One year ago today, Sega pulled the plug on the PC/PS2 PSU servers in the United States and Europe. Affected players were reflecting on their time in the game, moving to the Xbox 360 servers, or just moving on.
At the time of the shutdown, PSU GMs had argued that the closure of the servers would clear the way for faster content updates and the potential to catch up with the Japanese version of the game. Since the PC/PS2 servers were shut down, the Xbox 360 servers have received the supplemental update, a handful of missions, and the Absolute Zero event. Last week, the "Spring Event", aka the Third Anniversary Thanks Festa, appeared on the regional servers.
That might seem like a fair amount of new content. However, in the same time frame, the Japanese game has received even more events, and a third expansion for the game has been announced. Therefore I would argue that the pace of updates has not really changed at all; in fact, I think we might be further behind now than we were at this time last year.
Perhaps the PC/PS2 servers were not profitable; I suppose that would be sufficient justification to pull the plug for any major company. However, I don't think that the server shutdown has provided any long-term benefit to the Xbox 360 servers, aside from a population increase due to the migration of PC/PS2 players. So while those servers may stay around for at least the next year or so, players shouldn't get their hopes up when it comes to playing catch-up with the Japanese.
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