The communtiy, if anything, used to be more toxic and is less so now because of how much it's grown and appealed to more casual players who are polite.

ERP has always been a thing and if you wanted to avoid any chance of seeing a reference to it you'd have to keep out of main areas. ERP has been a thing in many MMOs so it's natural people with this interest would come to a growing MMO.

The FFXIV community used to be absolutely amazing.
Helpful patient players, wholesome players, players that were invested in the game who knew the story, the lore etc. It wasn't perfect but generally people wanted to interact with one another and had fun doing so.
I see this in the Novice Network, cities, dungeons and discord regularly. This hasn't changed and if anything has grown.

Allowing cross server gameplay = why bother interacting with anyone in a wholesome way when you're probably never gonna see them again.
That was a concern when 2.0 was developed with the cross-world Duty Finder matching system, but it was necessary so people could beat the dungeons and other content.

I would argue that since then, cross-world party finder and world visit have caused people from different worlds to interact more and I come across people I recognise from other worlds in content quite often.

Expanding the free trial = more people not worried about the consequences of their actions
This is a fair point. Anybody in a level 60 or lower area could be young and not old enough to pay a subscription, so they are less likely to be an adult about things.