Actually for any server, your best bet is to make the character when most people on it would normally be sleeping, thus lower online population at the time. The servers are constantly updating if they're locked or not based on the current online population.

This page: http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...06d0909189e479 ONLY updates at the shown times. If it shows something open, but you see it locked, check the time. Like if it was 3 PM Pacific, that page updated 2 hours prior and the server may have locked itself since then.