And Now, Another Moment of Brilliance

This moment is brought to you by Sega of Japan, which pushed a new version of the PSO2 launcher shortly after maintenance ended earlier this morning.

Of course, that in itself wouldn't warrant a new blog posting if not for the nasty side effects that came with it. In this thread on PSO-World, players are reporting that the launcher will actually delete files from your hard drive under certain conditions. The files may not even be related to PSO2; some players were reporting that the launcher apparently tried to delete files out of their Final Fantasy XIV installations. I guess Sega was tired of competing with other games for players.

In any case, the wise thing to do would be to wait until Sega sorts all of this out before attempting to update your game. I assume that compensation for this disaster will be coming once everything is back to normal, but even so, there really is no excuse for this kind of thing. You would think that a bug this serious would have been caught in testing, but hey, it's Sega.

Happy Anniversary

On July 9, 2012, Sega of America officially announced that Phantasy Star Online 2 would be getting an English release in the United States and Europe.

Exactly one year later, I don't think anybody really knows how much closer we are to an English release – except Sega, and they aren't saying anything. Even the official PSO2 Web site looks the same as it did last year.

I must admit that Sega of America's silence in the face of withering criticism has been rather puzzling to me. In the time since the initial announcement was made, Sega has said almost nothing about the game (except that it was delayed). When Sega revealed the list of games being shown off at E3, and PSO2 wasn't one of them, their official blog was lit up with posts complaining about the lack of news.

Is there really nothing that Sega can say about the progress of this game's localization? Nothing that has changed since the announcement last year? At the very least Sega could try to offer some sort of explanation for the delay. Any news at this point would help stem the tide of rumors that an official English version of PSO2 is nothing more than high-profile vaporware.

There is some good news in all of this: so much time has passed since the initial announcement that casual fans may have forgotten about it already. Sega may be waiting until they're sure of a release date to announce the game again and bring these people back into the fold. (You never know what kind of crazy plans these marketing people are cooking up.)

For the rest of the community, though, a full year without news is ridiculous. Sega needs to either:

1. Provide some sort of explanation for the delay, or
2. Just say the English version is cancelled already so everyone can go play the Japanese version full-time

...I'm not holding my breath for either of those things to happen, though. Here's (not) hoping for another year of silence from Sega!

More From The PSO2 Rumor Mill

How's this for out-of-control speculation: a thread was posted on PSO-World (and later on the official forums) quoting a series of Twitter posts in which it was claimed that the US/European release of Phantasy Star Online 2 might have been cancelled due to widespread use of the English translation patch.

The speculation was that everyone who wanted to play PSO2 has already played the Japanese version with the English patch, so Sega of America figured that releasing an official translated version of the game may not be worth it.

Of course, this is nothing more than just another rumor. As many posters on the forums have noted, there is no official news from Sega that can even lend credibility to this story. Sega take note: this is what happens when you announce a game and then fail to provide any substantive news about it for months. Rumors like this will continue to crop up every now and again until Sega says something definitive about this game (and reiterating that the game is delayed is not definitive).

Sega announces E3 games; PSO2 isn't one of them

It's true! Sega said so on their blog. So you know what that means right? Panic like it's the most terrible thing you ever heard! We already got a good start in the comments of that blog post. Then we got this topic about PSO2 at E3 is shaping up nicely too. There is also this topic over at PSO world too! Although from the posts I read over there I always got the feeling that they hated the English version from the very beginning. But yeah I've got to say it's really nice to see the community come together and give up on the English release of the the game. Best game community ever! Or not.

Sure it's disappointing and I really would like to hear news about the game, but I don't mind waiting for the game. I still think it needs some fixing. You know focus more on this thing called "gameplay" than that whole "dress up" thing that the game currently focuses on.

Well whatever, I'll just sit back and wait while everyone goes crazy over this. I've got other things to keep me busy.

English PSO2 Coming to Southeast Asia "This Year"

It's been pretty quiet on the PSO2 news front lately, but recently folks on the official forums noticed a GameSpot article regarding the release of an English version of PSO2 in southeast Asia.

According to the article, publisher Asiasoft has announced that it is bringing the English version of PSO2 to the region sometime later this year. Although no announcement specifically naming PSO2 could be found on Asiasoft's investor relations Web site, a May 14 press release mentions that the company will be releasing two "AAA" online titles in the second half of 2013. This seems to align with GameSpot's article, which names DC Universe Online as the other title.

If this story turns out to be true, then I think that players waiting for an English version of PSO2 in the US and Europe should be optimistic. Here's why: the version being released in Asia is probably the same one we're getting. It's likely that we'll get PSO2 before Asia does, and if a third quarter or fourth quarter release is expected there, I would expect a US/EU release date sometime around August or September.

Sega has been quiet about a new release date for PSO2 ever since it was announced that the game was delayed. With E3 coming up, hopefully we'll start to get some more information about what's going on.

Sega Finally Breaks Silence; PSO2 "Delayed"

It has been months since we've heard anything from Sega regarding the Western release of Phantasy Star Online 2. As you might imagine, this has made the player community a little bit nervous about the game's future (except for those of us who are already playing the Japanese version, of course).

In recent months, potential players of Western PSO2 have pleaded with Sega of America to say something—anything—about the game's future. Yesterday, Sega responded.

The game, originally slated for an "early 2013" release, is now delayed, with no new release date given. This news was confirmed by Edward on the official PSO2 forums:

Hey all, just want to reply & repeat what I said just now in reply on the blog. Yes this was our official statement to the press. I am sorry that it comes after so much time waiting. This doesn't mean the game won't release here; in fact it means we really want to make sure it gets a full & proper release, as best as we can support it.

I wish I had more news to tell you, and when there is, I promise I will. There's a lot of people here who will be working hard to bring the game to the West. Talking to so many players at PAX was a terrific experience and I know how much this game and this series means to fans; for as long as I am here I will do my best to support the game and the franchise with all our fans.

My impression is that with "early 2013" rapidly coming to a close, and people becoming increasingly skeptical of a Western release, Sega finally realized that they had to say something to keep everyone remotely interested.

The only problem is that most of the people that are remotely interested are already playing the Japanese version. Now that we officially have no idea when the English version of the game will be released, I'm sure even more players will join up on the Japanese servers. Edward's qualifier—"as best as we can support it"—doesn't fill me with much confidence, either, but I'll reserve my judgment for the final product.

So there we go. We asked for news and we got it, though it obviously wasn't the news anyone was hoping for. The English version of PSO2 is not canceled, but it doesn't sound like we'll be playing it anytime soon.

Theories and Thoughts

The lack of news regarding the Western version of PSO2 is understandably making some people restless and uneasy. It also seems to be prompting some speculation and ridiculous rumors about why Sega is not saying anything.

One of the more popular theories seems to be that Sega isn't saying anything about US/EU PSO2 because it has been canceled. Here's the bottom line: Sega has announced that the game is coming stateside, and even showed off a demo of the partially-translated game. Until Sega says anything to the contrary, this rumor is completely false. (Sega recently changed the official Phantasy Star Universe site to display the PSO2 site, so they obviously haven't changed their minds about the game lately.)

Some folks have also tried to attribute the lack of news to the recently publicized fiasco between Sega and Gearbox over the widely panned Aliens: Colonial Marines. Somehow, PSO2 isn't being released quickly enough in the West because Gearbox spent too much time working on Borderlands instead of Aliens, prompting Sega to spend too much time and money dealing with the delays. I'm pretty sure most businesses—even video game companies—don't plan projects this way. I highly doubt this is why PSO2 is taking so long.

I imagine that the real cause of the "delay" is that Sega is trying to determine how to best implement the Arks Cash system for a Western audience that may not embrace it the way the Japanese have. Either that, or localization is taking longer than expected – who knows. In any case, it's pretty clear that Sega will not have anything to say until the game is ready for prime time. That's a risky bet to make, in my opinion, but we'll see how it goes.

Now for my Thought of the Day: I think it would be hilarious if Sega of Japan put an IP block on the Japanese PSO2 servers. The volume of posts on the PSO-World forums from players rage-quitting the game forever (then claiming that the US version sucks and that they will never, ever, ever play it, not in a million years even if it was the last game on Earth) would likely knock the site off the Internet!

Sometimes I think this community is terrible

So I was browsing the internet and came across this PSO2 topic about a rumor of the English version of the game that wasn't actually a rumor. That isn't the terrible part though; this post is.

Ok let me see if I get this right. You waste Sega support staff's time with a question that would obviously not be answered and actually expected and answer back. Sega hasn't released any information about the game to anyone and you thought they would make an exception for you and tell you? And you are unsatisfied when they didn't? Please give me a break. You should be happy you got a reply at all, because that email should have been sent strait to the trash.

Then of course you have PSO-world forums agreeing how terrible Sega of America is and it's not just that topic; you can see other topics where people recommend not even bothering with the English version. While I'm not saying Sega of America is innocent or anything I do feel that Sega of Japan is also partly to blame. For those of us who played PSU I'm sure you guys can remember how the GMs announced content for the game a few times only to be proven wrong by SoJ when they updated the Japanese PSU Xbox360 website (with less content) or how they took forever to organize that whole 'MAG2' thing which ended up delaying updates even more.

Sure Sega of Japan is great at running the online Phantasy Star games, but only in Japan. They don't really seem to motivated to care for any of the other regions. Truthfully If Sega of America were to handle the English server's updates I can't see them being anywhere as bad as SoJ's handling of PSOBB and PSU. I will admit that the only exceptions were the Dreamcast and Gamecube versions of PSO but that was only because we played on the same servers as the Japanese. Even then they managed to exclude us from content (download quests from the DC PSO and Episode 3, Maximum Attack prizes and that Episode 3 tournament being Japan only come to mind - inb4 Episode 3 sucks).

Don't get me wrong: I want information about the game, but I'm going to have to wait until Sega is ready to give that information. Whining about it like a bunch of babies isn't going to accomplish anything. Anyway I just assume the delay is from Sega of Japan doing the usual when it comes to Phantasy Star outside of Japan aka not caring.

Welcome to Early 2013

The new year is finally upon us. That means it's time for Sega of America to open up and provide some details about the upcoming Western release of Phantasy Star Online 2.

Back in July, Sega announced that PSO2 was coming stateside, but provided only a vague "early 2013" release date. However, in the following months, Sega has been completely silent about the game (except for the appearance of a demo version at PAX).

As "early 2013" crept closer, I thought it would be a good idea for Sega to start talking about the game a little bit, if only to remind players and get them more excited about it. However, nothing happened; Sega's official PSO2 Web site has not been updated since August.

Now the lack of PSO2 news seems to be making the rest of the community a little jittery. Threads have popped up on the PSO-World forums and even at Sega's own official PSO2 forum, each questioning the lack of information on the game. Not surprisingly, Sega representatives have been silent.

And now it's 2013. When is Sega of America going to start talking about this game? When are we going to get a firm release date? I don't expect the servers to go live tomorrow, but any shred of news would be nice just for reassurance. An update to the Web site or even a post on the forums would go a long way in letting players know that Sega is actually doing something.

Everybody panic!

I hope you all are ready to assume the worst has happened for non-Japanese players on PSO2. I know I have! I was looking around the the internet and I found this thing about the Sega ID registration site blocking non-Japanese from registering.

If this post's title didn't make you panic; I now assume you all have panicked from hearing this news. This is horrible because now we are stuck with the confirmed to be terrible US/EU version. You know how it works, no news = THE MOST TERRIBLE NEWS YOU WILL EVER HEAR, therefore the US/EU server will be terrible.

Anyway this ends up being bad news for the anyone outside of Japan that currently plays since it means the English community will slowly deteriorate. That is if it is permanent unless this is some temporary thing while Sega deals with RMT/hacking or something...

PSO2 Improvements Planned

Here's another instance where the delayed release of the US/EU version of PSO2 might actually benefit players. Sega has announced that the game will be receiving some upgrades and improvements that have been heavily requested by Japanese players.

One such improvement (which I happen to agree with very strongly) is the reduction in the number of items needed to complete the level cap client orders. This is a great decision by the developers; the level cap orders are incredibly tedious, and any improvement here is welcomed. Currently, the required items drop far less frequently than I would expect for the number needed (90, in each of three different areas). I would suggest that the developers also improve the drop rates of these items, but some progress is better than none. Regardless of what they decide to do with these client orders, US/EU players will certainly appreciate not having to endure these quests in their current states.

Other requests from players include drop rate and rare enemy spawn rate improvements, as well as class rebalancing and system-related fixes. With any luck these fixes will be incorporated into the US/EU game on day one, so players won't know that they were ever a problem! Let's just hope it's enough...

Where's the Western PSO2 News?

Back in July, Sega of America revealed that PSO2 would be coming west. However, there has been virtually no news or information about the game since then. As November approaches and we get ever closer to the vague "early 2013" release, I can't help but wonder why Sega has not started to provide players with a taste of what to expect in US/EU PSO2.

I assume that Sega chose not to release PSO2 in 2012 in order to avoid having the game buried in a deluge of other holiday game releases. If that's actually the case, then I would expect the final release of PSO2 to be sometime in January or February (possibly with a short open beta test several weeks prior to test server loads and things like that). In my mind, that means it's time to start reminding players that the game is on the way. Maybe that's why I expected that Sega would have started talking by now. Perhaps they consider "early 2013" to be a bit later than that, though.

Regardless of what's going on with the game right now, it would be nice to see some acknowledgment that it still exists. A more specific release date would be great – maybe not an exact date, but one at least narrowed down to one or two months when we could expect to start playing. At the very least, some new information would probably go a long way in maintaining players' interest in the US/EU version of the game.

PSO2: (Temporary) King of the Grind

This week's content update for the Japanese version of PSO2 added a new difficulty and raised the level cap to 50. However, apparently not all went as planned – thanks to an oversight on Sega's part, players were in for a nasty shock upon reaching level 41.

The XP required to go from level 40 to 41 is 92,000 – a pretty hefty amount but generally in-line with the game's experience curve so far. (I probably won't make it that far in the Japanese game, so I can only report based on what other players say.)

However, to get from level 41 to 42, a player needs to earn a staggering 2.8 million XP (roughly) – an almost 3000% increase over the previous level! If you thought 20-30 was a grind, then this one's guaranteed to make you jump with joy.

Sega is aware of the problem and has planned an emergency maintenance this evening to correct the error. The issue apparently stems from the fact that the game's experience table was created at launch, with the expectation that the level cap would not need to be raised so soon. That's what Sega says, anyway.

So there's proof that Sega doesn't always screw solely with the English community. In fact, there's a good chance that the English game will never see this little glitch. Yes, the English game is being released several months after the Japanese game, but look at it this way – the Japanese players are helping iron out all the mistakes so that the English game can be perfect! (Yeah, right)

If At First You Don't Succeed...

...try, try again. Or in Sega of Japan's case, try, try, try again.

Folks over at PSO-World are reporting that Sega has attempted to push the much-maligned Windows-breaking GameGuard update for a third time. Not surprisingly, people that have received the patch are reporting unexpected crashes and operating system lockups.

I can only report on what other people are saying because, although I am still playing PSO2, I did not get this patch and never will. If this is actually true, then I can do nothing but sit back and marvel at Sega's unwavering commitment to achieving new levels of incompetence. Truly unbelievable.

What Are These Morons Smoking?

Last week the Phantasy Star Online 2 community was in an uproar after Sega of Japan pushed a GameGuard update that caused all kinds of nasty side effects on players' PCs. The update was pulled back shortly after.

So what do you do if you're Sega of Japan and you have this broken GameGuard patch sitting around? Try to push it out again, of course! The update reappeared earlier today and is now wreaking havoc on user PCs for a second time.

The effects of the patch were immediately visible on my PC:



After that, pretty much everything stopped working. I had to do a hard shutdown of my PC because I couldn't even get Windows to reboot!

What the hell is going on here?

There is absolutely no excuse for this level of incompetence. NO EXCUSE. Hell, there is no excuse for this piece of shit GameGuard software to even be allowed to shut down processes without the user's knowledge or permission, especially when those processes are critical to the proper function of the operating system!

So this is the bottom line: until Sega of Japan gets their shit together and fixes this problem, I am done with PSO2. Since I'm an American, I realize they probably don't care about what I do, but I'm confident that there are plenty of Japanese players saying the same thing.

In the meantime, I will spend my time looking for a way to play PSO2 without running GameGuard. I am tired of putting up with this shit and I will not tolerate it fucking up my PC anymore.

Also, I sincerely hope that Sega of America is watching this debacle and taking notes. If this situation is allowed to repeat itself on the US/EU version, then fuck it – I won't play. And I'm probably not the only one saying this, either. GameGuard is a renegade piece of shit malware program and should be wiped off the face of the earth forever.

Rant over. I'm out of here.

GameGuard Rollback

After the PSO2 GameGuard update earlier this week, I posted a small rant about GameGuard's incredible ability to protect users from their own PCs.

It turns out that not being able to open Volume Mixer was the least of my worries. Other PSO2 players reported BSODs and frozen computers. The update apparently even caused Windows to report itself as "not genuine" in some cases.

Thankfully, Sega noticed the problem. A GameGuard update was issued today that appears to roll back this week's Windows-breaking change. Sega is encouraging players that experience problems with GameGuard to send a report; details can be found by clicking the link above.

I'd like to hope that this is the first step in getting GameGuard removed entirely, but I'm not holding my breath.

Yes, GameGuard Still Sucks

Last night I decided that I would listen to other music while playing PSO2 for a change. Unfortunately, I was having a hard time hearing the game's sound effects over my music, even after cranking the sound effects up to 100% in-game. So I thought I'd go into the Windows Volume Mixer and turn up the game's master volume. Easy enough, right?

Nope. A recent GameGuard update now blocks access to the Volume Mixer while PSO2 is running. Attempting to open it generates the nifty window you see above instead.

It is still a mystery to me as to why online games continue to use the piece of shit that is nProtect GameGuard. It's well documented that GameGuard is useless, and the recent NPC incident is further evidence of that. In fact, GameGuard seems to do a better job of blocking innocuous programs (like Volume Mixer) than malicious ones.

Companies like Sega that produce multiplayer online games need to wake up and find a solution that is better than GameGuard. An in-house developed anti-cheat system that is integrated into the game software would probably do a much better job. In fact, anything would.

Alternatively, I implore developers of antivirus software to take notice of GameGuard and do something about it. It has all the characteristics of a common computer virus, so why not label it as such? Maybe then companies that use GameGuard will think twice about using it in their next game.

Everybody Relax

Earlier this week, Sega of Japan apparently updated the Terms of Service for Phantasy Star Online 2 to mention that connections to the game servers from outside Japan were no longer allowed (including via proxy). This sent the PSO-World forums into a panic and caused people to invent all kinds of crazy rumors about IP bans.

To make matters worse, gaming blog Kotaku apparently picked up on this community freak-out and posted their own poorly-worded take on the issue.

Here's the bottom line: despite what Kotaku and the folks on PSO-World would have you believe, nobody has been banned from the game servers for living outside Japan. So log on and play (after downloading the huge content patch), have fun, and RELAX!

So Long, Phantasy Star Universe

When it was announced that the Xbox 360 Phantasy Star Universe servers would be shut down, many expected that they could simply jump over to the Japanese PC servers. If Phantasy Star Online Blue Burst was any indication, the PSU servers in Japan would stay up long after the US/EU servers shut down.

Not this time.

Sega of Japan has announced that the PC servers for Phantasy Star Universe will be shut down on Thursday, September 27, just three weeks after the Xbox 360 servers go down for good. This will end all official online support for the game worldwide.

After Sega gradually phased out PSO support in the United States, Europe, and Japan, the end of PSU seems rather abrupt by comparison. Perhaps this is an admission that the game was not as good as Sega had hoped it to be. In any case, this means that the focus will now be on Phantasy Star Online 2 only, which hopefully translates into regular content updates and better support.

The Phantasy Star Universe era is about to come to an end. Hopefully the era of PSO2 will be more enjoyable and far less frustrating!

Sega Reveals First-Month PSO2 Statistics

Sega of Japan has released some statistics for the first month of official Phantasy Star Online 2 service.

According to an announcement post on the official Japanese Web site, over 730,000 people have registered to play the game as of Thursday, July 26. Approximately 200,000 of those accounts were registered after the game was released in Japan.

In addition, Sega says that the number of concurrent connections to the game peaked at over 91,000 players on July 7, three days after the game officially went live.

Because of this, Sega says that they are considering expanding Phantasy Star Online 2 service into other countries. The game has already been announced for release in the United States and Europe early next year.

Not mentioned was the number of accounts paying for premium content, though the announcement seemed to indicate that Sega is pleased with the free-to-play strategy so far. Hopefully the US/EU release will see similar success.