PSO2 Closed Beta Extended

According to the official Phantasy Star Online 2 blog, the closed beta test has been extended until Monday, April 30. Players will be given additional Arks Cash to play with until the beta ends.

In other news, some players are reporting that "hackers" have appeared in the beta test. Normally I would not approve of this kind of thing, but here we seem to have a situation where the script kiddies' lack of intelligence may actually benefit the game in the long run.

This is a closed beta test after all. And because these guys decided to try out their "hacks" (I use that term very loosely) now, the developers should have plenty of time to figure out what's going on and make the appropriate changes before the game goes live. This would also be a great time for the developers to test out their GM/admin tools!

Of course, since this is the Japanese beta test there are bound to be a lot of opinions regarding English-speaking players (who are likely behind much of the mischief). However, the developers (and Japanese players) hopefully will remember that the behavior of a handful of morons should not be considered representative of the community as a whole.

It's closed beta time!

So as luck would have it I was accepted into the closed beta after signing up last minute and I must say I find this game quite enjoyable. It maybe just me but the beta for PSO2 has given me a great impression of the game compared to the release of PSU, although I'll have to see how the cash shop really plays a role in the game once it launches.

Anyway I have come with screenshots from some of the time I've spent with the beta.

First up is the lobby of the shopping area. I'd post the main area but apparently I never bothered to take a picture of it. Oops! Anyway I like that it's all condensed to one lobby to start missions unlike PSU with all those sub lobbies. Pictures (click to enlarge):

This place is pretty big, it's easier to just jump down than to use the stairs.

They even got the the intro to the game playing on screens around the lobby, I guess they'll change it up and display different things for events or something.

This must be punishment for always skipping the intro.

A few area shots:

Hello rappy, I see you are still up to you're old tricks.

How did a nice walk in the forest turn into this!?

Oh glorious red box!

Now that red box was special. I remember reading about how normal weapons can drop as "special weapons" and I found a few of them and they still drop in red boxes. But I knew this one was different when the tekker wanted 27,600 meseta compared to around 1000 for the others.

Oh man this is gonna be good!

Seven stars. Neat.

That sure took a lot of screenshots to get the pose I wanted of that gun.

What? Ownership?

That last one worries me a little. What happens if I change my mind? I'm sure I would eventually, maybe. I worry it might be one of those things Ark's Cash is needed for. Speaking of Ark's Cash: make sure you work on your character to make it like you want the first time. Because if you go to edit anything after you've created a character nearly everything requires Ark's Cash.

See that red triangle? I'm sure we'll all learn to hate it soon enough.

I don't know about you but it seems sort of excessive. Maybe for free players they can charge for this stuff but if you buy the premium set Sega can at least throw us a bone and wave the Ark's Cash fee on small things like this.

Well back to the beta for now.

The PSO2 Beta Client Has English Credits, Apparently

A couple of videos appeared on YouTube today showing that the Phantasy Star Online 2 closed beta client apparently has both Japanese and English credits.

In addition to the language difference, the Sega logo at the end of the English sequence is slightly different than the one used in the Japanese sequence. Recent datamining efforts found that the English logo is actually installed inside a hierarchy of folders that could potentially be used for region-specific media and other files.

Despite this apparent find, we shouldn't forget that Sega still has not announced any release dates for any region but Japan. However, I don't know why anyone would waste time localizing the credits if an English release was not planned.

I think the United States and Europe will almost certainly get PSO2 at some point. However, the more important issue is (and always has been) whether the game will get international servers, and Sega hasn't even hinted at the answer to that question...

Report: PSO2 Will Have "Room Rental" Fee

A news report from Japan posted today on the PSO-World forums suggests that Sega will charge Phantasy Star Online 2 players a fee to "rent" room space.

It was already known that players would have to purchase the ability to use certain game features. However, no details were provided on exactly how those transactions would work. We speculated that Sega might fall back on a PSU-style subscription model for PSO2:

Another possibility is that the items are offered as timed DLC, meaning you'll have to periodically buy them again to continue enjoying the "premium" features of the game. This is pretty much the "free course" and "premium course" model used by PSU at the moment. Don't be surprised if Sega chooses this model for the final product.

If the report is correct, then it looks as if this is exactly what Sega will do. According to that report, players will be charged for room privileges and other "system" features on a 30-day recurring basis. No speculation on fee schedule or other pricing was announced.

In other PSO2 news, Sega announced today that the closed beta test will begin next Thursday, April 19. E-mails are being sent out to players that have been selected for participation in the beta. The test will run for approximately nine days, ending on Saturday, April 28.

Download the PSO2 Character Creator Now

As promised, Sega has released the Phantasy Star Online 2 character creator and benchmarking tool for public download.

The installer can be downloaded from the official PSO2 Web site here. Your download speed may vary due to high volume.

For those people who haven't participated in either of the previous two alpha tests (myself included), this should be a great chance to play around with one of the most highly demoed and discussed features of the game. Created characters can be saved to disk, and can apparently be uploaded to use in the closed beta once that begins later this month.

The benchmarking tool portion of the application outputs a score that you can use to tweak the game settings so that PSO2 will run optimally. Sega has provided the following suggestions depending on your benchmark score:

• Below 2000: Graphics settings should be adjusted down
• 2001 - 5000: Minor changes may be needed to play optimally
• Over 5000: No problems; use whatever settings you want

I'm interested to see how my laptop performs, though I'm pretty sure the desktop PC I eventually buy for this game will blow it out of the water.