If you like the game, you’ll probably be on the hook for an expensive monthly subscription ($13-15), as well as a few dozen dollars for all the various expansions. You can, indeed, go from Level 1 to Level 60 and experience two full story arcs without paying for any of it. Still, compared to what you do get for free, what you don’t get is relatively easy to deal with. Furthermore, you’ll hit the gil cap way before you hit level 60, leading to a lot of lost currency.

If you have friends who have been playing FFXIV for a while, teaming up with them is much harder than it should be, since you can barely communicate with them in-game. You can find a full list of restrictions on the Square Enix website, but make no mistake: Some of these are darned inconvenient. You don’t have access to every in-game microtransaction you can create only eight characters, and one character per server you can collect, at most, 300,000 gil (the game’s currency) you cannot communicate privately with other players unless they invite you to a group you cannot send letters to other players you cannot create or join guilds you cannot join a party unless you’re running a dungeon you cannot join PvP teams and you cannot use the official FFXIV forums or companion app. There’s also a whole laundry list of smaller restrictions. The Stormblood and Shadowbringers expansions are off-limits, as is the upcoming Endwalker expansion. That should be high enough to get through the main game as well as the Heavensward expansion - which is convenient, because that’s all the content you’ll have access to. First and foremost, once your character hits level 60, you won’t gain any more experience. However, while the FFXIV free trial gives you access to most of what you’d get with a paid subscription, there are still a few areas in which you’ll face limitations. If you’ve played an online game sometime in the last two decades, you should feel right at home after a quest or two. Likewise, because the game is extremely story-driven (especially by MMO standards), there’s the game will show you exactly how to advance the narrative and explore the world. You’ll have to choose a server, pick a class, design your character and so forth, but the game itself does a good job of walking you through this process.

Once the game finishes installing, you can jump right in.

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