kaz - think it's a recent (dec-07) thing - we get a message saying something like 'trial users are not allowed to invite'
thanks for the offer but unfort al'akir was full so we couldn't join that. thankfully we've been able to find a couple of people kind enough to help us - at least that way works and it means we have been able to play together.
Also - made our first mistaken assumption - we battled to the end of our hardest quest so far (mine full of level 9-10 creatures with a lv12 boss! omg!), killed the big bad guy but got taken out before we could collect the requisite item to prove success. It was late and we were tired so we thought we'd take the 25% durability hit to our items and get straight back there, finish off the last couple of workers, collect our items and head back and log out.
Of course as you guys all know, it dont work like that

- when we decided to resurrect immediately we were immensely disappointed!