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Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
So you can play the entire game for as long as you want for free, up through the first expansion, so long as your character doesn't pass level 60? How many hours of free gameplay does that equate to? Or am I misunderstanding and you still have to pay for the base game and it's just the online fees that are waived? Also I assume this is for PC?
I've never played FFXIV, but I guess I could give it a shot.
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There's a free trial account you need to sign up for. It's different from the regular game account and is totally free, but can be upgraded to the regular game account when you reach the end of the first expansion. If you hit level 60 before you run out of quests, you can keep doing the quests. You can also upgrade to a regular game account beforehand if you want access to a bunch of locked features like sending private messages, forming parties yourself (you can still queue for dungeons and raids in the Duty Finder), using the market board (aka auction house) and so on. It's available on PC and PS4.
I've been reading that the revamp of A Realm Reborn shaves about 25% of the quests off the main story, so you should be able to get to Heavensward (the first expansion) in about 60 hours. Add another 40 hours for Heavensward and 20 hours for Post-Heavensward content in the trial and you're looking at roughly 110 hours of content if you ONLY focus on the Main Scenario Quests and ignore all the side stuff you unlock along the way.
There's some great side content you'll miss out on if you do the main story and nothing else:
- A bunch of 4-person dungeons with their own stories (some good, some bad)
- The ARR 8-person raid series (The Binding Coils of Bahamut)
- The Gold Saucer, complete with Chocobo Racing, Triple Triad, Mahjong, and more
- The Heavensward 8-person trials (The Warring Triad from FFVI)
- The Heavensward 8-person raid (Alexander)
- The Heavensward 24-person raid (Void Ark)
- PvP, if you're into that.
The story in the current expansion has been really great, maybe the best of an MMO I've played, but Heavensward is up there too. I've enjoyed playing this game because your character feels more integrated into the world than other MMOs. From Heavensward and on, the game really solidified the feel it was going for. Fantastic music, amazing boss fights, flashy visuals (for an MMO), and an engaging story. It was really smart of them to include it in the trial.