I have a friend that I intended to recruit, who is more than willing to purchase the base game, the expansion, and based upon his earlier playing habits in other games likely paid at least a year in subscription fees... assuming he is permitted to create a character. He was not able to when I sent him the invite for the free trial 2 days before Early Access for Heavensward, but he was not able to join the server that I or the rest of his friends are on. So we waited and watched the character creation restriction page and up to the point that he was sent an invite to now, Balmung has *never* been available for character creation at any point, from 6/17 to the time of this posting.