Most of these are in place to prevent money sellers and massive amounts of spam, but none of them should really hinder your progress. Likewise, you can’t invite players to your party or join guilds. The amount of money you can hold is capped you’re restricted from trading and you can’t use the /shout, /yell, and /tell commands. Specifically, you’ll be limited to one character per world (which isn’t a big deal, as one character can do everything). However, I expect that the restrictions on trial characters will still exist.

Final Fantasy XIV‘s genuinely excellent story mostly picks up once Heavensward kicks into gear, so extending the free trial to include that seems like a good move. The lore and general structure should remain intact, but we can expect a lot less wandering back and forth doing boring crap, which is a good thing. Hopefully, that means less “Pray return to the Waking Sands” as part of the 100-ish patch quests between the end of A Realm Reborn and the beginning of Heavensward, but specifics are scarce. In short, we’re promised a “more streamlined” experience. This rework of the free trial comes alongside a rework of the A Realm Reborn content, as we went over briefly in our news item about patch 5.3. Specifically, the Au Ra race can be selected, and the Dark Knight, Astrologian, and Machinist jobs can be picked up once you reach the appropriate level. This also means that everything locked to Heavenward will also be available for free. For the sake of clarity: that’s the entire base game and the first expansion. Instead of gating you to level 35, free players will be able to go all the way up to level 60, right the way through the A Realm Reborn and Heavensward content.

Patch 5.3 (launching on August 11th) will heavily expand the free trial. And you know what? That’s okay, because the free trial is being heavily reworked. If the details on Final Fantasy XIV‘s forthcoming patch 5.3 don’t interest you, then I can only assume that’s because you don’t play the utterly superb MMO.

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