General Question: How can I justify a monthy fee, if I can't log in.

[Zelphair]

I guess its a good thing they give you a 30 day free trial. The argument will be well founded once your free play time is over, if the issue is still presenting itself.

Until you "must" pay a subscription fee, the argument is trivial and based on a "what-if?" situation. There's a good chance that the server issues can be resolved within the coming weeks. So, wait it out before you make the argument. Play on with the free time and have some fun!

Quit worrying, and just enjoy yourself. And remember, it is only a game. If you get frustrated because you can't get in, there are plenty of productive things to do in real life, try again once you calm down. This way you won't feel like you wasted your day, you actually accomplished something, even if it wasn't what you wanted, you won't feel as bitter.

It is true, that positive people have a better life quality. It is all about the steps you take to keep yourself happy.

The problem is that those 30 days aren't "free". They're built into the cost of the game. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the problems are fixed just before the sub fee kicks in. If my friends and I knew that I wouldn't be able to log in and they wouldn't be able to create characters on my server, we would have waited to buy the game until the problems were fixed. We would then have had the actual, full 30 days included in the price of the game available to us. (Not to mention with the whole time value of money and opportunity cost concepts. We could be doing something else with that money now.)

So, no, it's not fine as long as they fix it before subs kick in. This first 30 days is still time we paid for (not to mention legacy players only get 14 days). And honestly, if things continue as they are now right up until that 30-day point, there are people, myself and my friends included, that won't be playing the game.

The problems themselves, though, pale compared to the lack of communication, as well as the seemingly unequal treatment of NA/EU compared to JP. Yes, we got two apologies, and it's great that they're sorry, but we have absolutely zero word on what they plan to do about it, other than continue restrictions (which some could be forgiven for inferring as "We're just going to keep these restrictions in place indefinitely, and eventually enough people will stop playing that it fixes itself."). By contrast, JP servers start having the same issues (ironically, likely in part due to being the only stable option for NA/EU players), and within hours, they get assurances that more servers are being added to the JP data cluster.

Whether intentional or not, SE is giving a very bad impression to its non-JP players. On a related note, I'd love to work for SE's English PR team, and get paid to do almost nothing.