I like this game but the new player experience is straight up awful.

1. You can't make characters on servers with high populations. If your friend plays on a high-pop server you're fucked. If the server population is high enough you are stuck waiting for... maybe days. There's no way of knowing when you can make your character aside from a page that takes a snapshot once every 5 hours. Sometimes the windows of opportunity are very small, forcing you to "camp" character select waiting to be able to play the game.

2. There's no way to try a class without either watching the entire 10 minute cutscene, deleting a character, and starting over... except leveling to 15 and doing all of the story quests on the way first. And 2a.) You can't skip the first cut scene, even if you've seen it already? Seriously?

(cont)

3. A ton of stuff you'd really want to have is tied to the story missions. For example, people say "mount is at level 20," but what they actually mean is "mount is part of a level 20 story mission." I hit level 20 but my story missions are at 16. If you're a trial player that means either wasting a bunch of EXP or outright buying the game.

Blah. Sorry for the rant.

1) I can't argue against this point, it sucks. I've never personally had to deal with this, but it would suck.
2) I've unlocked all classes to give them a try, I have no idea what you are on about here. You know you can have all unlocked on one character, right?
3) Can't speak for trial players, but I don't see the issue here. You can't unlock things without... doing quests that you have to do to play pretty much all of endgame content? Plus the main storyline helps you get through the game and helps you out, you shouldn't really be over the level for it by much.

All these things sound like an inconvenience, not making it "straight up awful"

Welcome to the game anyway! It's unfortunate you're not enjoying the game as much as you could be. But anyway...

1). Unfortunately, this is an issue which has no easy fix - the servers can only handle a certain amount of players logged into it at any one time, which is the reason for the character creation restrictions - as this can literally change at a moment's notice there is no easy means to alert players it's now 'open' or 'closed'. All you can do is keep trying and hope for the best. I have heard creating a character on another server and then paying to transfer that character to another server bypasses the server restrictions, but I'm not sure if that's true or not.

2). You actually unlock the Armoury System which allows you to change classes at will at level 10 (and after completing the first couple of quests given by the starting class's Guild). Sure this might not allow you to change classes at will from the beginning, but it's not "you're stuck to level 15 and have to do all the story quests before hand" in order to do so. Admittedly, some classes might not be accessible to unlock til this level, depending one whereabouts you start in the game, until you gain your airship pass, but, again there is a way around this - find a FC (Free Company) who is located in another city that would otherwise inaccessible, and who owns their own estate (and thus have a mini aethertye set up). Doing so will automatically grant you teleportation privileges to that company aetheryte, regardless if it's in an area that you wouldn't otherwise be able to access before being able to fly on an airship (say, Limsa for Gridania/Ul'dah or vice versa). Also, as you're on the Free Trial access to a lot of features is locked or restricted so this is somewhat moot I guess.

3). Yes they are, and SE did it this way for a reason - they wanted to help guide new players into the game gradually instead of dumping them with a ton of content at the start. You know the old saying, "you have to learn to crawl before you can run." This can be annoying when you're trying to gain access to something cool (like, riding a mount), but trust me, it's worth it - you actually appreciate what you're unlocking due to the effort to get it, and it also gives an incentive to actually play through the storyline instead of using the game as a 'battle simulator'. Either way, it should go without saying but if you decide to continue playing in the full game, you'll find things will start to become so much more enjoyable, as you won't have the restrictions and limitations the trial has.

Anyway, don't despair! Once 'the training wheels are off' so to speak (by purchasing the full game and subscribing) I'm sure you'll start to enjoy this game far more than what you are now. :)