I play 8 characters of 4 worlds. I have lots of empty slots left for more new characters. I bought 6 characters in FFXIV-1 so part is carry over from that. I picked up 2 new characters in Beta. But I do not think they cost very much even if you have to pay for them later. I forget the details but Beta and Legacy players get a lot of free characters on a lot of worlds.

Right now I am not paying anything for them and when I registered my account for next month I did not get any additional fees.