Since they started hosting with Akamai, I haven't had long patch downloads for XIV... the last ~2GB one came down in roughly 30 minutes at a solid 16Mbit/sec download. Maybe you guys are running into congestion along your route that I'm not.. but it hasn't been all that bad for me with the last couple patches.

As for the subscription status denying the download.. probly a side effect of how they set up the access. You aren't just paying for game access... you are activating for access to other content as well, not just the game. The same was true for XI. It would require some substantial changes on their backend that I just don't see them assigning the resources to remedy at this point. Maybe one day down the line, who knows.

In the short term though, there are some in the community that have been hosting torrents after the big patches. Should be able to find links at the partner sites.