The article is dated Sept 28th, so the Wednesday in question would have been the 29th I suppose. I was able to sign up when I tried yesterday.
I don’t really have much patience for these sorts of things. I wish I did, but it does look interesting.
There will be a commercial aspect to it as noted in the quote above regarding “virtual goods”, but hopefully it won’t be the sort of situation where you have to buy stuff to participate and have fun.