FFXIV has a VERY generous free trial. However, the fundamental problem with FFXIV’s trial is it hides a lot of the content that many people would otherwise enjoy behind content that they don’t enjoy.
Ultimately this means that many people who would have stuck with the game don’t end up stick to it because of the first experience they get playing FFXIV’s trial.
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Welcome back to FF! I think something that could work well for your channel is to make impressions or reviews expansion by expansion, sort of like the channel Grinding Gear does with the game
I totally see your point. When I was a sprout that didn't know what unsyncing duties or party finder was I kept queueing for the ARR extreme primals and I beat most of them that way and had a ton of fun doing so -and that kept me hooked to the game during the slog that Stormblood was for me. But I can totally see how unreasonable is for a new player that would like to have a taste of how's challenging content in FFXIV to sit in 30+minutes queues only for the party to sometimes disband inmediatly cause the fake mentors that got there through mentor roulette inmediatly left.
Things like this can and should be improved. To continue with my example, start doling out 24h duty finder bans instead of 30 minutes and you'll discourage the "mentors" that that only join the roulette hoping for easy duties. Won't solve the long queues but at least it'll adress the quitting problem.
I do think that FFXIV needs to put you into the action faster than it does. When you start the game you're either in a carriage or on a boat that gets attacked by beastmen and that is the perfect time to introduce players to combat. Even Metal Gear Solid 1, which is also heavily narrative driven, throws you into gameplay right off the bat before a long ass introduction cutscene.