Final Fantasy XIV Goes Free-to-Play*

While most folk are pretty excited about Final Fantasy XV, which has been a steady stream of free content after Square Enix politely implied they may have screwed some things up. But Final Fantasy XIV, the second MMORPG in the franchise, is also still around, and it’s also got a pretty cool announcement for ya’ll: if you’ve been interested in trying it out, but not-so-interested in only having 14 days to experience the game, good news.

Starting now, the old 14-day time limit on the game’s has been removed and has been replaced with a different type of cap, this time on the level. Now, you can play as long as you want, but you’ll never get past level 35. Of course, this comes on top of other restrictions, such as chat restrictions and currency caps, but all-in-all, its’ very similar to the World of Warcraft trials: technically free to play, but not really.

But it can be used for more than just free trials: it’s also a (limited) avenue for players with expired accounts to keep adventuring.

"Even the expired accounts will be brought back to life, allowing players to continue their previous adventures. If you tried the free trial before but time flew by too fast, you can come back and pick up exactly where you left off with the same character!"

Cool? Yeah, cool enough. 35 is pretty generous, and when it comes to an MMORPG, where you can sink hundreds of hours if it’s good enough, no time cap shows confidence in a game’s quality. I hope it pays off for them.