They can get away with exclusive content for CN or KR (obnoxious as it is) because they're separate versions of the game.

As long as we're on the same servers - and I hope that's forever given my circumstances - the JP/EU/NA global version of the game needs to be truly global. That means no special treatment for people in another region. Imagine if the seasonal events were always staggered by time zone so they activated for people on Japanese accounts first; they already get a lot more community activity than us because the team is based there and running local events is much easier.

Having in-game items locked by region is just a bad way to run things. They can announce Japan first if they like, but forcing the rest of us to sit around watching everyone else enjoying their new rewards while we don't even know whether they're coming breeds a great deal of resentment.