SE did have a promotion announced that would allow a discount of $5.95 USD a month on each POL (FFXI) Account that was linked to a SE account with a FFXIV Service account. Both accounts (POL and FFXIV) had to be in a status of being paid accounts. It was a 1 to 1 pairing of accounts (POL and FFXIV) within the same SE account.

However, it was a very limited promotion in that the discount would only be given for at most 3 months. The promotion was simply scheduled to end after that.

In the months that the discount was going to be given to the FFXI account, the FFXIV account had to be in paid status on the 26th of the previous month, which meant that people that bought the standard edition would miss the first month since the standard edition didn't get released until the 30th of September 2010 (and thus, such an account would not have been in paid status yet on the 26th of October).

SE announced an extension of this discount period after the first two free play extensions, but the result would have been similar to the original provided FFXIV had actually started charging for subscriptions after those first 2 extensions. It still would have only been 2 or 3 months at most of FFXI discounts.. a maximum total of $17.85 USD per POL account.

Of course what really happened was the announcement of indefinite free play (which is only now about to come to an end). And because of that, the discounts were never given because no one has ever paid a FFXIV subscription fee (yet).

Once I realized the limited amount of this discount of $17.85 USD per POL account max, I sort of decided it was not a very good deal.

There has been no further word from SE if they will still apply this discount at all once paid subscriptions begin for FFXIV.