G'day Eorzeans

My brother has just hit 25 and was happy to finally be able to join a Grand Company, so he ventured to the Adders nest to do the quests required to join, and after he picked up the quests he walked to the doors to leave.. But wait, what's this?!

He can't leave the Adder's nest! and it seems this wasn't a problem with his character, some people were stuck there as well! (They were Japanese so he didn't know how to converse with them.) he tried a couple of times and it told him that it's moving him out of the Grand Company but it didn't.

He tried to force shutdown the game and when he logged back in, his character wasn't there at the character selection screen, the name shows on the right but the character isn't. and when he clicks the name it doesn't log him in.

Has anyone experienced this? Is there a fix to this? Will my brother be forever lost in the rift between The Adder's nest and Gridania?!