At the end of the day they have people sitting in the log in screen trying to gain access to a live game, at this point the users are the ones who are suffering. Frankly its poor customer service and it needs to be fixed. The fact that the problems have been going on for almost a full week is inexcusable. The game is very polished but so many features are lacking:
1) No auto-kick system.
2) Little to no Que service for waiting in line.
3) Constant errors that disconnect people or wont allow users to log on.
How long am I expected as a customer to sit here and attempt to access the game I payed for, they really dropped the ball on this one. Especially with certain competitors around the corner with new content being released soon and even brand new releases slated from other developers. This is your 2-4 week window to try and sell your game to people and retain them past the 30 days. It is almost a week in and I cannot even fathom handing SE a sub for this debauchery next month, look at casual players that in-essence make up the tigers share of MMO sub fees. People who log in for 1-2 hours a sitting. At this time people are spending anywhere from 15+ min just to gain access and this is being nice. Today alone, I have been trying to log in since 10am this morning and still cannot gain access.
I have several friends who are interested in this game and I just don't know what to tell them, I cannot at this time refer this game to them in this state nor would I. Go spend your hard earned money on something you can play.
From a service standard don't even think about handing customers 7 free days, that's garbage. You messed up and are wasting people's time. The standard I hold myself (and I am in a service industry) for each day you waste of a customers you not only need to refund them that day but award them something. You need to bring that customer loyalty back, this means it costs something to you. Refunding the days people lost is just giving back what users lost, your not giving them a reason to stick around at this point. I am not going to suggest policy to SE but from my standpoint. The decisions to sub past 30 days will determined by the effectiveness of how they deal with this problem.
If I am not mistaken they said a server fix was coming for this week so customers expect that they can log in without issues next week (I believe that expectation was set) and secondly they expect recompense for poorly delivered service. It any of this is delivered poorly I can see it greatly effecting the retention rate of this releases after 30 days beyond what SE already expects to lose (and I am sure they have done the calculations).
Good Day.