your character owns.
Visiting the homes of other players or other characters on your account.
Purchasing Prestige Housing from the Marketplace.
Touring the homes of other players with the express purpose of rating them.

As of March 2014, an occasional bug (program error) may cause the Visit tab of the Leaderboards window to appear blank, even when there are several houses you can enter.

In most cases, closing the window and reopening it (by various means described below) will populate the list with houses you can travel to, provided you have the minimum Visitor access.
This seems to occur most frequently when using the guild hall amenity described below, though it may happen when in cities with player housing.

Opening the Window

There are many ways to access the Leaderboard window. Examples include:

Character window: by pressing C to open the window, selecting the Housing (side) tab. If you own one or more houses, click on any of the Access buttons to open the Leaderboards window and if are in any city with player housing, you can enter the house.
EQ2 Button: this square button is located in the lower left corner of your screen (near the end of the level bar in the standard UI). Click on it to open the EQ2 Menu (a list) and choose Housing & Leaderboard from the options.
At Prestige House entrances: after you select which house you want to buy or enter (for many reasons).
Leaving any house with one or more house portals that "links" it to one or mores houses.
Guild portal amenity: if your guild hall has this amenity, clicking on the swirling portal object in the hall will open the Leaderboard window. (Shown in an image within the general article about housing.)
Typing /house: the good, old fashioned "slash command" /house will open this window when you are outside of any house (inside, it opens a slightly different window.)

Travel to Houses

This UI window was added to make it very easy to travel to both Standard Housing and Prestige Housing. You can use it to do so any time you are in a player-inhabitable city. It can also be used to travel to and rate houses, as described in a separate section below.

Houses Your Character Owns

You can use this window for the method below only when you are in a city with player housing.

The easiest way to do this is:

Press C to open the character window.
Click on the side-tab, labeled Housing.
Choose the house you want to travel to and click on Access.

You can use this method to quickly travel to any house your character owns or those owned by alts (other characters on your account) and it's an exceptionally convenient mode of travel between between cities with player housing, even if you do not have the same alignment ("good" or "evil"). This is significant if you own multiple houses or have alt (other character one your account).

For more information in changes that make this possible, see the general article on player housing.

Houses Owned by Other Characters

All houses have different access settings that determine whether or not you can enter them. The settings are described here rather than named and defined in detail; if you are unfamiliar with access settings and want to better understand them see the descriptions of all types.

Situations in which you will use the Leaderboards to visit another player's house include:

When you go to visit a player-owned house to buy items listed on the broker. This is only possible if the listed item includes their character's address because the seller is using a sales display. (Buying from a player's sales display allows you to avoid fees normally "paid" to the broker.)
To see someone while in their house. You may choose to do this if you simply want to socialize with a friend or if you like to engage in roleplay.
To go into the house of another character on your account. It may be useful (at times) to store items that can be placed in a house like furniture (using one location like a warehouse). Many choose to do this as a means of traveling between locations when you exit a house.
When using the portal to housing in a Guild Hall to enter any house you've personally been granted the right to enter, like friend, guild mate, or someone whose home you are decorating for them.

To Tour or Buy a Prestige House

Over the years, a different type of housing was added, known as Prestige Housing. There are many ways to get prestige housing, but many can also be purchased with Station Cash (real-world money) using the Marketplace. They are available to buy in this manner because you can enter prestige housing from two central locations in Freeport or Qeynos, while the (older) Standard Housing has numerous, individual doors you need to visit and "buy" with in-game coin (gold, silver, etc.) due to their age.

It's easy to tour and buy Prestige Housing. This is done by clicking on the Buy tab in the Leaderboard window. You will see a list of all houses that can be purchased using Station Cash on the left side of the window, details about the item limits (how much you can store in them), two images of an what the house looks like when it is empty. Near the bottom you'll find a search field to help you find them by name (like Personal Dojo) if you are trying to find something specific, and the button to Buy or Tour an empty version.

Clicking the Buy button will open the Marketplace window and give you a chance to consider your purchase before you commit. If you purchase a house, it will appear in your character's inventory as a deed. Read more about how to use the deed on the Prestige Housing page.
Clicking the Tour button will automatically zone you in to the one you'd like to tour. Roam around freely and when you are ready to exit again, you will either need to return to the exit (looks like a portal, with a mini-image of the house in most) or you can jump into touring more houses that you can purchase or start touring and rating houses owned and published by other players.

Touring and Rating Houses

Housing and Leaderboards Tab — The Ratings tab. See the descriptions in **Ratings Tab Features** section for details

A close up of the awards for a published house. Gold indicates Number One ratings and silver Top ratings.

A house doesn't truly become a home until it is decorated and once you've put effort into making a home, you may want to other players to stop in, take a tour, and rate your work. Before the process of touring and rating can be described, it's important to understand how to use the Ratings tab features and functions first.

Anyone can publish their character's home so other players can visit it and rate it. This process is fairly simple. Editor may move info on this from another page soon. This is a draft version

Ratings Tab Features

Even if you choose not to publish your homes, you can tour and rate the homes other players have published. This is done via the Leaderboard window. There are many options when you want to do this, described below. An image on the right is labeled to correspond with the descriptions. You can right click on it and open it in a new tab to see the image full size or click on it to enlarge it here.

The Labels on the image show various functions. Each example below has a matching letter added to the image.

Example A - You can click on the Category name to select specific categories (mostly based on the house size). A drop down arrow will open sorting options based on the awards a house may have "won" for Creativity and Style (described later), how recently is was published, the Author (person who published it), or the by the way Title it is published under. All of these sorting options make it easy to browse houses you may want to see for the first time or return to and tour again.

Example B - The drop down arrow here allows you to filter the listings by All (everything published), to see those published by members of your own Guild, or to select My Houses and check the ratings of or visit houses owned by your character.

Example C - When you find a house you want to tour, you can click on the title of it here. All of the vital info about it will be displayed under a preview (screenshot) of the actual decor that was chosen by the Author who owns it. When you are ready to tour it, you'll click on the Visit button to enter it automatically.

The Process of Rating

Rating homes is quite simple. An image to the right shows the two mini-windows involved in the process to help you use them while in a published house.

In order to rate a home, you must travel to it using the Leaderboards using the features described in the section above. To begin, you will choose a home by clicking on its listed name and, if the screenshot provided looks appealing or it already has enough awards to intrigue you, click on the Visit button. Doing so will allow you yo automatically zone into the home.

Once you've gone for a tour, you (and if you think its worthy of rating) you can click on the gold star in a mini-window inside the house. This opens a secondary Ratings mini-window so you can choose and apply a rating.

If you find it particularly creative, click the Like button for that category. If you think its particularly stylish, click the Like button for that category. If you appreciate it in both regards, click the Like button for both.

When you are done rating, do not forget to click the Save button! If you leave before saving your vote or votes they will not be applied!

Awards and Trophies

Any published home can earn awards when other players visit it and rate it. There are no specific criteria for rating any house positively, because as it goes with all artistic expressions, it is based on the freely made, objective opinions of those viewing the work. Other players who have visited and rated it may be rating based on the entire house or specific areas and elements that differ from person to person. Even so, the ratings system tied to the Leaderboards provides two categories for visitors to use when they tour a house if they really like what they see. Any published home can be rated both categories and win awards in both as well.

The awards are given for two categories:

Creativity: is generally intended to tell players you find aspects of or their entire home a display of notable creative effort. The reasons a house may get positive ratings are numerous, but examples of homes that win these awards may

Due to the perception that the decorating strikes others as rather unusual or unique in some manner.
Because it is extraordinarily inventive (rebuilt to look like a pyramid or spaceship) in some manner.

Style: is generally intended for homes that have a overall style you appreciate.

This could be simply a matter general of appeal on a wide variety of criteria. That is, that it is perceived as comfortable home, very "tasteful" in its interior design, or even thought of as artful in some manner too (though maybe not as much so as one rated for creativity).

Editor adding a breakdown of what each award means/how they are calculated. May end up here or in the section below.

Winning Awards

This section is actively being researched, as is the info on the page directly listing the achievements related to it. For now, the benefits of such awards will generally be described here.

Each house category you can tour competes against houses in the same category. For example, all Small homes compete against each other and all Massive against each other. Click to enlarge to image in the Touring and Rating main section above to see the breakdown of Categories.
The five top-rated for homes for Creativity and Style are eligible to win an award each day.
Homes only remain in the Newly Published category for 7 days.

The way in which these awards is won has changed over time and is subject to change again, so instead the general concept is as such: a house must be published, visited and receive positive (thumbs up) rating from one or more person who has taken the time to tour it. After it has remained at in a top rated position for a period of at least approximately one 24 hour period, it wins and award in the category or categories it was given positive votes for.

Hall of Fame If a house wins 50 awards in either of the categories it, is then moved to the Hall of Fame, where it will remain unless it is unpublished by the home owner (aka the Author). An unpublished house can return to the Hall of Fame easily though, as it only needs one additional award to return to the Hall of Fame again. Once in the Hall of Fame the owner will get a House Rating Trophy (described below).

As a home wins awards, several achievements and titles are granted to the owner who published the house. See the information on achievements.

Credits for Info in This Section: This section was written with the aid of EQ2 Design Gallery where you can read more about all things related to decorating in EQ2.

Getting a Trophy

Getting a trophy in the mail is the ultimate honor that can be granted to anyone who has published a home. The trophy can be placed in any home you own and offers rent status reduction (RSR) if you place it in housing that has status upkeep. The trophy itself is:

Fabled, No-Trade, 500 RSR

The way in which these trophies are awarded has changed over time, but they are essentially a trophy given to the owner of a house that's has won many smaller ratings awards (the smaller awards are not house items, just honors). This can happen only in two phases and the second phase is conditional in order to get this trophy.

Phase 1 can be broken down into 2 steps:

The house must be decorated
While the owner of the home is inside the house it must be "published" on the Housing & Leaderboards

The following Phase 2 conditions must still be met:

Enough other players have to visit the home and "vote" for it over time
And if it "wins" in one or more categories (broken down into Creativity and Style) it will potentially qualify for this trophy.

When all of the above happens, the trophy is sent via the in-game mail system with a note that tells players which home they won the trophy. The trophies will always be mailed to the owner of the published house (and not a secondary character that decorates the house) and can not be traded to other players.

Seeing Trophy Info

Any trophy placed in a house will show you the title (set by the owner when it was published) of the house, name of the house owner who won it, and the date it was awarded. To see this, place your mouse pointer over the trophy when it is placed in a house.

Tips and Tricks

You can open the Leaderboards window no matter where you are in the world. This is because you can use it to get a House Portal if you own a Prestige house.
You may also encounter this window when exiting player housing that is serves as a "link" between houses or as a portal hub. Info on how to recognize and create this scenario are described on the article about House Portals.