Not sure where else to put this...

I have a friend who was looking to come to the game. They bought FFXIV at launch (1.0), and after playing for a few hours of their free 30 days, decided it was garbage and moved on (like a lot of people).

I just came to the game recently, and thought it was good, so suggested he gain access to his account and give it a try. We both thought he might've had some free gametime on the account, having paid $50 at launch for a game that was pretty much in shambles, and only sinking a few hours into his free month.

Nothing.

Needs to buy one sub period in order to see whether his purchase from four years ago has panned out yet.

Kind of crappy. Even 7 days free for people who didn't do 90 days sub to get the Legacy rewards, but didn't play more than a few hours because 1.0 was so awful, would've been something. As it is, this has left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth as well, and I was only on the receiving end because now he doesn't even want to come back and risk being out more money on a game he bought four years ago. Was playing thinking once he tried it he'd be playing as well, but now that he doesn't want to give it another shot (which is understandable, since Square has given him *nothing* but garbage for the $50 he spent in 2010), I don't feel as invested.

When he bought the original game and the 30 days that came with it, that means that he bought access to it for those 30 days. How much of that time he actually made use of it was up to him. There's always a wide range of how much time different people play. SE doesn't charge more to the hardcore and out-of-work players who spend all day every day in the game than they do to casual players who can only log in for a little while on weekends. SE charges by the month, not by the minute.

I'm sorry your friend had a bad experience at the time. I wasn't on the original game, so don't know how it was (though I'm really liking the current one). I don't really see, however, how that could be turned into a reason to get free time now. He bought a month's worth and he had a month's worth. (He just didn't make much use of it.)

I know some game companies occasionally offer free welcome-back weekends when former players are allowed to access the game again for a couple days without a current subscription. It's a type of special promotion designed to draw some of them back into the game. Perhaps SE will do the same at some point and your friend could try it then. But promotions like that are for anyone who used to subscribe and doesn't any more. There wouldn't be any special rules for people who only logged on a certain amount of time during their previous subscriptions.


p.s. Was it the game itself that was so bad or the service? ARR had a really bad week or two when it first launched, with lots of server stability issues, but they fixed those. (Too bad they didn't have them fixed before release.) A lot of us liked the gameplay itself well enough (when we could actually manage to get logged in) that we stuck it out, but I still wonder how many players they lost who would have liked the game but didn't have the patience to put up with their launch-day service levels.

I don't know if 1.0 was bad. I bought it a week or so after it came out and couldn't even create account (*tons* of issues with their account creation process), so I gave up. Main reason I waited so long on ARR was because I know MMO launches are shaky, especially in their infancy, so I wanted to give it some time to mature.

Is there any way I can gift him a month (game card aside)?

There was promotion for a free 15 days and a beta4 access given to all former players of 1.0 at the relaunch in August/September. If your friend missed it, I am afraid he cannot try it out beforehand again.

I do not think there is a way currently to gift time through crysta without his account info. Time Cards might be a better alternative for you, although I would do some more searching to find a 30-day card and it may take a week to ship it to you.

There was a free weekend for returning people when patch 2.1 was released. You can hope that there will be one after 2.2 is released on 27th.