Turns out you can’t sign up for the beta as a European, though. Well, not with SOE at least. If you want to do the beta, you have to sign up via Pro-Sieben/Sat-1, which understandably a lot of people don’t want to. (On the other hand, that company hasn’t lost all your user accounts to security leaks yet! Might only be a question of time, though.)

The question is, of course, if that means that SOE will want to do one of the most despicable things in online games: split people by region. Really, I feel extremely strongly about that point. It should never, ever, be done, under no circumstances whatsoever. I’ve been bitten by these stupid restrictions too often.

However, at least for th beta, there’s a workaround. When you try to sign up via everquestnext.com, you first have to provide your credentials, and then are sent in an infinite loop back to the main page as a European. However, if you directly access the page behind that check, you can sign up without any problems. I did that by using a link that a helpful player in EQ2’s general chat posted: Everquest Next Beta Signup. I was cautious and scouted the link, because you never know whether it’s a scam. Since it’s a station.sony.com domain though, I don’t see anything suspicious about the link.

I can’t promise you you’ll ever get a beta invite – who knows, they might check for residence before they send them out. If I had to guess though, they won’t be that rigorous in their checks – if they don’t even just do it lottery-style anyway.

I signed up with my SOE account, got a registration confirmation, and now will just wait and see.