Europe: a late start (reported)
Shortly before the planned start at 18:00 CET (17:00 UTC), a notice in the Battle.net launcher announced a delay "for technical fixes". We only know this notice from Wowhead and player posts; there is no Blizzard text about it. Players then reported a banner saying Roleplay-PvP might not show on first login. The workaround: pick another ruleset first, then choose Roleplay-PvP from the menu at the top. Wowhead later reported reservations open in Europe and North America. On the podcast of 29 October, Aggrend mentions "some hiccups on Tuesday".
The part that matters: Roleplay-PvP was selectable during reservation. Blizzard had aimed for that on 22 October but not promised it.
Oceania: roleplay first (confirmed)
Kaivax wrote on 27 October at 20:02 UTC: players on Australian servers had to create Roleplay or Roleplay-PvP characters before any on Normal or PvP. Otherwise those rulesets "will no longer be available for subsequent characters". Blizzard called the fix urgent. We found no post saying it was fixed as of 30 October.
Restricted names (confirmed)
A bug in the restricted-name list blocked too much. The list is meant to catch lore names and technically unsuitable names. Affected were, for example, names containing the letters "con". The fix comes with the next realm restarts in each region. After that, names rejected with "That name is restricted" can be tried again. Kaivax's post is from 28 October, 01:28 UTC; the EU forum title dates it 28 October.
What this changes here
The rulesets page now says that Roleplay-PvP was selectable during reservation.