Character creation on european realms

So, recently some of my friends have bought and downloaded FFXIV, they have tried to join me on my realm of Phoenix and had troubles creating characters unless its 3 am GMT, which for people who have jobs is just plain stupid, now this morning I suggested that we try going to Lich to play, yet again no characters can be created, this is the same for all European realms, can we not remove the restriction? or have more realms put up? this is becoming beyond a joke for European players.