SEGA Officially Announces Western Release of PSO2 in 2013

Good to know that there's an English version is on the way... Good luck SEGA!

In my opinion, PSO is, and has always been, a rather awkward game to localize. The voices & story cut-scenes is cheesy even in Japanese. The art, style, animation & body-language is definitely Japanese and any amount of voice talent won't be able to shake off the notion that something is wrong with whatever English dubs they add to it...
(It's why I think most dubs for anime is awkward as well... )

I'd ask them to leave an optional Japanese audio for the international crowd as well, though they haven't done so in any previous PSO games as far as I know... :/
(is a global license for the Japanese voices too expensive? )

The English fan-base has become very hard to please, and a lot of them have already settled down in the JP servers.

Dragging the English community from the Japanese servers and into the international servers will be tough. Deliver sub-par English voice dubs (again), and it'll be even tougher.
All in all, I'll wish them the best of luck, cause while I love the PSO franchise, I really think they'll need it. They got their work cut out for them, and it won't be easy.

Excited, but if the servers aren't shared, I will not be switching unless I will be able to transfer my character data, but hopefully we will get shared servers and will be able to just toggle for English.

Please Tell Sega Of America that if they're going to go ahead and put up an English site for PSO2, at least speed back up the original music! >.<
Global Servers, PLEASE! I do not want to be left behind in updates like it was with PSU.
Early 2013?! NO! Just translate the subtitles, and all the items and miscellaneous stuff into English. You don't have to give us Dubbed voice overs, it will save you time and money.
That is way too long for an English translation. How much money do I need to give you to hire translators?
Bring back "Word Select" so that we may be able to communicate with people from other languages like we did in PSO.
And last but not least, make the "Arks Cash" shop prices more reasonably priced.
On a side note, I want to testify that I was able to play PSO2 JP just fine in my hotel room with my 4G connection from Verizon. I don't know about At&T's 3G service for the Vita, however,
since they fixed the issue with server read/write, that means less lag, and fast warps. 3G on Vita for PSO2 now looks more promising, let's just hope the graphics on Vita will look just as great or better than PC.

I think you're confused.
You mean "Global".

Well historically Ruby Eclipse has ALWAYS been at NYC Comic Con with the Sega booth hmmmmmmmmm possibly a NA demo that is playable there? I CANNOT WAIT!!!!!!

This is one of the happiest days of my gaming life.

The game has options in it for utilizing different languages and if we all can remember.....Original PSO had shared servers

Guys lets hope for the best. There are many hoping for the shared servers. we all know how painful it will be to start over with our characters. some may deal with ok, but others may not. So, Sega this goes out to you guys. if you have ears, listen and lets make this game the bomb Digity!!. :P We still Love you Sega. Dont be discouraged. You guys are still on my number one list. i know you guys can pull it off for America. Shared Servers and character transfer will make ALOOOT of people happy. i just wanna set that out there. thnx Sega for listening to your fans. hope to see the best yet to come.

Le gasp!!!! To hell with Jp D: Its amazing and all that jazz but jp lacks one thing that made Western Psu all the worthwhile, it lacked the Pouny experience

If we dont share servers with the Haters see ya next year.

I think you hit a major nail on the head. not only is Japanese culture and socialization vastly different from Western, the content of their narrations can differ in subtle ways that even translators or re-writers can, and do miss, To dramatically different ends, most of the time.
I am not sure about the western audience not filling up. I didn't know anyone on Xbox live that had played early PC release of PSU. I know some people did, but the mass amount of people I would meet up with only played it on Xbox, which means that post-western release, there were still tons of people jumping onboard, even if it was pay-to-play. with this title, being free-to-play, I think their western release will garner tons of players. the ratio of hardcore to casual players will probably be inverse to what it is now, but I still think it'll fill up quickly.

This makes me worry. If it takes Sega a year to localize the PC version. Then the Vita version which is gonna be out around 2013 in Japan, will be localized in 2014?
I hope this isn't the case.

"Oh no, I'm gonna have to start over!" "Aww, come on, I wanna play with the japanese!" "OMG, separated servers from JP version?! FAIL!" "I'll stick to the JP servers, thank you!"

Aww, come on! Don't say you didn't saw this one coming! If you feel such a royal need to speak with those who type in moon runes, go ahead and stay on the JP servers. The game's F2P, which most likely mean weaker servers than a P2P game, most of the times resulting in separating the servers regionally. Just be grateful the japanese ain't blockin' all our western IPs, like Nexon does!

tl;dr: Quit yer yappin' about a game for which you won't even need to pay for!

With the JP PSU they have items from Phantasy Star Portable 1, 2, and Infinity. We have a total of 16 events on the 360 servers. The JP PC has 24 events. We only have 1/16 the content that the JP servers have. And now OUR servers are being closed down, while the JP servers are still going to be up. Some people say its Sega of Americas' fault we aren't getting the full updates. But I think its both Sega of America and Sega of Japan. So we will have to just wait and see. Sega said they will have global servers.

I'm happy with the Japanese version to be honest so I can't see me putting much (if any) time into a Western release, which given Sega's track record will be taken down years before the JP version. I looked past it with PSOBB but I've been through the same thing twice now so I'll stick with a version I know will last.

Ever since the original PSO on the Dreamcast, the English localizations have lagged behind the Japanese releases. Quite a lot of downloadable missions and whatnot was never released in English at all, most recently the 3rd PS game for the PlayStation Portable, "Phantasy Star Portable 2: Infinity"
I would hope that microtransactions gives Sega incentive to actually release content in the states.

Hell yeah! As the others have stated, expected but still uber excited! I also think it's cool that the PSO2 website links back to PSO-World. Nice job guys! You sure are in SEGA's good books!

Heck Yea!!! ^_^

But if its F2P, then why does it matter if u play on the NA or JP version... you dont really lose anything even if history does repeat itself. I just like to actually understand what im doing. Even if the servers are low in population, thats just more room for more people who havent played PSO or PSU to join in and love the game and bring even more people to play with me and anyone else who wants to play in an english environment. I for one will be playing in the english server where i can actually understand whats going on, get in the game and not wait 30 mins to finally make a character or get back in the game after you log off.

no of course not i just signed up a pso fansite for shits n giggles lol.......