I've been playing for a year and just discovered this allies thing

The first time you set up the Account, there was an Age verification question. If you had set it up wrongly, you would be pegged as under aged. That would explain why your name is forever stuck as Mol Eliza, you can't see guild chat and so on. Since you still can't change your name, I suspect that they just relaxed the rules regarding minors adding allies recently, hence why you can suddenly add allies.