Maybe the selection of inactive accounts came from a different process than the form we filled out saying active accounts only. Maybe SE has invited people who have never played FFXIV ever. SE has the freedom to grant access to whomever it chooses. One of those was to invite us to fill out that alpha form.

We know SE has already invited people to the beta, and just for coming to see their presentation at a German games convention earlier this year. A nonsensical reaction would be "How fair is that?" A more sensible reaction would be: Congrats to those people, and how gracious of SE. (IMHO of course.)

It makes me sad that a lot of people view their not being selected as if SE specifically looked at them and decided they were undeserving. Just as with Gamescom, SE didn't decide that everyone outside that room was bad, or not good enough, etc. It's just one of those random things.