I'm having a lot of problems with recruiting friends to FFXIV. It's a really disheartening, when you try to get a friend to play; with no cross-server action, they of course want to come on the server. But then! The character restrictions kick in and they can't come on the server, and have to wait over five hours (after a two hour download)!

There should be better ways to restrict character creation than this restriction, that puts a total wall for people up. The fact that there is this chracater creation exists, some of my friends just blatantly rage quit and I can't convince them that it's worth the wait.

This has happened to me at least three times right now, one raged and created the character on another server and then transferred it to my server (extra 30€ paid...)

I genuinely think FFXIV would benefit of a different character creation restriction system. This system has it's benefits, but for players, new players to be exact, it has more disadvantages than advantages.