Character Generation Restrictions

I just tried making a new character on Leviathan. The site says that Leviathan is open for new characters but when I try to generate, it says the opposite.

Is this temporary? If so, what time of day do I need to try this again?

I tried several times when in character generation, Leviathan was selectable. It wouldn't let me generate though.

I then stopped the client altogether and restarted it. It now doesn't allow selection of Leviathan.

What a POS user interface. If you can select it, why won't it work?

Character creation restrictions are based on how many characters are currently logged into the server. The lodestone is updated every few hours with character restrictions, however, the client itself has a more frequently updated list. Server locks are automated. If people log out the server may open for a few minutes even during prime play times before more people log in and the server caps. Spamming refresh at the create character screen may get you better results. Otherwise I'd try early in the morning or mid week.

I really wish SE would sticky this info somewhere.

Edit in response to edit:
Have you created several characters today? There is a restriction on how many characters you can create every 24 hrs, which is the only other thing I can think of that might be causing problems.

The website only updates every 4 (?) hours with whatever servers are currently open. The actual character creation routine updates in real time taking the current server load into account, so servers which the website says are "open" may be unavailable, and vice versa.

If you want to get in on a high population server, your best bet is right after maintenance finishes, or at whatever counts as the "quiet" time for whatever timezone that server is for.

This is my only character generation attempt today. When I first attempted, Leviathan was highlighted as available and was a selectable option. Once you selected it and tried to proceed with generation, though, it came back with an error that character generation was currently restricted. You could select it but it wouldn't work. And the web site also said it was available.

Now, the selection is grayed out (can't select it). The web site update happened 20 minutes ago but it STILL says that Leviathan is available.

So, the POS interface is basically do all the generation and try your luck. The web site is useless AND just because you can select a world doesn't mean that you can actually generate a character there.

From the amount of spam tells and level 1 friend requests I get, seems that gil sellers have no trouble making new characters (assuming that SE is actually banning those accounts, which is probably not the case).