PSO2 Alpha Test Eligibility Details Announced for PSU Players

The eligibility requirements have been announced for Phantasy Star Universe players wishing to get in on the Phantasy Star Online 2 alpha test later this year.

Drawing chances will be distributed in three waves. To receive a chance to "win", players must have an account on the Japanese PC/PS2 servers (obviously) and meet the following criteria during the eligibility period:

• The player must be subscribed to the Premium Course option, or
• The player must have purchased at least ¥3,000 (roughly $36.45 USD) in Guardians Cash
  

The first wave of chances will be distributed on Thursday, February 24, and will be given out to all players who meet the eligibility criteria between January 1 and Sunday, February 20.

The second wave of chances will be distributed in April, and will be given out to all players who meet the eligibility criteria between February 21 and March 31.

The final shot at a drawing entry will occur in May, and is open to all players who meet the eligibility criteria between April 1 and May 30. This eligibility period will be open to PC PSU players only (though it wasn't really mentioned whether PS2 players would be eligible at all).

Former Phantasy Star Online Blue Burst players are also eligible. Players who purchased a Hunters License at any point during 2010 will receive a chance to "win" at some point in the future. Obviously this is also for players of the Japanese game only.

The official Phantasy Star Online 2 Web site has been updated with all of the necessary information. It's nice to see the slow trickle of information increasing ever so slightly! Now, if only we could get some screenshots...

PSO2 Alpha Test to Begin This Summer

An event related to the upcoming Japanese release of Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity provided some interesting information about the near future for Phantasy Star Online 2.

During today's event, PSO2 producer Satoshi Sakai announced that an alpha test for the game would take place in the summer. A contest will be held to determine who gets to participate in the test. Players that purchase a first-run copy of Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity (in Japan, obviously) will receive a code to be used in the PSO2 alpha test drawing. Japanese Phantasy Star Universe and Phantasy Star Online Blue Burst players will also be eligible for the drawing, though no additional information has been provided on how this will work.

This is very promising news. Perhaps the release of PSO2 isn't as far off as we all think! Now if there was only a way for US/EU players to get into that alpha test...

Source: Phantasy Star Online 2 Alpha Test Kicks off This Summer

Rewards as Content

I don't typically post about content updates anymore. Maybe that's because I don't play the game anymore (if you think I play on the Xbox 360 you obviously don't read this blog enough). Maybe it's because I just don't care anymore. However, I spotted the update news for this week on the official forums and I felt obligated to write something about it.

The update itself is pretty minimal. In addition to a GAS update and Valentine's Day lobbies, GM Edward announced that the rewards from Absolute Zero would be arriving this week.

...That is, some of the rewards would be arriving this week. Specifically, the item rewards, PA experience boost, shop discounts, and casino bonus are slated to be added. The other rewards -- 3* Luck, synthesis boost, and grind boost -- will be coming at an as yet unannounced date.

Apparently the reward distribution news did not sit well with players, because within 20 posts Edward was right back in the forums trying to justify the decision. I can understand how Sega could spin this as a decision to "benefit the players" -- split up the rewards and the players have more time to enjoy them. That makes sense, and I don't think it's such a bad thing to do. If all the rewards were given together I bet you'd see somebody complain on the forums about having too many rewards to take advantage of in only a 2- or 3- week period.

However, if the next maintenance period comes and the remaining rewards are listed as the only content update, you can bet that the community will not be happy. Edward claims that this won't happen; whether it does anyway remains to be seen. I just don't think anybody (myself included) would put it past Sega to do such a thing to extend the life of the game another month.

In any event, the players in the forum thread raged for awhile before settling down and talking about the upcoming content. Hopefully Sega won't release the rest of the Absolute Zero rewards as a standalone update, because if that happens the player reaction will be quite different next time.

JP PSU Gets a Third Expansion; PS2 Support to be Removed

Sega of Japan announced on Thursday that Phantasy Star Universe would be receiving a third expansion update that includes new environments and missions for the game. Images of some new areas were posted with the announcement on the JP PSU Web site.

In related news, Sega also announced that PS2 support for PSU will be dropped after March 31, 2011, one year to the day after the US/EU PC/PS2 servers shut down. PS2 players are being encouraged to upgrade to the PC version of the game, which is a free download.

These announcements are great news for PC players of PSU in Japan, and in my opinion, even better news for potential future players of Phantasy Star Online 2. With this news, Sega seems to be indicating the direction they are interested in taking for the next iteration of the series, and this is a great start.

Once PS2 support for Japanese PSU has been removed, players will only be able to play the game online on a PC. It's no coincidence that Sega then decided to give players some real new content for the PC version. Clearly the game developers have realized that the consoles are holding back the development and expansion of the PSU world. This causes the game to become dull and boring, and as a result, players leave.

If this is in fact the case, a console release of PSO2 looks very much in doubt, which would be fantastic. For several months, I've been arguing the potential consequences of putting PSO2 on the consoles. The only way to create a truly immersive, expandable game world is to release the game only on the PC.

Recently, it was also discovered that Phantasy Star Online 2 is further along in development than many people may think. Hopefully, this means that a release in 2011 is not out of the question (at least not for Japan, anyway). And as we all know, the game is still only slated to be released on the PC, so perhaps that's more validation that Sega is interested in keeping the game alive with new content for a long time like it is now apparently doing with PSU.

As a side note, the odds of seeing the new PC content arrive on Xbox 360 someday are very, very slim. Yes, the Xbox 360 has a hard drive, but it sounds like this content is being developed for the PC specifically and I would be very surprised if Sega of Japan ever made the decision to port it to the Xbox 360. Of course, you never know...

Forum Oddities: PSU GotY Edition

2010 is coming to a close, and the Web site MMORPG.com has opened the voting for its annual MMORPG of the Year award. Instead of limiting voters to a small list of games, the site has provided a huge list of currently active online RPGs to select from.

The list really is quite large, so I guess it shouldn't be that surprising that Phantasy Star Universe is somehow on it. I've never even heard of most of the games on that list. (Ignore the fact that PSU is not technically an MMORPG and therefore shouldn't even be a choice.)

However, I was a little surprised when I came across this thread on the official Sega forums asking PSU players to vote for the game as the best of 2010. Why would anyone want to do this?

The game is over four years old and struggling to maintain its player base, thanks in large part to Sega's day-to-day decision making and management of the servers (and the community in general). In just this past year, the community endured a continuing lack of updates, sporadic network outages, billing issues, and a permanent server shutdown.

Then there's the issue of server population. At any given moment, the number of people playing PSU online is equal to less than one percent of the population of people playing World of Warcraft, Aion, or any of the other large pay-to-play MMOs. That's not even a scientific estimate, but it's probably accurate. PSU is a niche game, and will remain that way forever.

Finally, you could make the argument that Sega is not really releasing new content for PSU anymore (meaning new environments / enemies / etc). Yes, the supplemental update has been released and is providing players with some new equipment, but Sega is not doing anything to expand the PSU world, and that probably won't change now that Phantasy Star Online 2 has been announced.

That said, if you'd like to think you're being clever, or if you want to try and screw with the results a little (good luck -- see the server population discussion), head over to MMORPG.com and cast your vote for Phantasy Star Universe as MMORPG of the Year 2010! (You have to have an account there to vote.)

Absolute Zero is Live

Absolute Zero officially began today, and an event site listing the kill count and unlockable rewards is now available. This event differs from recent ones in that much of the reward information is already displayed, but the kill counts required to earn the rewards is unknown.

In a move that I found to be surprising, Sega of Japan has decided that Absolute Zero will run for a ridiculous seven weeks, until January 21, 2011. That's just enough time to get bored with the event missions about five times over. Whatever happened to the short (i.e. month-long) events, anyway? Is Sega just trying to get players to hang around as long as possible?

Oh, and one last thing -- it seems the Xbox 360 is incapable of handling some of the Absolute Zero missions, as evidenced in this warning by PSU GM Edward. Apparently you might (read: will) experience massive slowdown in the first block of Frozen Flowers. According to Edward, the mission is "much better" by Block 2 (though I'm not really sure what that means).

Of course, to fix the slowdown problem, simply play the mission with the camera pointed at the ground the entire time. That's a lot of fun! Or, you could play the PC vers- oh, I'm sorry, I forgot -- you can't. What a shame.

For more information on Absolute Zero, check out the event page linked at the top of this post.

Time for Absolute Zero

When Sega has good PSU-related news to announce, it doesn't take very long to get it out to the masses. So when PSU GM Edward took the unusual step of announcing a content update on a Monday afternoon, it should have been pretty clear that this would be no ordinary maintenance week.

Friday's maintenance period will kick off the long-awaited Absolute Zero event on the regional servers. PSU GMs had been hinting at the arrival of this event for awhile, and it doesn't really come as a surprise that Sega chose this week to start it.

Though no end date for the event has been announced as of yet, my guess is that it will probably run for five weeks, until January 7th, 2011 (unless Sega enjoys doing maintenance on New Year's Eve -- I know I wouldn't). By doing this, Sega can basically finish any mid-event maintenance on the 17th or 24th of December and then take off for the holiday. This also gives Sega the chance to reel some former players back in for awhile during the hectic holiday release season. (Of course, whether they stay after the event ends is another story altogether, but...)

On the other side, players will be happy to know that they'll actually get something to do during a month where Sega has not typically been forthcoming with new content for PSU. Absolute Zero is a Maximum Attack-style event with a global kill counter and unlockable rewards, which might help keep players motivated. An event Web site, which normally accompanies this type of event, will not be available until after Friday's maintenance.

Only one question remains to be answered: Can Sega hold this event without some kind of catastrophic failure or server problem? Based on the current track record, I wouldn't be too sure, but you never know!

PSU Network Lag, Now and Forever

After several weeks of no updates, things might be temporarily looking up again on the US/EU PSU servers. Friday's maintenance period kicked off another GBR -- this time on the Guardians' Colony -- and added the autumn lobbies. Plus, with the Absolute Zero event looming on the horizon, there's some hope that players might be able to stay occupied through the holiday season.

However, it's not Sega's style to hold events without some kind of huge server issue, and it looks like we have the potential for another one here. For the last month, players have been reporting irritating lag spikes that have dropped whole universes in some cases.

Things were so bad last weekend that there were actually prolonged server outages. Compensation is planned but so far nothing has been announced.

Call me crazy, but I don't think it's too much to ask to be able to play a cooperative online game without fear of being randomly disconnected or dropped from the server "just because". PSU GMs have apparently been making an effort to pinpoint the problem by surveying users, but it's been almost a month now and very little has changed.

Periodic network outages and connection drops are nothing new, either. PSO: Blue Burst players will remember the infamous 906 errors that occurred for months leading up to the shutdown of those servers.

The bottom line is that Sega should be doing more to ensure that players don't leave the game because of annoying network problems. The upcoming event will bring idle players back, but only if Sega can get things in order before then.

Phantasy Star Portable 2 news

So I've been busy and haven't wrote anything here in awhile and since I felt I haven't posted enough like Minus I wanted to post this and it probably contains information you already know about... BUT YOU'LL HAVE TO DEAL WITH THAT OK!?

Anyway, I was pretty disappointed that Sega ruined PSP2's online mode right off the bat. Yes that's right the code for online that came with the game was useless! Oh, but don't worry Ruby said they are working on a fix! I have no idea if they got it working yet but the damage is already done. This is probably the fastest I've seen an online Phantasy Star game get ruined. Sure it was bound to happen but at least the online code could have helped kept off pirated copies of the game.

Next the game seems to have a few glitches. The UMD version of the game seems to have the install "corrupt." I use the word "corrupt" loosely because from my experience it seems that the game randomly shuts off the install data in a mission and once you complete it you are able to just turn it on again. It's pretty annoying and should be fixed. Also there seems to be a freezing issue with the mission Awoken Serpent once you enter the boss warp. This should have never been and definitely must be fix.

Also it looks like the game has no DLC, free and paid (I didn't care about the paid stuff anyway). It seems the English version of the game changed the way some items were obtained so it's looking very unlikely that this content will be released. I have no idea why they took this route. The DLC missions are FREE for the Japanese version of the game so why not just put it on the disc and leave it at that?
There is a way to use the Japanese DLC on the English version of the game though. Besides the mission text being in Japanese for the new content it seems it also updates a few English quests into Japanese, also there are issues playing online with people who do not have the DLC. I haven't tried using this so if you try it do so at your own risk.

And lastly, the nice folks over at PSUPedia released the full list of passwords for PSP2. I thought this was pretty nice, and much better than Sega's slow release of them (PSU updates anyone?). Although Clumsy wasn't too thrilled about this, and compared to them a cheat site (although he later changed his wording on the matter). Lastly he said "hacking out content is killing the game, killing the community, and hurting the franchise." I agree with the first and last statement but in all fairness I'm pretty sure the community is killing the community. Also in this case the "hack" didn't hurt anyone so I don't see what the big deal is compared to some of the stuff that went on in PSO and PSU.

PSO2 Console Versions Possible? Let's Hope Not

Yeah, I realize that I've been posting a lot of PSO2 news/comments on this blog lately. Any new PSO2 news is a lot more interesting than another PSU maintenance period skipped and another week of no new content.

So, on to the PSO2 news. Sega of Japan has posted job listings for software engineers looking to help develop Phantasy Star Online 2. (As a side note, this does not give me great confidence for a release anytime next year.)

Of particular interest are the qualifications required for the positions. According to the job listings, posted on Sega of Japan's corporate site and translated in a post on fansite PSO World, successful candidates will (among other things) have "experience in network game development for PC, PS3 and/or Xbox 360".

I found this to be a little troubling, since it indicates that Sega is at least considering console versions of PSO2. Such a decision could have disastrous effects on the success of the game in the West, primarily in regards to the international servers that many potential players (including this one) are hoping for.

So far, PSO2 has only been announced for the PC. Any console versions of the game that are announced could ruin the dream of international servers. A PS3 version of PSO2 does not necessarily mean certain doom, since PC and PS3 servers would probably be combined (as they were with PSU). However, if an Xbox 360 version of the game is announced, all bets are off. Microsoft's refusal to allow combined Xbox/PC/PS2/PS3 servers means that the server population would have to be split somehow. Of course, if that were to happen, Sega could break the population up into international PC/PS3 and international Xbox 360 servers. However, I think this scenario would be unlikely. Instead, I would expect regional servers and a return to the drama and infighting that made the PSU community so great.

Bottom line: Pray that Sega stays away from the consoles, especially Xbox 360, if you are hoping for worldwide servers.

There's also the issue of actual development. If Sega chose to release console versions of the game, which console would they use to develop the game? I won't care as long as Sega chooses the PC or the PS3. The Xbox 360 is the weakest link of the three platforms, and I think Sega would have a hard time making a really good-looking, expansive, next-generation game there.

Of course, this is all speculation. Sega may choose not to develop any console versions of the game at all. This is the smartest choice, but with Sega it's not a foregone conclusion. We can only wait, watch, and hope they get things right.