Both methods work, clicking and selecting play will offer the unlock as will opening a slot and unlocking that way, note during the vip beta the second method was faster, as the direct unlock seemed to take about a minute or two.
Nuff Said...
Coolio Wolfus leader of Coolio�s Crusaders on Union.
Tekna Logik leader of Tekna�s Tormentors on Defiant.
Creator of: Coolio's Tech Beacon Replacements
AE arc 402506, 'The Rise and Demise or Otherwise of Tekna Logik...'.
Then there needs to be a message. When a character is locked, there's a text "the character slot needs to be unlocked" when the mouse is over the slot, but it says nowhere how. That's unlike old locked characters which were moved off the database, where it specifically says that entering the game will unlock them. A message of this type will do wonders to clarify how the slot could be unlocked.
I don't know if this is a bug, but it's certainly unintuitive and a little alarming.
On my free but playable account I had a character I wanted to unlock. My first guess was that clicking on it would offer to unlock it and use a global slot, but that did nothing. I then tried the "Create a new character" icon at the top left, hoping it would offer to unlock a slot (I didn't really read what its text said until after I clicked it). What it did is unlock a new slot. At that point I was thinking I just used a global slot for nothing (not that it mattered much for this free account, considering I had only one character and 4 slots, but there were more characters or it was Premium I'd have been a lot more worried). I then tried to click again on the character, and was offered to unlock it. When I agreed the open slot was gone and the character was unlocked.
This is a pretty confusing procedure. It could also be problematic if all the character slots on the server are full (though granted that would be rare).