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.)