Final Angst [Long]Follow

I have really loved the final fantasy series over the years, starting for me with FF2 way back when (no you may not ask how old I am).
I bought FFXI as my first "Everquest" style game with lots of hopes, back in early November figuring I could beat the Christmas rush of new people and have a good time.
Well I spent all that month figuring out the interface, all the little side jobs and such and then another month trying to get to know people to get together with regularly to play.
The result was that by January 10th I was a level 7 WM (originally a 13 warrior but couldnt find people to party with, then changed).
I still was having no luck with it so decided it probably wasnt worth my money and cancelled my ID.
Yesterday I actually met someone through another venue who was interested in starting to play and I got convinced to restart my id and buy them a world pass to my server.
Well they got to my server okay after a day of downloading updates but for some reason they had a bad lag (apparently this had not been a problem on the server they had started on).
So I got convinced to try to start another character on another server where we could meet up and hopefully the lag would not be too bad.
Now I didnt really want to lose the character I had worked on all these months if I was going to keep on playing so I bought another ID. With this ID I discovered that the only server I could get on was the one my main character was a part of which of course did me no good at all.
So at that point I got convinced to delete my main character and just restart a couple times until I got the right server; its too bad I lose all my effort but with a new friend it shouldnt be hard to make up right?
Well its been about 6 hours now, and I have restarted and sat through the lonnnnng intro only to be dumped into every server BUT the one I wanted countless times. I have no character and the music of San`Doria makes me want to curl up and tremble in a corner somewhere.
My friend said he will try to save up the price for a world pass but he is not only new as a character but new as a player so I think its going to be a long wait for that.
I dont know what else to say except AHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRGGGG!!!!

Unicorn is the server I am trying to get to, but the server seems to be elusive as the creature.
Does anyone know if they are assigned based on geographic location? I figured they where just purely random.

Theres a way to figure outw hat server you're on without going through the intro. Somewhere along the char creation (I forget where) you gotta cancel everything and go to delete your char - it will show what server you're on.

After your character is created, just before the game launches, you'll be asked to link your character to an alias. If you cancel out there and then go back to the character selection screen. You can see what server you've landed on.

Woo Hoo! I finally made it to unicorn! Let the rebuilding begin!
Thanks to everyone for their advice!