1) Go here:
https://member.square-enix.com/jp/ac...pre_member.php
They want the email address you want to link the account to. Type one in and submit. It cannot be a cell phone or PlayOnline email address.
2) Check your email and click the verification link.
3) You are now at a page that looks like this*:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...ixMembers1.png
Fields with an * are required.
The first field is asking you to pick a login ID, which can be between 4 and 128 characters long, using both cases of letters, numbers, and some symbols.
The second field is a password to use, can be between 4 and 15 characters, and can be both letter cases and numbers.
The third field is password verification.
The fourth field seems to be a security question. Questions are, in order: Favorite food; favorite singer; favorite expression; favorite movie; pet's name; respected person; mother's family name; father's family name; favorite place to go; when you were a child, what you wanted to be when you grew up.**
Scrolling down a bit you get:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...ixMembers4.png
The next field is the answer to the security question. You can use half-width hiragana, full-width katakana, or full-width Roman alphabet, and a few symbols (・ ー 、 。 ? !). This means you have to enable the Japanese IME and type full width romaji for an answer to your question, basic English keyboard input won't work. (This step had me stuck for a while getting an unusable password error.)
After that seems to be your gender, male, then female. It says you cannot modify this later.
Next field is date of birth, in order of YYYY/MM/DD. It says you cannot modify this later.
Next is two fields are pulldowns. Images of the pulldowns follow:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...ixMembers2.png
This is area of residence in Japan, mainly prefecture.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...ixMembers3.png
This is your current occupation. Options are, in order: Company employee/government worker; independent business/self-employed/liberal profession; stay-at-home father/mother; part-time job; junior college/vocational student; university/graduate student; senior high student; junior high student; elementary student; unemployed; other job.
Next shows the main email address for your account.
Next is a mobile email address, such as one for your cell phone.
The next three seem to be asking what news you want to receive via email from certain sources, for main mail, feature mail, and store mail. Choices are: PC and mobile mail address; PC address only; mobile address only; no email (only available for the last two)
After that seems to be asking what categories you would like to receive surveys in.
One more scroll down the screen:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...ixMembers5.png
Asking what game consoles you have/use.
Member nickname (what you want to be seen as when other people see your account and avatar). Can be between 4 and 15 characters, and can use both letter cases, numbers, and symbols. Cannot be the same as your login ID or password. It likely must be unique, and conform to the usual rules of not being offensive. Cannot be changed later.
Avatar gender (Male, female). Cannot be changed later.
Now there's a CAPTCHA you have to type in. After that there's a user agreement, and below that a reset button on the left and a submit button on the right. This is as far as I can get and then the errors/notifications appear.
4) The next page confirms your registration information, if you get no errors. Left link at the bottom is Go Back, while right link is Submit.
5) Now it tells you you are registered and logs you in. You can click the Square Enix Members since 2005 image to go back to the main page and use the account. Congratulations!
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*I use high contrast color override in my web browser to ease my headaches with how much I read off a computer screen. Pages will be in different colors for you. I simply force text to not be on a bright background and turn off background images, as I don't like reading off a lit lightbulb. There's also less visual clutter on the pages for me to sort through.
** This one I may not have gotten right. I'm pretty sure about the rest of the list, but this one was a lot more than I learned myself.
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If anyone can help me refine this, we can get people signed up that have importer accounts and want to use the token. The token costs 980 yen on your PlayOnline account, and can be paid for with WebMoney, as well as shipped to most countries.