Questions regarding the Recruit a Friend & the Free Trial campaigns

Greetings,

It looks like there are various questions revolving the Recruit a Friend and Free Trial programs. We compiled a quick list of information that should answer some of these questions.

Recruit a Friend

• We've seen players asking about the two-person mount we showed off in a previous Letter from the Producer LIVE, and I just want to say, yes, there is still a mount planned for the Eternal Bond system.
• You can invite any friend that has purchased the game but has not paid for any subscription time. So if you had a friend that played at launch for the free 30 days, but not beyond that, they can still be recruited.
• As we mentioned in the RaF instructions, you can use game time cards to add game time immediately. Otherwise, you'll need to wait until the free 30 days has lapsed to be able to purchase game time.
• Unfortunately if a World is full, there will be times when your friend will need to wait until it opens up to new characters to join your World. It happens throughout the day and we do keep an updated list on the Lodestone to help share information.
• Recruiting a friend is done via your service account and therefore any rewards you earn will be for all characters on the service account.

Free Trial

• We don't currently have any plans to change any of the restrictions placed on Free Trial accounts as they were created to dissuade RMT spam and other issues. Linkshell chat is not restricted, so please invite them to a linkshell to chat with your Free Trial friends.
• If you're having trouble registering a Free Trial account, it's most likely that you previously had the full client installed. Please refer to this Knowledge Base article for instructions on removing the other client.

Both of these campaigns do not have an end date and are scheduled to run continuously.

If you have any additional questions, please let us know and we will do our best to answer them!

This may be a difficult question to answer, but is there any stance on players "recruiting" themselves; or rather making a second account in order to get the rewards? I have heard of people doing that sometimes, and not sure if there is any official comment on that.

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Originally Posted by ThomasGallant

This may be a difficult question to answer, but is there any stance on players "recruiting" themselves; or rather making a second account in order to get the rewards? I have heard of people doing that sometimes, and not sure if there is any official comment on that.

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SE: No! We would not like people to spend $45 to buy a mount. XD

I just hope they don't consider that as open gates to make a cash shop, cash shop and p2p at once is just insulting (whale hunting on top of that ;( ).

Edit:
Thanks for the consolidated info :)

Would it be possible to relay this suggestion to the dev team.

Could they possibly add a free world transfer to the friends recruited as part of the 90 day reward?

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Originally Posted by ThomasGallant

This may be a difficult question to answer, but is there any stance on players "recruiting" themselves; or rather making a second account in order to get the rewards? I have heard of people doing that sometimes, and not sure if there is any official comment on that.

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People can in fact do this - It's how I got my RAF mount - I'd already recruited all of my real life friends to the game so was more than happy to just make a second account.

Why i cant create a trial account w/o having to download another client? And looks like u are forced to uninstall ffxiv in order to being able to install ffxiv trial client. Is that correct?

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Originally Posted by Warlyx

Why i cant create a trial account w/o having to download another client? And looks like u are forced to uninstall ffxiv in order to being able to install ffxiv trial client. Is that correct?

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Why would you do a trial if you are already have an account?
If you want to recruit yourself, you would have to upgrade to an full account anyway and pay for 90 days.
So the trial client wouldn't help you at all, and because of the limitations of the trials you couldn't check out new endgame fetures

I have a friend who does not possess a Square Enix account, has never played FFXIV and is attempting to create a Free Trial account. When following the steps on the Free Trial launcher it prompted her to enter a Confirmation Code which was apparently sent to her e-mail. This was never sent so thus she could never fully create her account. I personally tried to do this with a second e-mail of my own on another computer (which did not have FFXIV installed) and the exact same thing happened. No confirmation code sent, so the Free Trial account could not be created.

When I sent a message to the support about this, this is what I got back:

"We are sorry to hear that you are having issues with FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn.

There is no registration code for the Free Trial campaign.

Instead, permission to play the Free Trial will be allocated to the Square Enix account you enter on the launcher screen after completing the steps required to start playing."

Are there any plans to introduce this campaign on ps3/4? :(

It really work like that ?
I mean, buy the game first to unlock the "Enter a Friend Code" (or something like that) button in the mogstation ?
And if yes, Can I upgrade the trial version to the full game to unlock it ? Or maybe can I directly linked a 2nd full game in my main service account with the free 30 days ?

I have a question...

If I wanna recruit a friend, but said friend wants to enjoy the 14-day free trial, is such a thing possible?
Or recruitment codes cannot be used on free trial accounts?

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Originally Posted by AlexionSkylark

I have a question...

If I wanna recruit a friend, but said friend wants to enjoy the 14-day free trial, is such a thing possible?
Or recruitment codes cannot be used on free trial accounts?

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Your friend can try the free trial, and if they wish to purchase the full game they can. Once they register the full game they'll have the ability to enter a Recruitment code on the Mog Station, as long as they have not yet purchased game time (the included 30 days with a new account does not count).

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Originally Posted by EZ5902

Are there any plans to introduce this campaign on ps3/4? :(

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The Free Trial campaign is currently only available for Windows, but we'll be sure to make any announcements in the future should that change!

The Recruit a Friend campaign is available on all platforms.

Hey, Bayohne, thanks for the answer =) another question now...

what happens if I recruit 2 friends?

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Originally Posted by AlexionSkylark

Hey, Bayohne, thanks for the answer =) another question now...

what happens if I recruit 2 friends?

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"* Reward items can only be redeemed once per character. Inviting multiple friends will not grant additional items."

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...riend_recruit/

Is it possible that my friend who has subscribed the game since Feb-March of 2014 to get the recruitment code? I've sent him a code, but wanted to see if he is eligible for it.

Welcome to Gilgamesh where we have more PVP than RP our party finder scrolls down too.

get free xp with the code:7NVSDAPV

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Originally Posted by Tempestmoon

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Originally Posted by AlexionSkylark

what happens if I recruit 2 friends?

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"* Reward items can only be redeemed once per character. Inviting multiple friends will not grant additional items."

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...riend_recruit/

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That says you can't get a reward multiple times, but still isn't entirely clear regarding whether it can come from multiple friends. For instance, if one friend buys 30 days of subscription time and another friend buys 60 days of subscription time, do you get the 90 day reward?

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Originally Posted by Warlyx

Why i cant create a trial account w/o having to download another client? And looks like u are forced to uninstall ffxiv in order to being able to install ffxiv trial client. Is that correct?

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Originally Posted by Cuervo78

Why would you do a trial if you are already have an account?
If you want to recruit yourself, you would have to upgrade to an full account anyway and pay for 90 days.
So the trial client wouldn't help you at all, and because of the limitations of the trials you couldn't check out new endgame fetures

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A couple of reasons why you'd want to do the trial, even if you have the normal client installed :

A) You've been away from the game for a while and your membership expired. You're thinking about returning and you want to get the patches updated, so it's done and out of the way until you decide for sure. You can't patch without an active service account.
B) You've been away from the game for a while and your membership expired. You want a quick in-game glimpse if various things have changed, as well as how your system handles the game - maybe you upgraded over the summer. The benchmark doesn't count.
C) Your trying to introduce a friend to MMOs and FFXIV, but they are not very computer savvy. You want to see how to setup the trial client and also how it differs from the regular one, when you start teaching them about the game.


Why can't you just register a trial account online like every other game and then use your current install to play the trial?
Why does Square have to continuously be difficult and unnecessarily different from other companies that have working ideas?

First I moved my FFXIV game folder and my FFXIV folder in MyDocuments\MyGames, to somewhere temporary.
I then uninstalled FFXIV via the add/remove programs.
Next, I installed the trial, at which point it had me register a new account via the launcher program, and then proceeds to download the client.
At that point I stopped the download, removed the newly made FFXIV folder from MyDocuments\My Games. I placed my folders back to their original spots, overwriting any of the new 'trial' data.
After running the launcher again, it lets me login with my 'trial' account and start updating the client. It's showing about 9gb, so either there's been a huge patch/client refresh this past six months, or it's making me get the whole client.

Initially, I was excited by this, but now I m confused. I recruited a friend, everything went smoothly. He bought time and I got the friendship circlet on my main character, this was also fine as I assumed I would get the mount after a further period of time. I logged into my secondary character today only to find that it had received the mount whistle. I had hoped to have both items on my main. Whats up SE? why did this happen and is there any way to fix this?

Are you sure you haven't simply gotten the mount on every character?

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Originally Posted by Jacost

Are you sure you haven't simply gotten the mount on every character?

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I am sure. I only have 2 characters on the server and my main is the only one of the two to get the circlet while my second is the only one to get the mount

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Originally Posted by Tempestras

I am sure. I only have 2 characters on the server and my main is the only one of the two to get the circlet while my second is the only one to get the mount

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##UPDATE##

upon posting this, my main magically received the mount, which is odd as I literally had logged out of it and onto my second about 15 minutes ago. Now the question, does my secondary character get the circlet too?

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Originally Posted by Tempestras

##UPDATE##

upon posting this, my main magically received the mount, which is odd as I literally had logged out of it and onto my second about 15 minutes ago. Now the question, does my secondary character get the circlet too?

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I would think so. At least that's how the veteran rewards work. Each of your characters gets every veteran reward you earn. I'd always assumed these reward items would work the same in that regard.

The restrictions on trading and moogle delivery prevents free trial guests in receiving their invitations. Without invitations, they cannot attend.

Having players invite their non-ff14 playing friends to actually try the game under the premise of wanting to be a guest in the ceremony which potentially costs $40 would have been a great way to get people to try out the game and maybe stay and subscribe later.

Nowhere in the eternal bonding website says that free trial players are not allowed to be guests. I have not seen any other official post stating to this effect - unless I have overlooked it.

Therefore, I would like to ask directly, and in turn, have a categorical official reply: are you banning free trial players from attending Eternal Bonding ceremonies as guests? Or perhaps there is another way besides trade window and moogle delivery where you can send the invitation to your guest?

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Originally Posted by Fig

Nowhere in the eternal bonding website says that free trial players are not allowed to be guests. I have not seen any other official post stating to this effect - unless I have overlooked it.

Therefore, I would like to ask directly, and in turn, have a categorical official reply: are you banning free trial players from attending Eternal Bonding ceremonies as guests? Or perhaps there is another way besides trade window and moogle delivery where you can send the invitation to your guest?

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Couldn't resist replying due to the way you are wording this. I'm not sure the eternal bonding website even needs to list this restriction unless (oddly) they spell out the fact that people need an active account in order to attend or that banned players are unable either.

When using the free trial you are accepting limitations placed on that character in return for free play time. So it's actually your trial guests that are "banning" themselves from ceremonies since there is an easy way for them to attend. Aka. Subbing.

A better post would have been asking if there was a possible way for them to allow invitations to bypass any restrictions trial accounts may have.

The nature of this kind of "ban" is a ban by implication. In other words, the only reason free trial players are "banned" is because the guest invite methods happen to fall under the free trial restrictions. There are two possibilities:

1) this was an oversight and was an unintended effect due to the sweeping nature of the trade restriction - they can remedy this by simply going "oh right, trial players wont be able to get invited. we will make a new method of sending an invitation", or

2) SE intended that free trial players are not allowed to be invited as guests - if so, they should post this on the eternal bonding website. Eternal bonding mechanics are addressed to people who actually bought the game and have reached a substantial amount of progress with it. These are players who wouldn't normally concern themselves with the free trial details. They have guidelines on guest invitations but they are silent on free trial users.

Likewise, if i was a free trial user, I shouldn't be concerning myself with the detailed mechanics of eternal bonding. If I happened to have friends in game who wanted to invite me to their ceremony, I shouldn't be burdened with the technicalities or it would be as if the guest was the one asking the couple to invite him/her and would be inappropriate. Sending out invites are (at least theoretically) in the complete discretion of the participants, after all.

This being said, the problem of the implied ban is that we have 2 rules to know: one for a free player, and one for subscribers. This guest invitation issue, however, requires you to be well-versed in both rules and be able to harmonize them to the best of your abilities. While this is not impossible to do, it can be unreasonable. A free trial user has only 14 days to play and unless he's actually expecting that someone will want to invite him to be a guest, there's no reason for him to read the eternal bonding rules. In the case of the participants, if the rules don't mention any restrictions on who to invite, it is but reasonable to assume that they can invite anyone. Of course, there are exceptional cases like mine where we convinced a non-player to go into free trial to be a guest, but exceptions are exceptions, not the general rule. I'm sure notice in the eternal bonding page saying free users can't be guests isn't too hard to add if it adds to the clarity of the rules.

Until SE releases a statement, it can go both ways. As of this time of writing, my ceremony has already finished so this is moot and academic for me. However, I would really like to know SE's stand on this for the sake of clarification and for the benefit of other players.

Update: GM responded to my in-game support after around 2 days of waiting for a response: "We understand that you are reaching out to the GM team for assistance, but unfortunately we are unable to address your request as it falls outside the scope of our services."
The GMs have normally been responsive when it comes to eternal bonding issues, even going as far as to decide matters which can potentially cause a claim for refund/cashback due to mistake or interpretation issues on the rules. The issue in this case is just a guest invite, which pales in magnitude compared to a sale dispute. It may be inferred from their silence that no official stand has been issued by SE on this and they cannot, by themselves, comment on the issue.

Hey there, sorry to hijack a thread a bit but since I can't create my own threads yet I tried to find the most correct one to post this question in :/ .. I can't find a clear answer to this anywhere on the net. Is the PS3 free trial available only to US customers ? I am asking because even thou I have a full game for the PC, I wanted to motivate my wife to play on our PS3, but I cannot find the free trial option anywhere in the PlayStation store. I can find the PS4 trial just fine (which to me has no logic...).

When I got an link from a ingame friend to the trial ( https://store.sonyentertainmentnetwo...-NPUB31255_00-), I could access the page only without logging in, to actually buy/activate the trial, after that the page refreshed and went into "Page cannot be found" ...

So Is the PS3 trial US only ? If it is EU also, why dose it not work in my country which is Poland ?

I understand that time between friends isn't cumulative.my question is will they both receive the friendship circlet and emote?

They both received the rewards. In case anyone else was wondering.