I suppose that's one way to prevent new players from entering overpopulated servers..

[myahele]

Certain Worlds will no longer go down, even during congested periods such as right after a maintenance.
　* During congestion, Worlds will no longer go down, but the character selection screen may not display.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post3214352

I guess it'll be a lot more difficult making characters in overpopulated servers; typically, people would wait on or after maintenance to hopefully create a character, but it seems as af SE is going to prevent that from now on.