I remember specifically that Tasos said the game would have some sort of free trial. However, all I've seen now is a limited number of paid pre-orders and no information that suggests there will ever be a free trial when the game is released tomorrow. Was this idea dropped in place of making money or something?

He probably considered the Beta as the "free trial".

remembers something that the day in between preorder and actual start of accounting pperiod was going to be free,
but i dont know for sure
and even so, that was like what, 5 days ?

/edit scratch that, that was already recplaced by the normal launch only consisting of the preorders,
too far behind on news sorry ^^