Remove the Chatting Restrictions from the Free Trial Period

[Xerius]

After a long time of convincing I have finally persuaded a friend of mine to try out the FFXI 14 day free trial period. Most of the restrictions are pretty standard but there is one stands out as rather ill-advised and it's the almost entire exclusion of the /tell functions. One of the main reasons people join an MMO is for the community and the inability to interact with that community is usually going to leave a sour taste in their mouth. I mean they do still have /say and /party but they can't even invite people to parties...

I understand that it was done so that RMTs can't just start up new, free accounts and harass the playerbase with /shouts and /yells but the people that should be advertising this game for you are the players and you're not giving us the tools to help newer people (potentially customers) enjoy the game.

[Renaissance2K]

Can't you just give your friend a linkpearl or party up with them?

[Demon6324236]

Can't you just give your friend a linkpearl

Trading with other players in any form at all is completely removed from the trial, meaning trades, bazaars, delivery boxes, Auction House, so on, so a Linkpearl would be impossible. So far as making a party, only if your not doing anything else at the time with a party.

[Rustic]

I understand that it was done so that RMTs can't just start up new, free accounts and harass the playerbase with /shouts and /yells but the people that should be advertising this game for you are the players and you're not giving us the tools to help newer people (potentially customers) enjoy the game.

The critical adjustment that needs to be made is changing the /tell restriction from "all" to "friends only". Simple as that. RMT aren't generally going to end up on your friend list, after all...

[Xerius]

The critical adjustment that needs to be made is changing the /tell restriction from "all" to "friends only". Simple as that. RMT aren't generally going to end up on your friend list, after all...

Something like this is exactly what it needs!

[Kaisha]

You should be able to reply to a /tell, just not initiate one.

Trial-account limitations is commonplace in MMOs also. I'm surprised FFXI's original run of trial accounts (years ago) had zero locks of dbox/trading/communications to start with, before they had to take the whole thing down due to RMT abuse.

[oliveira]

You should be able to reply to a /tell, just not initiate one.

Trial-account limitations is commonplace in MMOs also. I'm surprised FFXI's original run of trial accounts (years ago) had zero locks of dbox/trading/communications to start with, before they had to take the whole thing down due to RMT abuse.

It was so bad, so bad that Chinese RMT were creating Japanese trial accounts with stolen credit cards. Because of that stuff SE started to refuse foreign credit cards on PlayOnline (mid 2008).

That caused a TON of problems to a few legit players who play with Japanese accounts (like me for example ...). /huh