PC/PS2 bonuses start next week

Today GM Edward@Sega has announced that the bonuses for the PC/PS2 servers will start next week once MAG+ ends. Also in the post he states that the server will shut down midnight on March 31st.

Anyway here is a list of the bonuses:

- Super Holy / Three Star Luck -- All Players
- Weapon/Armor Synth Rate +20%
- Weapon Grind Boost +15%
- Vol Coins boost x10
- Free Beauty Salon / 50% discount clothes and parts
- Photon Art Experience Boost

I hope you weren't getting your hopes up for something interesting. I know I wasn't!

PC/PS2 "Thank You" Bonuses Coming

In a short posting on the official forums, GM Edward hinted at the fact that the PC/PS2 players will be seeing some bonus rewards after MAG+ ends. The bonuses will be offered as "thank you" gifts for playing the game.

It's a nice gesture, but one that seems rather empty and meaningless at this point. Any rewards that go into effect for the 2 1/2 weeks after MAG+ will ultimately be met with a server shutdown. Anything gained as a result of the rewards will be gone forever.

Found a super-rare weapon thanks to increased drop rates? It's gone at the end of March. Did you make it to LV170 thanks to the EXP boost? Sorry, your character's been deleted. Did you level that last Photon Art to 50? Too bad, it's been wiped out.

Of course, we don't know what the rewards will actually be, but why does it matter?

The best reward Sega could have given PC/PS2 players is better service and management of the game. They didn't, though, and here we are.

Are We Finished Yet?

Edward has announced that the PC/PS2 and Xbox 360 servers will be undergoing Friday morning maintenance to fix a number of bugs that surfaced in previous updates.

In addition, Edward also announced that the Photon Art boost that was supposed to have been in effect for the duration of MAG+ was not applied as planned. Rather than add the boost in Friday's maintenance period, Sega of Japan will be waiting until Friday, March 12 to put it into effect.

This means that for the remaining PC/PS2 players, whose days are already numbered, the PA boost will be in effect for approximately 2 1/2 weeks before the servers get axed. That's considerably less time than had previously been announced. I guess you could say that it's Sega's final "fuck you" to the PC/PS2 players.

It's not like it really matters anymore, though. Most PC/PS2 players (including this one) appear to have accepted the fate of the servers and have moved on to something else. Of course, that doesn't mean we're all happy about what's going on, but is there really any point in beating that dead horse again?

MAG+ is Bored

...according to this thread on the official forums.

But I suppose that's what happens when you stage an event with content we've already seen twice before. I wouldn't expect any updates until after MAG+ is over, and with the PC/PS2 server shutdown coming at the end of March, there's probably not much (if anything) coming until after those servers close.

Personally, I wouldn't expect much in the way of new content even after the PC/PS2 servers do close, so enjoy your bored MAG+ while you can!

Free play details clarified

GM Edward@Sega has posted today that PC/PS2 servers free play is available to anyone who had a subscription to PSU during its lifetime. This clears up Edward's original post where it was oddly worded to sound like you needed an active subscription to play for free until the servers closed.

Sega Blew It

There's not much more that can be done about this. Posted on the official forums, and discussed earlier right here on this blog, is the disappointing news that the PC/PS2 servers will be shut down at the end of March. Sega of America argues that there aren't enough players left to justify the cost of maintaining PC/PS2 servers.

I don't deny that there are very few players left on the PC/PS2 servers. How did we get to this point, though? How is it that the Xbox 360 community continued to thrive (and I'm using that term loosely) while the PC/PS2 servers continued to die?

People come and go from online games all the time, and this was to be expected with PSU, but the answer to this question is actually simpler than that: Sega of America killed the PC/PS2 servers. They blew it. Let's take a look back at some of the notable missteps:

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Leaving Moatoob locked at release. For three weeks after the game's initial release, the planet Moatoob remained unavailable while players ran around in just a handful of missions on Parum, Neudaiz, and the Guardians' Colony. Over that three weeks, the population declined from multiple full universes (at release) to just one or two. Yes, the Xbox 360 community also had to deal with this, but you can't argue the fact that this had a negative effect on the game right from the start.

Rampant item duping. Shortly after the Moatoob fiasco, some PC/PS2 players discovered a glitch that allowed them to dupe Scape Dolls and sell them for ridiculous amounts of money. The money soon spread to the rest of the community through the sale of elemental photons. The economy was permanently ruined, and Sega sat back and did nothing. Some players jumped ship.

Room hacking. Later in the game's first year, another exploit surfaced on the PC/PS2 servers that allowed a player to enter another player's room and access it as if it was their own. Players reported valuable items stolen from their shops. Sega acknowledged the problem and tried to fix it, and although the script kiddies were eventually banned, most players were never adequately compensated for their losses.

Error 65. Perhaps the most legendary screw-up in the history of the PC/PS2 servers began in April 2008, shortly after the start of Maximum Attack G, the latest in-game event. Sega's billing system for PSU had been fairly unreliable to this point, but during this event it finally kicked the bucket for good. Players whose subscriptions were up for renewal found themselves unable to log in for weeks. The situation got so bad that Sega decided to let PC/PS2 players into the servers for free while they tried to solve their billing server problems. Unfortunately, this left locked-out players with about one week to enjoy the event.

Sega responded by promising that MAG would be extended, but shocked players when the event was removed at the end of the originally allotted time period. The event came back nearly three months later. For many, this was too little, too late.

Lack of updates. The months following the second MAG event brought virtually no new content. Canceled server maintenance periods were a common occurrence. We bitched about the lack of updates on this blog for most of November 2008. There's not much motivation to play when the content you've got is getting old and overly repetitive.

The Xbox 360 demo. One of the perks arguably keeping the Xbox 360 community alive is a demo server that is available to Xbox Live Gold subscribers. Sega of America held various "demo weekend" events to get players to try the game out, and even offered rewards to subscribers as thanks for doing so. Xbox 360 players received a Tails statue, a Knuckles statue, Real Handgun and Real Handspear weapons, and a NiGHTS statue during some of these "demo weekends". PC/PS2 players eventually got most of these rewards, but not until months later.

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These certainly aren't the only issues the PC/PS2 servers faced over the last few years, but they are the most notable. Now, as the servers are scheduled to shut down in the next couple months, Sega of America will likely lose a number of PSU subscriptions permanently. Many players (including myself) invested a lot of time in the PC/PS2 game and are not interested in rerolling on Xbox 360.

In addition, the majority of PC/PS2 players are most likely playing PSU on a PC. The PC version of PSU is, without a doubt, technically superior to the Xbox 360 and PS2 versions. I imagine that there are a lot of PC players that do not want to go to the Xbox 360 and suffer the lag and slowdown problems that were not present on their PCs.

I understand Sega's reasons for deciding to shut down the PC/PS2 servers, but there is no way to spin this news in a way that will make players see Sega of America in a positive light. It would be nice if Sega could just patch the client to connect to the Japanese servers... but everyone knows that Sonic Team would never allow that.

In the meantime, free play for PC/PS2 players begins January 29 with the final event, Maximum Attack G+. After that, I guess it's back to Phantasy Star Online...

Who knew PSO would outlast the game that was designed to replace it, anyway?

PC/PS2 servers = dead

GM Edward@Sega has announced some bad news today: the PC/PS2 servers will be closing March 31st.

Apparently January 29th is the last day to subscribe and the beginning of free play on the servers but sadly you can only have access to the free play if you subscribe by the 29th. So I doubt there will be any change in the activity of the server during the free play period before the shutdown.

Update (1/22): Free play is available to anyone who had a subscription to PSU.

It's a shame to see the servers go but with the way the population was the last few months I'm not surprised that this finally happened. I'm annoyed to see it end this way because PSU it pretty much dead to me even with the Xbox version still around. Unless Sega offers some sort of character transfer I won't even consider playing it.

Also before I go: I found part of Edward's second post funny...

While sad, this is also a huge opportunity for the Xbox 360 version of the game. Players here are well aware that the Western version of the game has fallen behind the content schedule for the Japanese version of the game, but in focusing our resources on just a single version now, we do have the chance to actually close that gap.

...because this will not happen.

(New?) Content: MAG+ Begins January 29th

Happy New Year! It's been nearly two months since anything has been posted on this blog, but that's not without good reason. Since the last post on November 23, Phantasy Star Universe has seen a new party mission, a new story mission, and difficulty updates to The Egg Thieves and The Dark God.

A small patch to fix some bugs was also released in December.

Not much else has really happened, other than the GM-run Great Gurhalian Cup time attack competition. There hasn't been much true "new" mission content to hit the US/EU servers in the last few months.

It doesn't look like that will be changing within the next two months, either. GM Edward announced today on the official forums that the first event of 2010, Maximum Attack G+, will begin on January 29. This has been hotly anticipated by the US/EU community for some time now.

However, MAG+ isn't really itself new: think MAG with an additional difficulty level and some small new bonuses. There will be only one event mission (not counting the boss), as was the case the first (and second) time around. I understand that it will be a nice diversion from grinding the same old mission locales, at least for a little while. How long will the community's interest in this version last, though?

In any case, while I'd rather see Sega implement some other things (like the new "expansion" content -- minus the cash shop), it's nice to see that the US/EU community continues to get the content the Japanese got -- even if it is months/years later.

The Great Gurhalian Cup Returns

Thanksgiving is fast approaching. You might remember that around this time last year, PSU GMs announced a new time attack competition known as the Great Gurhalian Cup. It was basically a GM-run event in which teams of players raced one another through various missions, in a tournament-bracket format, to be declared "time attack champions" and win some prizes.

If you were wondering whether or not the competition would return in 2009, you were probably the only one. But don't worry! The second annual Gurhalian Cup time attack tournament has been announced on the official PSU forums. The team rules have changed for this year's competition, and they're pretty confusing, so be sure to read the announcement thread if you're interested in entering the contest.

Overall, I think it's nice that Sega of America does things like this to mix up the grind and generate some renewed interest in the game. However, as I've said all along, events like these really don't excuse the lack of content updates.

Last year, PSU GMs said that the Gurhalian Cup would not interrupt regularly scheduled content updates. A lot of people (including myself) were skeptical, but fortunately we were proven wrong. This year's event actually doesn't start until January 2010 -- hopefully the game will see some new content before then. At this point in the game's lifetime, when a lot of players are leaving, it would be devastating to use this event as a method of holding players over until the next update.

Here's hoping that we'll see new content alongside the Gurhalian Cup in 2010!

Little Bit Ridiculous

A point of contention in the PSU community lately has been whether or not to offer digital downloads of the PSU client to potential players/subscribers. I suppose this is because hard copies of the game have become incredibly hard to find, and console players whose discs are failing after long periods of use are losing out.

On the official Sega forums, GM Edward has started a thread in which he asks for suggestions on a digital download feature for PSU. Personally, I think it's a great idea -- it could provide a way to get new players into the game -- but that's not why I decided to write this blog entry.

A post in the thread shows that you can still get hard copies of the original PSU game on Amazon -- for a price. I couldn't believe what they were charging for the Xbox 360 version, so I had to check it out myself.

(Click the image to view it full size)

That's right. Now you too can own the original Phantasy Star Universe for the low, low price of $113.99! Honestly, who would be stupid enough to buy this?