The character creation lock is only a temp messure. When I tried to create my character in p4, my server of choice was locked. About an hour later, it was open. People have been waiting for months for this game to come out, so everybody probably got up as soon as it went live to get started. It will die down, and trust me, when it's time to pay that cash, I'm sure you will see a great reduction in people playing this game. So I would create someone now in a new server, level him up, then transfer later so you still progress while you wait.