"Free Trial Members can not Chat"

You can thank all the gold sellers who, in the past and in other games, used "free trial" accounts to spam advertisements in chat channels, or use annoying methods to advertise their wares.

I thought whispers with them, or party chat was allowed. If not they should be. I can understand cutting them off from general chat, but there is no reason they shouldn't be able to whisper or use party chat. If they are a gold spammer, all that requires is the "report spam" feature, that's why it's there, but this is a lousy move to limit gold spamming. That being said, sometimes even general chat is necessary if they want to LFG for something.

Then you would get tell after tell after tell from gold spammers. Not a lousy move. It only seems that way because you have not had to deal with it.

I have played this game since Early Release. And when my friend wanted to try the game, I thought the free trial program would let us play together. No, what I get is a friend's toon who can't chat, leaving no point in letting us play with friends! If you can't chat, you can't look for groups, strategize, hell, you can't even tell your friend you made this guy! This is absurd, and I'm not going to demand anything, just saying that I think they should either fix the Free Trial Program, or get rid of it. I understand they want people to buy it, creating 'freemium', but this isn't the way to go. I'd rather be limited to level 15 than limited to not being able to chat! BioWare, you've lost all other free trials from me.

I agree with OP. bioware really has some issues. What is the point in chat restriction to groups, guild and whisper if they can't talk in general or trade or whatever else to get into a group or guild? Honestly the logic behind these devs is truely something to laugh about.

Inb4postdeleted.

Because of Gold Sellers and spam. But how do you know this will happen w/o actually trying?

it isn't hard to use the report spam and ignore button, and your chat won't look like that if you report and ignore the spammers. How are free trial people supposed to LFG for esseles, or for Heroic Quests. If they can only reply and not do outgoing whispers, how are they supposed to talk to their buddy they met the previous day and party up with em?

it isn't hard to use the report spam and ignore button, and your chat won't look like that if you report and ignore the spammers. How are free trial people supposed to LFG for esseles, or for Heroic Quests. If they can only reply and not do outgoing whispers, how are they supposed to talk to their buddy they met the previous day and party up with em?

nobody uses chat anyways...at least not on my server

You would be using that report button and the ignore function all the time. The spammers create a toon, spam for a while, create another toon, spam for a while and so on. Multiply that by a dozen or so different people and it gets extreemly annoying, extreemly fast.

How do they group? Honestly, if they want to do group content they can buy the game. You can get from 1-15 without doing a single heroic mission. The need to prevent spamming is greater than the want to use chat for people that are not providing any revenue for the game makers.

For black tallon and esseles, Im sure eventually people will see others hopping around by the gate to the mission and figure out they are free players and they can invite them.