Road to 80 Buff

Hi, I am not a new player but I have some feedback and information that may help new sprouts! I started as Endwalker launched on OCE. All new players got the Road to 80 buff which doubles all experience. I got to about level 30 when my friends told me to move server to be part of an FC with them so I did. I still had the buff and soon made it to level 80 as a white mage. Then I lost it. My friends stopped playing but I kept playing almost every day. I got several classes to 90 without the buff and all others to about 50-60, and it took a lot of time.

My friends returned and with the buff have in 3 months gotten 8 or so classes from level 1 to 79 in preparation for loosing the buff. But I found out recently that you don't loose the buff when you hit 80 like I thought. When searching this up all the information was extremely vague. So I contacted the GMs to ask about it, and it turns out that when I transferred I forfeited my buff and only got it for 90 days after the transfer. I was not notified by the game of this fact when transferring and had I have been, I wouldn't have swapped servers and just made a new character, but I never questioned when I lost the buff because I hit 80 on a class and all information was so vague that it seemed like you would loose it after you hit 80 for the first time.

Now I am falling behind my friends rapidly, as If I want to level a new class any higher to do content with them instead of wasting exp on a max level class I need to do almost 3 times what they need to in order to keep up. The buff doubles all exp, including other buffs, so at one time I might have a bonus 46% from my other buffs but they all have 286% on theirs. In one level 60 dungeon they all got 4-5 levels and I got one.

There is nothing that can be done now but after putting almost 900 hours into one character only to see my friends zoom past me in a matter of 200-300 I feel no point in continuing to play, as all motivation has gone out the window. I don't want to keep my friends from playing by asking them to wait for me to catch up, but I also don't want to run a dungeon 4 times to get what they can in 1 just to keep playing the same content with them.

So if anything I just want this little rant to be there for any new players who also aren't quite sure of how the buff works, so they don't waste it.

TL;DR I lost my road to 80 because the game didn't explain how it worked or that I would loose it, now friends are getting way ahead of me.

(Also I'm sure some people will be like "how did you not know" but when the description on the website and in game is just (100% exp until level 80) it doesn't clarify, and that along with hitting 80 and loosing it right after didn't help)