Free Log In Campaign Timer Broken?

[NaiaLalita]

Hello. I hope this is the right place for this issue. It seemed the best fit of the forum's categories.

Due to my personal circumstances right now, I do not have an active subscription to the game. It expired in November, right as the Free Log In Campaign started. Which turned out to be good timing for me, because I ended up qualifying to use the Free Log In Campaign right in time to catch the Starlight Celebration before the Free Log In Campaign ended.

I spent a couple weeks reading and re-reading the Free Log In Campaign rules and planning when to log into the game to take advantage of the free play time. I aimed to log in on December 19th, so I could play until "11:59 p.m. (local time)" on the 22nd - as per the text on the Free Log In Campaign page
(My time zone, and therefor "(local time)", is Eastern Time Zone)



In fact, the page itself provides a log-in example that I planned around.



Instead of the 20-23, I was doing the 19-22.
My goal was to have plenty of time to do the Starlight Event, and some normal weekly tasks, on the 19-20. Then I could participate in the Fashion Report on the 21st, and - again, per the text on the Free Log In Campaign page - I could finish up my free time with Jumbo Cactpot at the end of the 22nd.

The purpose of this novel is to provide as much information as possible.

The issue, then, is this: Today is the 22nd and 11:59 p.m. (local time) is still almost 10 hours in the future. But, as of 1:00 p.m. (local time) today, I have already been locked out of the game.

I'm not raising all this fuss purely because I'm missing Jumbo Cactpot, or any other similarly narrow-minded small reason. I will be subscribing again in January, as my personal situation allows.

The text of the event very clearly stated its terms, and for some reason they are not being functionally implemented. I was obviously looking forward to this time in game, make no mistake, but the greater issue is the failure of the game/system to adhere to the terms laid out in the public event information.

[worldofneil]

I do not have an active subscription to the game. It expired in November, right as the Free Log In Campaign started.

There's your problem I'm afraid. From the campaign page (which you linked):

Registered service account must have been inactive for at least thirty days

Your account wasn't inactive for 30 days before the campaign started so you're not eligible. It started on November 13th, so you would have had to expire ~14th October, not November.

[NaiaLalita]

I'm sorry if I didn't make this clear.
I did get to log in. On the 19th, the 20th, and the 21st.

My account was inactive for the 30 days. The stipulation was that you needed to have a 30-day-inactive account prior to logging in at any point during the length of the campaign.

My subscription time expired on November 12th, 2018. My account qualified to participate in the Free Log In Campaign on December 12th, 2018.

I intentionally postponed logging in for the reasons I already stated (primarily, participating in the Starlight Celebration; secondarily, extending the demolition timer on my private housing by as long as possible)

I did get to log in, and I did so following the example given in the page - however, instead of getting a fourth day of play time that expired at 11:59 p.m. (local time)... I cannot log in at all on this fourth and final day.

TL;DR:
I planned to use this campaign from December 19th, 2018 to December 22nd, 2018.
I successfully logged in on the 19th, 20th, and 21st - but am unable to log in on the 22nd, which should have been my fourth and final day of play covered by this event, per the event's own stipulated text.

[Dynratygus]

Thank you for posting in the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Forums,

Unfortunately the issue you are describing is something we are not able to assist with in the Technical Support Forum. I will be moving this thread to do "General Discussion".


Hope you see you online!

[Iscah]

The end of the overall campaign was at 23 December at 3pm GMT... which according to this time zone converter translates to 10am Eastern time on the same day. (I used New York - is that correct?)

Would that be the time at which you stopped being able to log in?

If so, then presumably the overall campaign end "overrules" your personal timer, and they just didn't state that specifically in the description.

....EDIT: no, wait, that's still a day out from when you thought you should still have access.

Something strange with time zones? Odd settings on your computer clock for some reason? Mixed AM and PM? Daylight savings?

[NaiaLalita]

My topic was moved from Technical Support to General Discussion, even though this isn't a Discussion Topic. I hope that explains why this had the appearance of being posted after the event had ended.

The only thing I can think is that the event logged your initial log-in based on PST (which was not mentioned in the Event Page) rather than Local Time.
Which is patently absurd, to make an event's start and end times based on split time qualifiers. But that's a topic for the game team to address, not the community.
But if that is, in fact, what happened, then my December 19th log-in was not at a time when it was also December 19th in California (PST). In which case, if I had waited three measly hours, I would have actually had the full intended log-in time. But because I failed to scry the time zone truth from my crystal ball... I was too excited and cost myself an entire day of play. Happy Holidays to me.

I assumed that, given the log-in period ended at "11:59 p.m. (local time)", the start time would also be logged in local time. That made sense to me, but was clearly incorrect.

But it's all moot now, since the event is absolutely over, and it took until my issue quite literally timed out of relevance to get a (non)response.

I appreciate you trying to help Iscah. "Something strange with time zones" is what I'm banking on.
Hopefully future events will have more clarity to their terms to eliminate this sort of confusion, error, and disappointment.

[MsQi]

Hope you see you online!

lol what?!

They say something like "at most 96 hours" to cover themselves in these cases. The fact that they moved it shows they are not really willing to get into a discussion on something they give away for free, though this does sound like a technical issue.

[Paladinleeds]

lol what?!

I think someone's had one too many Christmas drinks haha.

They say something like "at most 96 hours" to cover themselves in these cases. The fact that they moved it shows they are not really willing to get into a discussion on something they give away for free, though this does sound like a technical issue.

Yeah. From what I can gather there's been a technical issue here. But yeah, they do say "Up to 96 hours" so that legally, it's not false advertising.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

lol what?!

They say something like "at most 96 hours" to cover themselves in these cases. The fact that they moved it shows they are not really willing to get into a discussion on something they give away for free, though this does sound like a technical issue.

I wouldn't say its a technical issue. This is more of a wording isue or misunderstanding on how the login campaign works. The game was functioning as intended and there were no "technical" issues with it.

Technical assistance in this case, likely means game crashes, strange performance issues, things of that nature.

[Iscah]

The fact that they moved it shows they are not really willing to get into a discussion on something they give away for free, though this does sound like a technical issue.

A lot of things get moved out of the technical support forum. It seems to be limited to in-game program issues that can be described using their preset template - you're supposed to follow it or they'll reject things just because they're not in the right format.