if you ever pay a sub for ffxiv you can never access the free trial ever again. free trial lets you play like, 120 hours of single player story stuff and level a big pile of classes to 70, but if you decide to pay 1 month sub in the middle of that now all of that costs sub fee forever

so as a result, it doesnt make any sense at all to pay a sub before hitting the end of the free trial. this means u have to play like, 120 hours of the game while not being able to see anything most players are saying and not being able to see the trading post and not being able to pvp

its a rly bad first impression imo. either forfeit the free trial forever for the ability actually interact (and now if you come back later and youre like, level 30 and halfway through ARR u have to pay, even tho free trial ppl get all that for free), or play it and have the game feel dead

this is plainly stupid and feels rly bad for new players. and i doubt anyone who plays the game cares bc theyre all way past that point

if you have a low level account that isn’t allowed access to the free trial anymore you might as well just make a new account instead imo

also if you ever open the game on steam your account is now permanently only openable via steam. thats just jank?? like you still have to log in to a sqex account so it’s not like it’s using steam for auth