It's not "7 Free Days of Playtime". Stop calling it that.

[Viirin]

Again, having worked for a fortune 500 company for over 25 years this isn't going to happen. The accountants won't allow them to suddenly start messing up when they deduct payments just for free time.

The easiest would be to offer a "discount" or a free month, that way the accounts know when to take out. Accountants are strange that way, they hate uncertainties.

Second, they never said "how" they were going to do this, just that it would be 7 free days. That could mean anything without their explanation.

Personally I think this is vague on purpose......

They didn't say how because it's obvious how. I've had compensated time given to me on subscriptions before - that's how it works dude - you get charged later.

[Risq]

Its weird...Im trying to understand why when I get the Error code and get kicked out of Queue, why do I get put back in the exact same place I was.
But I keep hearing everyone else has to start over.

To answer you question, that's what happened to me for almost 4 hours. After sitting any where from 1-10 minutes I was getting kicked, but I kept a second window running, so when I was kicked I immediately just had to click "Play", and then I was back where I left the queue.

But that "ONLY" worked as long as the dreaded 2002 error didn't come up when I was trying to log back in. When that happened, I would get it over and over and over again, anywhere from 7-10 times. But once I got past that, I was sent to the back of the queue again.

Hopefully, God willing, you won't repeat my issue and never get on after 5 hours.

[Ashemmi]

They are "adding" 7 days, You didnt Pay for those 7 days.
Thus, they are Free.

Even if you were to go pay for 7 days right now, they are still adding 7 days to your account.
Do the math, you now have 14 days, but you only paid for half of those days, the other half was given to you for free.
So its still a Free 7 days

Partially right, and maybe for 'some' people entirely correct. There is another way of doing this math.
Pay for 7 days, unable to log in for seven days. 7 days granted as "compensation" for the down time.

Pay for 7, get 7, take 14 days to actually get them. That's if a week sorts all this out.

[Navnav]

I don't know the OP so this is from another third party, and I agree with him and I believe he/she (not sure which, sorry ) is correct.

Let's explain his point this way..............

- You rent out a summer home for two weeks.
- You send them the money for the two weeks.
- You get contacted by them and they say that something came up and you can't access the Summer home for the first week you paid for. (Doing this for easy math and as a way to better explain)
- They then tell you that you can have an "extra" week to compensate you for the week you missed.

So when you later "check" the time you have been given access to the summer home it's still only "Two weeks" not "Three weeks", make sense?

If it was an extra week plus what you paid for it would be three weeks (Two weeks you paid for "plus" an "extra week") but tacking on an extra week on at the end of a missed week isn't giving you anything you've not already paid for.

You paid for two weeks, you get two weeks, but you're majorly inconvenienced for one of those weeks, so to make you feel better for their screw up they "say" you get a free week, but they aren't out anything because they are just giving you want you paid for, nothing more and nothing less.

Is that any clearer?

And if you're on automatic debt, how does that work? You're already charged monthly, so an extra week doesn't do anything for you................

Personally since it launched Friday I've played once Friday during lunch at work for 20 minutes, and then last night (Sunday) for 2 hrs after trying for 4 hours to get connected.

All the other days I just gave up after 3 hours plus of trying to get connected, especially after getting down to "triple digits" from queues of 5,000+, then getting kicked, and then being returned to the end of a 4-5,000+ queue

For me, that's it, 2 1/2 hours of play time after trying to get connected for 4 days.

So I'm certainly not getting "my" money's worth, and an extra week on a monthly sub again helps me how?

You put it it much better than I did. However what we have seen on these forums of late is white knighting to a ridiculous degree. They are actively challenging common sense to say some of the most dense dung I have seen in a while...

[VictorTheed]

I have a question about this free playtime announcement.

Does it mean that if my sub runs out on Dec 16th, then with the 7 days added to it, it will now run out on Dec 23?

I heard the announcement but I wanna make I understand it correctly, ty anyone who answers this for me.

[Risq]

I was going to keep replying to some folks individually but I won't, it's getting late and tiring, and it only shows me how deep the lack of understanding actually runs here.

Some of you are willfully twisting whats happening to fit what you want it to be.

There are two saying I teach my Kids:

No one truly understand injustice ................. unless it happens to them.

And for the record I'm not saying that me not getting to play a "GAME" is injustice, just the lack of understand is what I'm drawing the conclusion to.

And the other is:

Never try to teach a dog to speak. All it does is waste your time and eventually annoys the dog.

I'm wasting too much time here on folks who are willing to twist basic economics into what they want to be rather that what it truly is. I'd swear you were working for SE if I didn't know better.

If not, then I'm honestly baffled on how some folks were able to graduate school not knowing the basics of this.

I am 52 years old. I have a day job that required me to be at work from 7am to 5pm, I'm a single Dad raising 2 kids. The only time I can get to play for a few hours evening when everything settles down is during what is called "Prime time".

Do you even know "why" is it called that? Because that is the time the vast majority of the people have available to play. You know the hours you keep insisting that everyone should avoid. Go figure, again, feels like SE employee's...............

Sure I could play at 2am, for a few hours, but what do those of you insisting I avoid those "prime time" hours and play the rumored "off hours" expect me to shuffle around to make that happen? My kids? My job?

When you have no real responsibilities, or don't care about the ones you do have, it's really easy to 'claim' to be make a bad situation work for you.

This game wasn't sold as a game that you needed to change your life to play, and to be honest no game should, but what amazes me is the "lack" of understanding that this has caused.

Leave you white knights with this blessing or curse, depending on how you take it:

May at a critical time in your life, when you really need someone's help, may you remember my statement here and have someone show you all the grace and understanding you've shown others who are frustrated in this thread.

[Risq]

Now is absolutely nothing at all like the 1.0 situation. The only problem right now is a demand far exceeding the server capacity. 1.0 had myriad problems, but I don't recall demand far exceeding server capacity being one of them.

I wasn't going to respond to anything else from you, but I have to for this last point.

If you played 1.0 you remember how bad that game was.

No matter how many issues there were, being dropped while playing was one of them. I know, I have screenshots I saved from years again where the server up and dropped me for no reason. So server stability "WAS" one of the issues from back then, that they needed to address, but instead we were being pacified with free time and other trinkets.

"AND" like now, there were those who defended that games issues all the way up until the shut off the servers.

So "WHY" did they kill a working game and rebuild it from the ground up of there were some saying it was ok, and that the whiners were make a big deal out of nothing? Because those whiners stopped paying for a game and FFXIV 1.0 started losing a lot of money.

So, if enough people call it quits again, I bet they figure out a way to get this queueing issue fixed yesterday.

Just saying..................

[Sylve]

I don’t understand why people like you are standing up for SE and trying to pretend that this situation is acceptable. They waited until it was way too late to do anything about their crappy servers and now it’s too late to do anything about it because of the limited supply in COVID times.

It is not difficult in the slightest to find out whether your server has a history long queues during content drops or expansion launches.
Given there were reports of queues across a multitude of servers when there is typically none during a period of zero new content, That should have clued you in *before* Endwalker released as to how bad the queues would be come the expansion.
You had every oppurtunity to take action yourself as soon as SQenix acknowledged the massive player influx to correct the problem you now face.

SQenix are on record stating the explicit, verifiable reason as to why they were unable to procure more servers. They even outlined the additional work they did to expand the current servers to the maximum the hardware allows in lieu of being able to add additional servers.

So we have 2 parties with access to the exact same information, one side has done all they can and explained as such to us in an incredibly open and transparent manner and the other side chose to ignore the information presented and instead screech at the aforementioned party to have "done more".

You could easily have organised a transfer in the months leading up to the expansion. You, with the same information SQenix had, chose not to move from your overpopulated server.
As i explained above:

For new Servers to have ANY effect whatsoever on the Queues, people need to willingly transfer themselves off their overpopulated server and onto this new one.

You were unwilling to transfer to a lower population server when you had the chance, so what proof can you give that you would have moved to a new server had it come online prior to Endwalker?
We have proof you would have stayed, because you did.

No, whenever people around here start screaming about new servers, they want everyone else to move away. Problem, everyone else is thinking the same thing. And look where we are. Or rather, you are. Not me, because I play on a lower population server and thus have zero problem playing the game.
Sucks for you though, maybe you should have acted on the information SQenix gave you eh?
In the meantime, I'll enjoy my 7 free days of sub

Mayhaps while you're in the queue, You can educate yourself about the history of shortages such as the ones we currently face.

[SamsaraTrickstar]

If I pay you to bring me 5 apples tomorrow and you don't bring them, but then the day after that you come and give me "5 free apples in compensation":

It is NOT free.

It's what I've already paid for and you failed to deliver on the agreed terms.

Please do not embelish facts and reality with pleasant sounding words.

The correct way to make the announcement would have been "We are reimbursing you 7 days of playtime from your subscription. We might reimburse more days at a later date if the problem persists".

You are correct don't get me wrong.but it is free time just not for all. Let's say so far for me there was 1 day where I really was not able to log in as I was kicked from the 5k+ wait 4 times. So to me it's 6 free days so far. For some it's full 7 . For some it be just a refund of sorts to the weak if not playing. Will this help the bad felling?no . But at this point what you think SE can do,they fucked it up.

[Alxyzntlct]

...

I applaud you, good sir. I've done my best to refrain from responding to a lot of the folks trolling on the forums of late as I felt my own personal anger would take hold and run away with my words, whereas I see you've already stated it all rather eloquently.

Thank you, for both taking the time and sharing, it makes me feel a smidge better and less crazy amidst the silliness of late.

/bow

(Not sure if this translates via text, but I'm being 100% real here, no sarcasm, I legit appreciate your words, Risq)