I know this likely won't help your issue, but I can give you the experience I have had with trying to create characters on my server, Exodus.
Exodus has been closed for character creation since maybe a day after the head start began. After watching all of the "updates" on the character creation restrictions and seeing it taken off the list repeatedly, I began to just not pay attention to them. Exodus was not available to create characters even when it seemed like SE was saying it was.

VERY late last night (about 2am EST) I found that I was finally able to create a character on it. I created the character I had been waiting a week to make, and even deleted excess characters that I knew I would not use and narrowed it down to the 4 characters I knew I wanted to have on the server. This all took me about an hour and a half to do, and it was open for character creation the entire time.

I have been seeing servers pop in and out as far as if you can make characters on it, but this was the first time I had seen Exodus available for it. I have my doubts that when I get home today I would be able to make a new character on it again - I get the feeling that they are watching the number of characters and slowly increasing the number that are allowed on each server, and once they become full again they close them off again. This is all speculation as the communication from SE has been pretty dismal.

Anyway, again - I realize this isn't an answer, but I figured you may be able to glean something from what I've been going through. If you can, try watching later at night, as I saw a lot of servers open up for character creation late last night. I hope you can get on your friends' server soon!