Haha, all I can say is good luck!  FFXI had the single most convoluted account registration process known to man.  It was as if Square outsourced Playonline to Korea, then they sent it back in Korean, had it translated to Japanese and then just turned on Google translator for the english version. 

On top of that you need to create a playonline account, a Square-Enix master account, then have them merged, then create a game handle (your game account name), then, after probably an hour that it takes you to figure all that out, you'll finally get through the Playonline launcher and into the game.  But alas!  You try to create a character and it won't let you!  HAHA OWNED!  Instead you have to go back to the website somewhere and register your character independently of everything else!  Genius, I tell you!  And good luck figuring out where you're supposed to go to do that.  (Hint: it doesn't say anything about "characters" at all.  I mean, why would it?  That would be too obvious.)  (Hint #2, since I don't want you to suffer too much: If I recall correctly, you're supposed to click on a link called "add options."  "Characters" apparently got translated into "options" and has remained that way, uncorrected, for the last decade. 

So you have your playonline account, SE master account, FFXI handle and "options" all ready to go.  Time to go through the 15 step Playonline log on process for the 6th time and go create your character!  You do this, but you may notice everything seems stretched out and fuzzy.  You need to change your graphics settings but can't seem to find an option to do so.  You resolve to wait until you get into the game to change the settings, since there will surely be options to do so in game.  Wrong.  After searching through every menu for 15 minutes, you'll find nothing.  Instead, you have to log out and find the 3rd party program that comes with FFXI (I don't remember where it's located on your computer, but, of course, it's not intuitive), and go there to change settings.  The thing is, you don't necessarily know what all the settings mean (they're not very descriptive), and you can't test them out 1 by 1 without going through the entire playonline log in process yet again. 

So you manage to get your correct graphics settings.  (Don't hesitate to put everything on max; the game's engine hasn't been updated a single time since its release.  The most average modern computer will play FFXI at max.)  You finally log in and everything looks proportional.  Time to play the game!  Except you suddenly find you can't move!  ASDW, the arrow keys, the num pad, and your mouse all have no effect!  Don't waste your time pressing every button on your keyboard.  It will all be in vain.  Nothing will make you move.  Every button will only open chat and type that character in chat because it turns out your keyboard settings don't match your keyboard.  Guess what you have to do to change your keyboard settings?  You got it, you have to log all the way back out and change the settings using that same program you used to toggle your video settings!  So genius!

Ok, and that's my intro to FFXI rant.  The only way they could have made the whole process LESS intuitive would have been to invent 3 of their own languages, write the FFXI website, the playonline website, and the playonline launcher in those 3 languages, and then scramble the text so you'd have to decode it. 

http://www.square-enix.com/na/account/

Just go to this site and make an account, use the serial you got from gamestop.

When you see the playonline id just create a new user with the same details you get from your account creation 

These should be your playonline ID, your playonline password, your squareenix ID and squarenix password.

If you are still confused just say so.

Sorry if my above post doesn't exactly help you.  I can't exactly recall any of the specifics of the registration process.  I mean, who can?  It was seriously that convoluted.  But if you read through my whole post, I'm sure you would have gathered some tips that could prevent you from making the same mistakes many new players often do. 

For reference, I played FFXI back near its launch and through the COP expansion (really until the very beginning of the Treasures of Aht Urhgan xpac.)  So I haven't really played in many many years.  But 4 friends and I did return for 1 month at exactly this time last year when we got FFXI and all xpacs plus 1 month play time for like $10 on Steam, at which time we all had to go through this registration process again.  Needless to say, even after the game was fully downloaded, it took us all several hours to get in the game with working characters.  So I can verifiy that everything I say was true (and honestly, not even exaggerated) up until a year ago. 

Originally posted by Homitu

Sorry if my above post doesn't exactly help you.  I can't exactly recall any of the specifics of the registration process.  I mean, who can?  It was seriously that convoluted.  But if you read through my whole post, I'm sure you would have gathered some tips that could prevent you from making the same mistakes many new players often do. 

For reference, I played FFXI back near its launch and through the COP expansion (really until the very beginning of the Treasures of Aht Urhgan xpac.)  So I haven't really played in many many years.  But 4 friends and I did return for 1 month at exactly this time last year when we got FFXI and all xpacs plus 1 month play time for like $10 on Steam, at which time we all had to go through this registration process again.  Needless to say, even after the game was fully downloaded, it took us all several hours to get in the game with working characters.  So I can verifiy that everything I say was true (and honestly, not even exaggerated) up until a year ago. 

I can just fine, but after all I am a hyper intelligent cucumber