For the Test Realm - we encourage everyone to list every Castle they have! Let's see all of those amazing decorations! Castle Tours Myrella WindSpar has set up shop in the Wizard City Commons to allow young Wizards to open their homes up so that other players can visit and rate Castles without having to teleport to someone in the house!
Visiting Castles When you speak to Myrella WindSpar in her Wizard City Commons shop, she will give you three options:
Visit Castle If you wish to Visit a Castle, you can choose from Castles that were added in the last 24 hours, a random Castle, the Castle of a friend or a Top Rated Castle.
Add Castle If you wish to put your own Castle up to be toured, you will be asked to categorize your Castle as Decorated, Magical, Crazy or a Maze. By adding your Castle to Castle Tours you agree that for the next 60 days other players may visit your Castle whether you are present or not. This means that players can visit your house at any time. If you no longer wish to open your house to tours, you can remove it from Castle Tours.
Remove Castle If you've placed your Castle on the Castle Tours, you may remove it at any time by selecting Remove Castle from the main Castle Tours menu.
Rating Castles When you visit a Castle, you can rate it! You may only rate a Castle by selecting "New Today" or "Random". You can rate Castles from one to four stars; a Good Castle, a Great Castle, a Fantastic Castle or a Spectacular Castle. Rated Castles appear on the Leaderboards for up to 30 days and you can visit the top rated Castles at any time.
Find a decoration inappropriate? You can report a house from the very small button on the Friends Panel.
Wonderful Idea! I work very hard on my castles and can't wait to show them off. My only concern is the Reporting, what would be considered inappropriate? It's not like you can bring things in from outside the game and everything in game is age appropriate, so I'm not really clear on what that would mean, also would false reporting the houses work the same as false reporting players???
This is a great addition to the game. Finally we have a reason to go all-out on decorating!
Two changes:
Add more categories for housing tours (besides Magical, Maze, etc) How about Spooky, Zoo / Pet Ranch, Garden, Seasonal, Games, etc There are a lot of themes & house styles & the menu should reflect that.
Give us an option to limit tours by a castle type. So if we want ideas for a specific castle of our own, we can visit others like it. So I could visit "randoms" but only Myth Houses, or Red Barns, etc
When you add a house to Castle Tours, you agree that random players can visit your house to rate it.
Because of this, Castle Tours ignores your limit home to friends setting.
Arthur
Thank you Arthur. That answers my questions quite nicely. Next question: will I be able to see/interact with people touring my castle (or any castle for that matter)?
First off I want to say that this is a very cool idea. I love seeing how other wizards have decorated their house.
Two questions though
1st If you have teleporters set up to go to your other houses will random wizards just be able to teleport to those houses or will the only friends allowed to teleport option houses remain in effect for your house that is not added to the tour?
2nd I noticed it still gave me the option to open a bank. Does that mean other wizards can get into your bank and move things to their backpacks or does it automatically open your bank even though you are in another wizards house?
First off I want to say that this is a very cool idea. I love seeing how other wizards have decorated their house.
Two questions though
1st If you have teleporters set up to go to your other houses will random wizards just be able to teleport to those houses or will the only friends allowed to teleport option houses remain in effect for your house that is not added to the tour?
2nd I noticed it still gave me the option to open a bank. Does that mean other wizards can get into your bank and move things to their backpacks or does it automatically open your bank even though you are in another wizards house?
Teleporters work normally, so yes, visitors will be able to get to other places.
When you open a bank in another players castle or dorm, you actually get your own bank, not the other persons, so no, there is no danger of theft.
I would love to thank KingsIsle for this update. It's going to be fun to tour players houses and show them. Makes it so much easier to see many houses when my friends list is limited. Simply brilliant.
I see that one of my previous comments was removed (not for inappropriate stuff, by-the-way) when the thread was moved from test to live.
My previous comment/question is this: There are going to be thousands of castles to tour. What about castles that people list that are not decorated or are storage only?
I love the idea of checking out decorated homes. It's lots of fun, but I am finding 95+% of the homes I visit (for example, all of the ones I visited today), are NOT decorated at all or are only storage for extra stuff. I'm not able to see the simple and the extraordinary homes that wizards have created.
Is this something we have to live with, trying to wade through the countless empty or near empty castles?
For example:
Massive Fantasy Palace - Besides the entry door to get in, every door, hall, and stair was blocked. You could not move past the first room at all. It was not a maze or anything you had to figure out. It was just ... plain ... blocked.
Azteca house - It was totally empty except for a crafting table at the end of one room.
Wizard City house - (the cheapest one) - had only ONE tree outside, there was nothing else on the property nor inside.
I see that one of my previous comments was removed (not for inappropriate stuff, by-the-way) when the thread was moved from test to live.
My previous comment/question is this: There are going to be thousands of castles to tour. What about castles that people list that are not decorated or are storage only?
I love the idea of checking out decorated homes. It's lots of fun, but I am finding 95+% of the homes I visit (for example, all of the ones I visited today), are NOT decorated at all or are only storage for extra stuff. I'm not able to see the simple and the extraordinary homes that wizards have created.
Is this something we have to live with, trying to wade through the countless empty or near empty castles?
For example:
Massive Fantasy Palace - Besides the entry door to get in, every door, hall, and stair was blocked. You could not move past the first room at all. It was not a maze or anything you had to figure out. It was just ... plain ... blocked.
Azteca house - It was totally empty except for a crafting table at the end of one room.
Wizard City house - (the cheapest one) - had only ONE tree outside, there was nothing else on the property nor inside.
I agree completely. While I've seen a few great castles, the leaderboards are packed with empty houses. How about a minimum number of items (at least 50) before a house can be submitted for tours?
BrynnerofReign, I know what you mean. I was so excited to be able to visit other castles, but not so much anymore. 95% of the castles I get sent to when I click on "new castles added" or "random" are completely empty. Out of 9 castles visited yesterday, 8 of them were completely empty. I don't know why they were even added. It is just a giant waste of everybody's time. I spent a LOT of time and gold getting my 4 castles ready for the castle tours, but now I doubt if any of my castles were visited even once. KI should make it so that only castles that are actually decorated show up on the lists. If somebody tries to add a castle which has had nothing done to it, a message would pop up saying something like "Thank you for your interest in joining the castle tours. We see that your castle is not quite ready for touring. Please, decorate your castle with ideas from your imagination, and then we will be happy to add your home to the tour schedule". I hope they can figure out a way to get the castle touring to work a little bit better. There are a lot of great castles out there, and I would like to see them, but if I keep getting sent to empty castles most of the time, I am not even going to bother trying any more.
I love visiting other castles and getting decorating ideas from them. Well done whoever has worked on this idea. Just brilliant. 
Out of 9 castles visited yesterday, 8 of them were completely empty.
I don't know why they were even added. It is just a giant waste of everybody's time. I spent a LOT of time and gold getting my 4 castles ready for the castle tours, but now I doubt if any of my castles were visited even once. 
KI should make it so that only castles that are actually decorated show up on the lists. If somebody tries to add a castle which has had nothing done to it, a message would pop up saying something like "Thank you for your interest in joining the castle tours. We see that your castle is not quite ready for touring. Please, decorate your castle with ideas from your imagination, and then we will be happy to add your home to the tour schedule". I hope they can figure out a way to get the castle touring to work a little bit better. There are a lot of great castles out there, and I would like to see them, but if I keep getting sent to empty castles most of the time, I am not even going to bother trying any more.