Oh no, a new Mission Spotlight is on the way

I've noticed that there was a topic asking about Mission Spotlight with a poll for possible missions. GM Edward has allowed the poll to determine what the mission will be and unfortunately it seems that Bladed Legacy has won. Not only is the mission horrible but it has also been done TWICE already for the Mission Spotlight.
I could go into the whole thing about how it's not fun, doesn't have great drops and how having cheap monsters/attacks isn't equal to being difficult but I'd rather not beat that dead horse anymore.

I'd rather have some updates than this filler but at the very least a better mission could have been chosen for it.

In related news: There was a Mission Spotlight last week at the mission "The Black Nest" but I didn't care enough to post about it.

PSU Turns Three

And to think I almost missed this occasion! This past Saturday, PSU officially made it through its third year of existence in the United States and Europe.

Last year at this time, I put together a similar anniversary post in which I ranted about the slow trickle of content updates being made available on the US/EU servers. I argued that continuing this policy of drip-feeding content in the third year would cause many players to quit the game:

As we enter the game's third year, there's still quite a bit of content left to see. Events, S3 missions, story missions, and plenty of other stuff is out there. Sega needs to get on the ball and get the game back on track, though; otherwise, PSU may not ever make it to October 24 again.

Let's take a look back at Year Three and see what significant new content we've gotten since last October 24.

• - Master classes and new story mission (Ep3 Chapter 6) -- December 19, 2008
• - Winter Mission Carnival -- January 23, 2009
• - Desert Arms Shop -- March 27, 2009
• - Shred the Darkness -- April 17, 2009
• - Innocent Girl -- June 12, 2009
• - Protectors: Gamma/Delta -- July 3, 2009
• - First S3 missions -- August 7, 2009
• - Moatoob Relics (Citadel of Sand) and new party mission (Security Breach) -- August 28, 2009
• - Protectors: Alpha+/Beta+ -- September 25, 2009
• - New story mission (Ep3 Chapter 7) -- October 6, 2009

Along with a scattering of upgraded mission difficulties and level cap increases, those were the bulk of the updates over the last year. The slow release of content continued, with "major" updates monthly that added only one or two missions.

Sega has done a lot better with events, however. In the past year we've had four events, which succeeded in bringing back some players (at least for a little while). However, the regular population continues to decline on both the PC/PS2 and Xbox 360 servers in between these events.

The next major content update hits October 30, with the Guardians Colony GBR, the Colony rare mission, and a level cap increase to 170. However, this seems about on par with the monthly update strategy that Sega seems to be employing, so I don't expect the population situation to change anytime soon. There are certainly some interesting times in store for the next year. Will we make it to a fourth anniversary?

Honestly, I'm rather amazed that we made it to the third anniversary!

GameGuard Not Fixed for Windows 7 RTM

That's right. The GameGuard errors that first appeared in the Windows 7 Beta nearly ten months ago have still not been fixed.



Back in January I didn't really have a problem with this. Most companies generally don't develop software fixes to work with beta versions of operating systems. However, now that Windows 7 is released and available to the general public, there is simply no excuse for this. An official fix for this error should have been in production prior to the release of the RTM build, but it doesn't look like that happened.

That doesn't mean you can't play PSU on Windows 7, though. A special Windows 7-compatible version of the GameGuard executable is available for download at this site. Once it's downloaded, extract the GameGuard.des file to your PHANTASY STAR UNIVERSE Illuminus program files folder (not the GameGuard folder) and start the game. Or, if you're running Windows 7 x64, you could try the workaround we posted back in January.

In any case, GameGuard's continued lack of official Windows 7 support is a little bit irritating. INCA Internet, Sega, and anyone else responsible for making PSU work in Windows 7 should get working on it.

Of course, Sega could also do the smart thing and drop GameGuard altogether...

PSP2, PSU, and PSO: I'm Still Confused

Back in March, I commented a little about the relationship between Phantasy Star Portable and PSU. The two games are not all that different, but despite all of the critical acclaim PSP received at launch, the population of PSU remained in decline. I figured that Sonic Team would use the success of PSP to make some changes for PSU.

As usual, I was wrong. It seems instead that Sonic Team has put all of their efforts into the development of Phantasy Star Portable 2, a sequel that looks more to me like Phantasy Star Online than the current incarnation of PSU. In fact, it almost looks like a hybrid of PSO and PSU -- at first glance, the game appears to mix the best of PSU's gameplay (combat, PAs, items) with some of PSO's game mechanics (character-based PP, level-based skill disks, etc). And unlike the original game, Phantasy Star Portable 2 will have a true online mode (as opposed to just the ad-hoc mode PSP1 had).

That begs the question: what exactly are Sonic Team's plans for PSU? Is Sega content to just let the game die while the PSP games grow in popularity? Hopefully not -- I'd like to see the console version continue to exist, either through some sort of update or through the development of a brand new game. PSU has more potential for improvement and expansion than any of the portable games ever will, and it would be nice to see Sonic Team use the PSP games as a way of getting new players into PSU.

Sadly, that doesn't seem to have happened yet. Hopefully Sonic Team will figure it out once PSP2 hits retail.