So I had missed out on the news that players could create a new character on either a new world or one with "Preferred World" status, and obtain various bonuses for doing so. One of these bonuses was a one-time 15-days of free play time for reaching level 30 on the character.

Earlier this week, I got notification that my sub would be expiring on Tuesday. I'm leaving the country to fly out to Tokyo on the 27th for three weeks, so I opted to not renew my sub since A) it's a fairly expensive trip and I need all the money I can get and B) there was no sense in paying to renew my sub if I was going to be unable to play for so much of the period of time. It was at this time that I was informed of the 15-days of free playtime when one of my friends told me about it. So I made the character on what I'm assuming was a preferred world (I had the Road to 60 buff, which I think is the most solid and obvious indication) on Monday, and by Tuesday night I had hit the level required for the gift.

After hitting 30, I logged out for a bit to grab some dinner, and returned to find my sub was over. That's to be expected, as it was about 12:30AM PST on the Wednesday at that point. But I thought maybe it would have added the 15 days to my account by that point, since it says on the article pertaining to New/Preferred World bonuses that "When requirements for the free play time bonus are met, 15 days of play time will be added to your account upon changing areas or your next log in. In the event the Square Enix Account Management System is under maintenance, another attempt to add play time to your account will be made after twenty four hours.".

Sure enough, my friend informed me that when he did it, it took about 24 hours for him to get the email about the added playtime. So I waited, but a little over 40 hours later, I haven't received anything.

My first theory was that, because I already had a level 70 on the server I created the new character on, that perhaps I was ineligible for the reward of creating a character on that specific server, since it did not really benefit the population at all as I'd be playing a character on the same server either way. But delving further into the article I found "Players with pre-existing characters on Preferred Worlds are still eligible to receive these bonuses for new characters created after the bonus period has begun", so that pretty much nixes that theory.

So I'm down to one of two other theories. Either it's a technical bug, or it's working as designed but the game is unable to add the free playtime to an account that does not have an active sub (I'm thinking perhaps my sub ended while I was in the final stretch from 29-30, but it allowed me to continue playing until I either changed maps or logged out), and the time will be added to the account once I resub again.

I'm not terribly upset about it either way (except for losing the 10ish hours in playing a new character rather than my usual one in an attempt to be able to keep playing up until my trip), I'm mostly just looking for confirmation in what happened/looking for someone to ridicule me in the event I missed something blatantly obvious.

Thanks in advance for any help.