Confusion on welcome back campaign

[Sertious]

As the title states, i'm confused about the Welcome back campaign. I've been having a blast the last few days on it. Love FFXI and everything that comes with it. However i'm confused about the end time.

I saw one thing saying it ends today 6:59 am pdt. It is now past that and I'm still logged in. (not complaining about extra time, just not ready to be billed yet) http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/campaign/11th/wcb.html

However now i'm seeing another news entry that makes it appear that it ends January 14th.
http://www.playonline.com/pcd/topics/ff11us/detail/11335/detail.html

So my question is, when does it officially end? And if it is on the 14th of next month i'll be more than ready to continue my subscription by than. Just if it ends sooner I just have to wait until the holidays are over before I spend the cash.

Thanks for the help

[Lexin]

Yeah figured I wouldn't be able to play today and let the LS I joined know that I wont be on again till Thursday or Friday when I have some money. Either way I plan to sub as I bought Seekers collection a few days ago on steam.

[Sertious]

For some reason i'm even still logged on. So it's making me wonder that it doesn't end today. So even though I may regret this, i'm in the middle of contacting customer support to get clarification.

[Lexin]

Keep me updated I'm not going to login just to be kicked off soon after.

[Sertious]

lol that's about the only reason I Don't want to log out for fear of not being able to log back in.. But I was looking at the collection on steam. I've just done enough on my character that the only way i'd do the set on steam would be if it was less than 1 month of game time. Give me a flash sale for 5 bucks than i'll start a new toon with 30 days free game time lol.

[Sertious]

Well according to tech support the campaign ended at 6:59 PST. Why i'm still able to log in after my account status does state that all my options are cancelled, I have no clue. But it's all good

[Sfchakan]

Friend was able to login just now.

[Sertious]

Yah i'm still playing. So I don't know. Guess I shouldn't be questioning things. Just gonna take it that I can get booted any time, so at least enjoying the time while i'm on..

[Trumpy]

Thats wierd that it would end today when thigns associated withit end on jan 14

[Sertious]

Trumpy that's what I was curious about. I'm wondering if the customer service rep was more clueless than I was lol. But that 2nd link I posted does say the campaign ends the 14th. So i'm gonna just roll with that and Keep on keepin on..Definately would be nice having a couple more weeks of free play time with this glorious game. Get another job to 99 or two lol

[Numquam]

I wish they would just make the game free already.

[Sertious]

That would be fantastic Numquam. But I do have the same beliefs as others. While the game is older and it's almost time for that, I really would hate for the typical F2P crowd to show up and ruin the game.

[Demonjustin]

The game being free would be horrible because the entire way they make money from it would have to flip and change into a typical F2P system, you still would have to spend money, or we would never get updates because they would not have money to pay people to work on them. This game in particular would lose more people, gain hardly any most likely due to the rough starts and lack of advertisement it has always had, and the fact that as we lose more people, SE makes less money, and the game shrinks even more.

The idea of it being free comes from the idea of not paying monthly, but even if we don't pay monthly, someone has to pay for something, it will just change to in game items, and that change will lose people, which loses money not likely to be fully recovered by the shift, which makes it an overall bad idea.

[Cof]

I was also able to log in on December 9th. The listed start dates are the 10th and 11th. A lot of confusion surrounding this event..

I suspect that the link you posted only applies to the bonuses listed on that page, and free subscriptions are ending slightly late.

[Draylo]

I wish they would just make the game free already.

Can you really not afford 12 dollars a month? Go get a job then.

[Sertious]

Ok this went off topic. But thanks for putting in a constructive comment dray. *eyeroll*

[Draylo]

Thanks for your constructive reply to my comment, I'm sure it was needed.

[Numquam]

That would be fantastic Numquam. But I do have the same beliefs as others. While the game is older and it's almost time for that, I really would hate for the typical F2P crowd to show up and ruin the game.

I'm cool with the current price. I'm just not cool with the current content they keep tossing out. The game has changed a lot this entire year. I guess I'm getting too old and scared of change. :(

[Numquam]

Can you really not afford 12 dollars a month? Go get a job then.

Go away. :D

[Draylo]

Go away. :D

Go away. :D

[Demonjustin]

Come on children, play nice.

[Castanica]

I'd like to see the game go free to play, at least some of the servers anyway.

Massive amounts of people on the servers would be a good thing, of course it does depend how they would work it under free to play. Nobody wants to ruin it for those that pay to play right now.

As someone that paid to play a previous mmo that went f2p and being originally against it the result was actually not that bad, it was so nice to see so many more people and content being easier to do due to that at least.

[AyinDygra]

Well, best way, IMO to go FTP in FFXI:

Make a subscription "status effect" similar to Signet that gives people various boosts that don't impact combat:
Double Exp from combat
Double Gil dropped (on top of Gil Finder)
Higher Shop selling prices.
Lower delay between Seal Drops.
Increased Skill-up rate
Decreased crafting failure rate.
Discounts/free for in-game travel features (warp costs: gil/conquest point/kinetic units, whatever)
Discounts/free for in-game entry into content (Limbus entry fees, Einherjar, etc)
Fewer seals required for BCNM orb trade-ins.
Increased # of Imprimatures, Imperial Army ID Tags, Op credits, storable at any given time and/or increased rate of receiving them.

More real-world + in-game item bundles (or just in-game items that were previously sold could be full time offers)
Also, real-world only items could be in a shop on their website. They already tried selling those key chains and stuff...

I'm sure there are more potential things to add, without restricting content to free players, or giving paying players too much of an advantage to make free players feel like it's not worth playing.

Edit: Oh yeah, and I wasn't clear on the time frames involved either. Plus, the initial ad implied that the campaign was a return to Vana'diel so you could experience the new expansion for free... leaving out that you had to buy the expansion... oh well.

[Cof]

It ended, can't log in anymore after closing ffxi. Didn't boot me while logged in though.

[Sertious]

Cruddy. Just got home and logged in since I saw your post Cof. :( i'm dissappointed now.