Any word on the US and JP servers being linked?

[BahnKnakyu]

If this is the case, then I'm gonna be jumping on the JP PSU bandwagon once it's released on August or whatever. ST only chose to segregate the servers for BB, so I'm hoping they think otherwise for this release and allow the JP players (whether they're REALLY JP players or not http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_wacko.gif ) to interact with the US players... ala FF XI.

[Ryna]

There has been no word yet. We hope to find out at E3.

[Zeota]

E3 is the key
It shall have all our answers
Very soon my friend

[linkzone]

i got E3 with gamestop so i can watch everything live or recorded. yes yes yes. so sweet.

[Kayai]

lol three rhymes with key so its kinda like poetry....about Phantasy Star Universe.....yeah

[PhotonCat]

They're most likely gonna be separate, at least I hope so.

[Spellbinder]

On 2006-05-06 20:43, PhotonCat wrote:
They're most likely gonna be separate, at least I hope so.



Why would you want them separated? http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_frown.gif

[ecchichuu]

Doesn't even matter to me. The closed beta Japanese servers lag pretty bad if you're not in Japan. Attacking stuff after it's already dead, getting hit by an enemy because your own attacks didn't register fast enough to put the enemy in hit stun, and lagging Japanese players down who would otherwise be playing smoothly... Lag is bad.

Unless ST is planning on using better servers during the official release, the lag would keep me on US servers.

[physic]

really didnt hear anyone complaining about lag, or see it in vids other than people who were on dial up

[Zeota]

Lag in PSO wasn't such an issue playing on JP servers, and I used to do it quite a bit in my final days/weeks of PSODC. I don't see why it would be such an issue here, unless the game is a strain on one's hardware. Besides, linking the servers would make us importers feel l33t. Though I'd much rather use this to help others than shove it in their faces.

[Tystys]

Meh, well, I think that PSU will be powerful enough for some of us to have to upgrade. I still say lag COULD be an issue.

[PhotonCat]

Why would you want them separated?

A. I want to play on servers located in North America. I do not want to play on foreign servers that will give me high latency and lag. Not to metnion that when there is any maintaince it will be at inconvenient times for North Americans if it is on a JP server.

B. Why mix different players from around the world when they can't even understand each other? The JP players will stick with playing with the JP players and EN players will stick to playing with EN players.
I have no idea why you would even want to play with ppl you can't talk to. "Cut-n-Paste" word chat is aggravating and can't be used for a normal converation.

C. The severs will become too crowded with ppl from all over the world. It needs to be limited. NA players with NA only, JP players with JP only.

If Sega is smart they will give North Americans there own servers. It is for the best to avoid unnessasary headaches.

[Spellbinder]

On 2006-05-07 14:04, PhotonCat wrote:

Why would you want them separated?

A. I want to play on servers located in North America. I do not want to play on foreign servers that will give me high latency and lag. Not to metnion that when there is any maintaince it will be at inconvenient times for North Americans if it is on a JP server.

B. Why mix different players from around the world when they can't even understand each other? The JP players will stick with playing with the JP players and EN players will stick to playing with EN players.
I have no idea why you would even want to play with ppl you can't talk to. "Cut-n-Paste" word chat is aggravating and can't be used for a normal converation.

C. The severs will become too crowded with ppl from all over the world. It needs to be limited. NA players with NA only, JP players with JP only.

If Sega is smart they will give North Americans there own servers. It is for the best to avoid unnessasary headaches.



Well, I hate to compare, but if it can work in FFXI, it can certainly work here.

In the time that I played that game, the only time I ever had a lag issue was when there was a connection problem in my neighborhood (or we forgot to pay the bill http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif). And as for maintenance, it doesn't matter what time they have maintenance, even if it was US only. People tend to play games at all times of the day, and someone will be inconvenienced eventually. It may not be you, but someone else on the other side of the country will be.

Why Mix? Maybe some people like the exposure. Or the fact that since there's such an time distance between the US and Japan, the night owls will still have a large population to mingle with. And even if we can't all understand them, maybe some people want to learn. Word Select may not have been the end all solution, but it worked well enough for me. And between my time playing with JP and US players, I picked up on it enough to have a good time regardless of who I played with.

And crowdedness? Now I don't mean this in a belittling way, but did you play this game when the JP and US servers were connected for a time? With all the ships and block you had to choose from, being crowded was hardly an issue, at least for me.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Spellbinder on 2006-05-07 14:32 ]</font>

[Aeternus]

I had much more fun playing with the japanese in PSO-DC than with americans to tell you the truth.

I hope they're linked... and no I never had lag issues on original PSO and that was on dial-up.

[Rubesahl]

In my case, I love playing with Japanese people. No I can't completely understand anything, especially if they use too much kanji but I have an idea and I can talk to them with romanji pretty well and most of them understand you. I like Japan and I like playing with Japanese players. I'm no fan of playing with US players to be honest, I preffer playing with Japanese and Europeans. I have my reasons and I do not mean to offend anyone, its just a matter of prefference >_> I'm not american anyways... -shrugs- When I learn Japanese fluidly I wouldn't be surprised if I just buy the Japanese versions and stay there even if their unlinked unless my friends ask me to move http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif

[PhotonCat]

Well, I hate to compare, but if it can work in FFXI, it can certainly work here.


No. It didn't work on FF11 either.

FF11 servers where located in Japan as I'm sure you know.
They had horrible latency most of the time if you where not in Japan. Mobs would spawn faster to JP players than to EN players.

When they had maitainence it would always be from like 12/1PM till like 5/6PM in the danm afternoon!

That's unnacceptable to an North American player. Sure that's fine to a JP player(cause it would be around 1AM to 6AM JP time) but it's not what an NA maintainance time should be.

Square was too lazy to make new servers in USA. I hope that Sega doesn't follow.

[Spellbinder]

On 2006-05-07 17:52, PhotonCat wrote:

Well, I hate to compare, but if it can work in FFXI, it can certainly work here.


No. It didn't work on FF11 either.

FF11 servers where located in Japan as I'm sure you know.
They had horrible latency most of the time if you where not in Japan. Mobs would spawn faster to JP players than to EN players.

When they had maitainence it would always be from like 12/1PM till like 5/6PM in the danm afternoon!

That's unnacceptable to an North American player. Sure that's fine to a JP player(cause it would be around 1AM to 6AM JP time) but it's not what an NA maintainance time should be.

Square was too lazy to make new servers in USA. I hope that Sega doesn't follow.



After playing the game for two years, I can honestly say I've had no problems with lag or latency in that game. Yes monsters do spawn faster for a player in Japan by about a split second, but the only time that really mattered is when you were doing HNM hunts trying to beat out your competition. Sometimes you won, sometimes you didn't but I doubt PSU will have anything along those lines were a small latency would cause problems.

And honestly, I couldn't care if there's a maintenance in the afternoon. I can find something to do. Even if they changed the hours of the maintenance, as I said before, someone will eventually become inconvenienced. There's nothing you, I, or anyone can do about it. People are going to want to play during maintenance time regardless. If it's in the morning, morning players will be angry, if it's in the evening, evening players will be upset. That's life, get over it.

[Hotsuma]

Well I understand Blue Burst took a drastic turn with seperate servers but... I would like to believe that Phantasy Star Universe would put the game back to it's international roots, and let people of multiple cultures and races interect under one "universe" to add a truely engaging experience. I mean playing with people from all over the state is all and good, but I think it gets even MORE interesting when you have people from around the globe and you get to experience a little bit of how they do things an their culture. It's always fun to learn new things I think, so it would be nice for the servers to be linked like back on PSO. If you lag then I guess you need to get off the 56k or need a better ISP. Sorry to bring up FFXI, but yeah, I had NO problem with lag in that game playing with JPs. Only time therwe was lag was like Dynamis when you have like 64 people on the screen at the same time with like 30 monsters as well. It was pretty chaotic those runs.. but regardless the rest of the game ran great with international players. And I mean c'mon, some JP players are great people and really nice and entertaining. I have many JP friends from FFXI, I say that is one of the better highlights of the game despite it's countless flaws(which I won't get it into -.-). I believe it would be a great gaming experience if you camn interact with people across the world, there's always a way to communicate, human nature isn't restricted by the spoken tongue alone.

[physic]

FFXI actually they didnt really have a horrible latency issue, it was in fact an illusion, based other things you can do that slow down how long it takes your monster to appear.
Once a NA linkshell learned about it, and all teh other things involved in spawning they became able to actually beat jp on pulls on my server, and specific guy who used to win was on dial up.
Even if teh latency was infact real, they were talking about milleseconds difference. Not horrible i cant play lag, but id like to say again that in FFXI actual connection tests showed that they had teh pings pretty much the same based regionaly. It turns out teh internal settings of teh computer and graphic options were more to blame.
As far as seeing no reason to play with teh jp, hey, you really wont have to, this is not a MMORPG in that sence. you will only have to play with 5 other people at a atime regardless. And yeah somethimes people had reason to play with teh jp, challenge mode comes to mind, though i found it one of teh funnest things to do, NA people didnt really want to play it to much till way after the jp did.
But really teh biggest reason to hope for connecetd servers is, not getting jerked, frankly as long as the servers are connected, everything that comes out for jp comes out for the NA the same day, No waiting months for that quest, or option, no special items they only gave in jp quests. Being able to run and do teh new quests for teh first time with everyone else with no faqs. thats teh best reason to hope for a jp eng connection.

[voxie]

I would really like to the servers linked but... Now that I think about it, with previous games, you hardly saw JP players come over to play with the US/EU peeps, it was more the other way round. And so from that/their point of view, I can imagine keeping the servers seperated.

I can imagine joining the JP side if the servers aren't linked too~

[kassy]

On 2006-05-07 14:04, PhotonCat wrote:

A. I want to play on servers located in North America. I do not want to play on foreign servers that will give me high latency and lag. Not to metnion that when there is any maintaince it will be at inconvenient times for North Americans if it is on a JP server.

B. Why mix different players from around the world when they can't even understand each other? The JP players will stick with playing with the JP players and EN players will stick to playing with EN players.
I have no idea why you would even want to play with ppl you can't talk to. "Cut-n-Paste" word chat is aggravating and can't be used for a normal converation.

C. The severs will become too crowded with ppl from all over the world. It needs to be limited. NA players with NA only, JP players with JP only.

If Sega is smart they will give North Americans there own servers. It is for the best to avoid unnessasary headaches.



Lol?

Did you play DC v.1? it worked fine, I don't need to constantly talk in game with other players to have fun, playing with JP players back in the day I did alright with symbol chat and word chat.

Having at least the option to play with JP players isn't going to hurt anyone if they create NA and JP servers which players can move freely between like they did with version 1.

[BahnKnakyu]

Latency isn't that much of an issue in FFXI. I have a friend who's currently playing it and when he interacts with the JP players the last thing people complain about is the foreign players' latency. And Spellbinder is right on the money - I want to be able to play with people from all over the world, right now on PSO I'm practically playing with people from everywhere except - you guessed it - Asia. I like the variety. I also want to see the courteous playing style of the JP players, since I've been told by US players who are currently in JP BB that cooperative play there's pretty good too.

Honestly, if ST/SoJ/SoA does care about the future worldwide PSU Community (please put your pitchfork down fellas), I would think there's almost nothing to lose with giving JP and US players an option to play together.

Anyway, anyone have any E3 info about it?

[vitius137]

the only game that i had a problem playing with other area people was maple story. i met some of the rudest, respectless and black hearted people there.... especially some people from other cultures do nothing but swear in half english and steal your items...........

im npot racist. thats just maple story, the community tends to get a lot better once you get out of the noob zone (exept for kill stealing mages)

[Reystradamus]

i think it would be interesting mixing servers...allowing everybody 2 play 2gether...isnt that the purpose of online gaming???especially RPGS...to meet other people....make new friends...help them out in a quest...i hope the servers are connected the more people the better!i dont think crowding will be a problem...its not like everybody will log on at the same time...

[Pob]

If there's anything like challenge-mode, the servers have to be linked. Not enough non-JP players play challenge!

[Dahilia]

Yeah. Link the servers so we can learn more about the world around us.
It's intresting to see how diffrent cultures, uh, waste Vol Opt...?

Since the game isn't all one linked world (I think? I didn't play beta), and more divided ships/planets/instances, I don't see how lag would be an issue with players from all around the world coming in (this is assuming each region has their own server which happens to be linked and in synch, instead of a bunch of servers in Japan everyone has to connect to).

But if they're to be divided up via region, no big loss or gain to me.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Dahilia on 2006-05-10 22:15 ]</font>

[Itsuki]

I'm npot racist. thats just maple story, the community tends to get a lot better once you get out of the noob zone (exept for kill stealing mages)
I don't mean to sound bad, but maple story is 'free' and thus attracts a different crowd then other games would. I'm not saying this is necessarily a good or a bad thing, but the average age level and maturity tend to take a hit. Also, if you get banned, its like "oh well, its free, I'll just make a new account."

As for lag. The ping for the servers was maybe 200-250ms? It wasn't all that significant. Also, you have to take into consideration that alot of things are done client side in PSU, just like in PSO. So lag is even less noticable. Yes, if you got hit, there was a quarter second delay before you took damage and got hit back, same thing alot of times with attacking, but it wasn't anything that really effected your skill. I think people with slower computers were more of a problem. Since that ended up causing monster location inaccuracies, and they'd effectively run slower, and they'd take forever to load bosses/floors, etc.

[VAL-0251]

I'm going to go down the list and respond to some of the points I see...this is in no particular order, and please, nobody take any of this stuff personally, I don't know you and I read the thread as one big stream, so I don't really know who said what.


I can just see a bunch of lag issues.
As a student in the Computer Science program of the 5th ranked engineering college in the United States, and a professional with both MCSE network administrator's and wireless certificates, this is truth.

Two factors influence this.
1) Distance
This is not just physical distance, this is the network proximity to the server. Your signal doesn't just go up into a satellite and get beamed back down where it's needed. It gets transmitted through many, many different connections and routers. Each of these connections are called 'hops'. For example, from my computer to pso-world, I need to go through 17 different connections. That's 17 corporate routers that need to look over and approve my transmission, and 17 sets of cables that need to be in tip-top shape for me to get the speed I pay for.

Going to Japan will inherantly take more hops than going to a server in North America for Canadians, Americans, and Mexicans. The inverse is also true. It is a geographical fact. If ANY ONE of those cables has ambiguous quality, or any one of those routers is getting hit hard and is overloaded, it results in massive lag. This is why many people will say they 'never had a problem' with lag on a certain game, whereas others have extreme lag problems that seem to plague only that game. This is also why certain games seem particularly dialup unfriendly.

2) Server load
Computers can only accept so many incoming connections at one time. It's a limitation of the operating systems that run them. Unless I remember incorrectly, most modern operating systems can handle on the order of 800 concurrent connections. Past that, you need to get into doing some crazy sorts of abstraction that will bring most computers to their knees. Modern MMOs will use well in excess of 800 connections as it is, and that is ignoring all the administrative access reserved connections that must be maintained for people like GMs. Compounding the problem by integrating servers will result in erratic performance; anyone who is lucky enough to have an actual socket will probably play fine. Anyone who gets caught up in that crazy abstraction...might not be so happy.

What all this boils down to is that if you want to integrate servers on a modern MMO with very high traffic, you're going to need extremely gutsy computers and extremely competant, 24/7 administrative support to respond to any problems, since, businesswise, you have all your eggs in one basket. Though you have to purchase MORE servers, it ends up being CHEAPER to go the split route; the equipment itself is cheaper, cost to power, and administrating the servers is far less of a headache.

Bottom line: Integrated servers are a bad idea from both a technical and business standpoint.


Well, I hate to compare, but if it can work in FFXI, it can certainly work here.
Forgive me, but if you would like to compare, I would like to point out that you would be hard pressed to come up with a worse analog. Comparing FFXI, a very mathematical, analytical, predictable, and overall 'slow' MMO to a platformer-action style of MMO like PSU is...well, it's worlds apart, to say the least. Aspects like distance, positioning, and timing are critical to PSO/PSU, whereas they are subdued greatly by the setup of FFXI. I'm not saying one way or the other is better; this is just how it is. 200ms might not seem like a whole lot when you have 1-2 mobs around you, striking at a 2 second attack speed for somewhat predictable damage, and you can punch a key to queue an attack for the next round easily, but I guarantee you will feel it in PSO when you have a bunch of Boomas crowding around you and you can't pull off a combo correctly.

As a more concrete example, 500ms lag in PSO is widely considered unplayable. In World of Warcraft and FFXI, it's an inconvience, but still quite doable. In World of Warcraft, I mainhealed 40-man dungeons with 500ms lag. Trying to do anything with 500ms lag in PSO:BB would result in a Mag's synchro rate going down very sharply.


In my case, I love playing with Japanese people. No I can't completely understand anything, especially if they use too much kanji but I have an idea and I can talk to them with romanji pretty well and most of them understand you.
Well, I'm sorry to say this so bluntly, but you are the exception, not the rule. Most people simply don't want to play with someone who can't understand them. Communication and teamwork, in addition to simply socializing, are integral to the fiber of the MMO; in many ways, that was the driving force behind the genre in the first place. It's a lot of work to try to be clear with people who don't speak your language, and it's even moreso to learn bits and pieces of the language. The long and the short of it is that most people boot up a game to have fun, and tangling with a language barrier is not most peoples's idea of fun. I get a kick out of coding in C/C++, but that doesn't mean I should put that into a game. It would simply frustrate people.

Also, as someone who's taken 25 credit-hours of Japanese at the college level (it's my minor; my field pays well for Japanese proficiency) and as someone who's lived in Japan for a summer...I can tell you that, no, they actually don't understand you. English education in Japan is about as token as Spanish education in America until the college level. Most Japanese can identify English by sound, and what it looks like on a piece of paper, but the vast majority of Japanese do not have even a kindergardener's comprehension of English. Not like I would expect them to understand, though; it's not exactly their mothertongue.

Then you also have the legal implications of this sort of thing. Back on Ultima Online, before the servers were forcibly segregated, Europeans, Asians, South Americans, and such, were more or less free to come and go as they pleased into North American shards. This was up until a Japanese man, feeling particularly funny, told a VERY obscene joke (which I will not repeat) to another player, who turned out to be a 12-year-old girl with a father looking over her shoulder. The relative sexual permissiveness of Japanese society when compared to American society meant that the Japanese person didn't think much of this, but the American father thought enough of it to bring a lawsuit against the owners of Ultima Online, WHICH HE WON.

Bottom line: Cultures will not mix without some jagged edges, and the owners will be responsible for the cuts resulting from those. They don't want that.


Well I understand Blue Burst took a drastic turn with seperate servers but... I would like to believe that Phantasy Star Universe would put the game back to it's international roots,
I'd like to point out that PSU does not HAVE any international roots, or ANY roots for that matter. The game is not even set in the PSO world; there is no Coral, no Ragol, no Pioneer 1 & 2. It's based off the Megadrive Phantasy Star, as I understand it. The game's roots are whatever the Sonic Team decides they are.


there's always a way to communicate, human nature isn't restricted by the spoken tongue alone.
No, but human patience very commonly is.


But really teh biggest reason to hope for connecetd servers is, not getting jerked, frankly as long as the servers are connected, everything that comes out for jp comes out for the NA the same day, No waiting months for that quest, or option, no special items they only gave in jp quests.
Do you realize the public relations disaster any one of these situations would be? Any developer or marketing professional so much as SUGGESTING something like this would likely be fired on the spot.

Further, what is there to change between localizations? The text? That is quite literally five minutes worth of coding work. Copying and pasting new text blocks from the translators's emails and committing the changes to the patch. Trust me on this, testing and developing are what I do for a living. This is not a valid fear in any form.


I also want to see the courteous playing style of the JP players, since I've been told by US players who are currently in JP BB that cooperative play there's pretty good too.
Uh...again, as someone who lived in Japan for a summer...Japanese players are not all courteous. In fact, many of them are outright racist. As a gamer for 16 years now, it was one of the most degrading times in my life to have my competancy as a gamer called into question because I am an American.


i think it would be interesting mixing servers...allowing everybody 2 play 2gether...isnt that the purpose of online gaming???
There are logical limits to everything; if there were not, it would be a valid assumption to say that the new puppy you got will eventually destroy a major metropolitan area by wagging his tail, because he's growing so fast.

In this case, the logical limits are the technical hurdles that make this sort of integration...tricky, at best, and outright ridiculous to support at worst, and the fact that, in any culture around the world, there will inevitably be some jagged edges. Someone will get offended by someone in another country, and then it will be Sega's problem. They are not in business to play arbiter in conflicts spanning half the globe. They are in business to make money.


i dont think crowding will be a problem...its not like everybody will log on at the same time...
Blizzard Entertainment, with World of Warcraft, did strict regional segregation. There is no way to log onto another region's servers, unless you use an illegally imported copy of the game (which is what the commercial gold farmers in China/Korea/Vietnam do).

They STILL had to COMPLETELY TERMINATE new character creation on many of their launch servers not long ago because the crowding was suffocating. This assertion is...too optimistic.

Folks, integrated servers are a bad idea, both for the end gamer and for Sega's business. Technical and legal reasons, both. Now, if they wanted to allow you to move freely between regional servers, that'd be fine. Considering you pay for the game, I think you should have the freedom to go wherever you please, and if you folks think you'd be more comfortable playing on the Japanese servers, then by god, you should be able to go there.

However, integrating them completely results in many technical, legal, and cultural ramifications that makes it a lot harder for many, many people to enjoy the game, and therefore makes it a lot harder for Sega to make money.

Take care, everyone.

[physic]

Hmm you bring up many points, and have some reasoning, but like everyone naturally does, you adopt a certain stance and reason why it should be so. The fact is if i could play on jp servers in pso on dial up with no noticeable lag, there is no reason i shouldnt be able to now. I played night after night in challenge mode, probably teh part of game requiring tehmost skill and use of reflexes, where lag actually mattered with japanese players.

The commucincation and culturual issues are really personal issues, many people here have been more offended by americans than by japanese. As for teh little girl, pso was a curse fest with people using periods to curse and having lewd symbol chats spammed in lobbies on the regular. A simple teen rating and a disclaimer will remove any liability the company has for players language or actions.


Do you realize the public relations disaster any one of these situations would be? Any developer or marketing professional so much as SUGGESTING something like this would likely be fired on the spot.

Further, what is there to change between localizations? The text? That is quite literally five minutes worth of coding work. Copying and pasting new text blocks from the translators's emails and committing the changes to the patch. Trust me on this, testing and developing are what I do for a living. This is not a valid fear in any form.

i never said it was logical or reasonable but it is in fact what happened on pso japanese had various downloadable quests that gave them various itmes that were never given to the NA.
PSO GC showed that they could in fact do all updates in realtime and release new things at the same time without a problem, yet if teh servers arent connected, I will bet you this would not be the case. I base that bet on the past history of pso, how for a certain quest to get rares from it you actually had to switch your language to japanese. With PSOBB as an example being best you can hope for with different servers, you would at best get everything 2 months after, this means the secret is out nothing is really a surprise.

Truthfully though I know very little japanese i was able to play with and even sort of converse with japanese players with word select. At times it was very fun to figure something new out in word select and be able to work with some one of a totally different background. At the end of teh day no one will force anyone to play with someone they dont want to play with, its my experience the japanese are gonna work harder not to be around NA than vice versa, you will lose nothing in that respect with connecetd servers. The only good reason to seperate servers is xenophobia

[Parn]

On 2006-05-11 01:14, VAL-0251 wrote:
Japanese players are not all courteous. In fact, many of them are outright racist.
Haha. It's funny because it's true. Nothing beats having Japanese players talk trash, only to get caught when your Japanese-speaking friend gets sick of it after half an hour of leveling in an experience party in Final Fantasy XI, and calls them out on it.

They're not all bad of course... I just hate this belief that many JRPG players have that Japan is some kind of freaking utopia. There are bad seeds everywhere.

[VAL-0251]

The fact is if i could play on jp servers in pso on dial up with no noticeable lag, there is no reason i shouldnt be able to now. I played night after night in challenge mode, probably teh part of game requiring tehmost skill and use of reflexes, where lag actually mattered with japanese players.
Again, if you happen to be in an area where you can connect to Japanese servers and play just fine, then more power to you if you want to go there. It's your money, your life, you're your own person and you have a right to your decisions.

However, forcing that decision on everyone else is a bad idea. Not everyone is as lucky as you; a bad connection somewhere in Oregon or the Yukon or Hokkaido or anywhere else that you don't have the misfortune of using will utterly ruin some poor player's experience, and there will be absolutely nothing he can do about it. This goes for North American players going to Japan and Japanese servers going to North America--it's a bad idea no matter where the servers are stored.

Once again, I think you should have the freedom to go over there if you please. You're paying for it, you have the right to make your own decisions within reason because of that. But unless you have an idea for changing/circumventing the basic technical fact of network proximity, don't integrate our servers.


The commucincation and culturual issues are really personal issues, many people here have been more offended by americans than by japanese. As for teh little girl, pso was a curse fest with people using periods to curse and having lewd symbol chats spammed in lobbies on the regular. A simple teen rating and a disclaimer will remove any liability the company has for players language or actions.

Firstly, yes, they are personal issues, but those that would prefer to play with Japanese players are--once again--the exception, not the rule. Again, basic, basic fact of human relaxation; when you want to relax, you boot up a game to have fun. Struggling to communicate is not fun for most people. Some folks get a kick out of it due to the cultural experience--this is why we should be allowed to connect to Japanese servers if we please.

Think of it this way: if you ran into a character on an integrated server who spoke only Swahili or the Ukranian dialect of Russian, would you be as pressed to try and play with them as you would a Japanese person? Probably not; in many ways, its very hard to care about them.

Most players simply don't care if someone is Japanese. They just want to play with someone who speaks their language and doesn't have obvious brain damage. It's not that extreme of a request.

Also, that happened on UO, not PSO. The extremely restrictive profanity filter, and the inability to turn it off, was likely done with at least some of that court case in mind.

Also, just FYI, the only ESRB ratings that currently protect games are the M and the AO ratings. If something happens in a T-rated game that shouldn't, even online, it's the company's problem when it's across country borders. Rating PSU Mature will inevitably damage sales because of the tightening restrictions on that rating in America.


i never said it was logical or reasonable but it is in fact what happened on pso japanese had various downloadable quests that gave them various itmes that were never given to the NA.
PSO GC showed that they could in fact do all updates in realtime and release new things at the same time without a problem, yet if teh servers arent connected, I will bet you this would not be the case.
Please post stronger supporting evidence than you did on this point. From what it seems like now, you're pointing out that they had this problem in the past, but fixed it in the most recent version of the game (GC), so there...is no issue anymore.

The text after this particular block is an example made irrelevant by the GC version, and a completely unsupported claim about BB. The patch notes I have managed to dig up are dated the same.


Truthfully though I know very little japanese i was able to play with and even sort of converse with japanese players with word select.
Most players are not willing to go through this sort of headache purely to play with others of a certain nationality. If you are, that is wonderful. That is why you should be permitted to go over to the Japanese servers. Forcing it on everyone who plays is a bad idea, however. My entire office at work is looking forward to PSU as a refreshing change from the slow, mind-numbing MMOs of WoW and FFXI, but I tell you truthfully that none of us want to work at communicating after 9 hours in the office. Personally, I don't care; I'm rated as Intermediate Medium proficiency in the language by the FLCA in America--it's not a huge chore to speak Japanese for me. But for my co-workers--and many, many other American gamers--it's the LAST thing they want to do on their entertainment time after a hard day at work.


At the end of teh day no one will force anyone to play with someone they dont want to play with,
Perhaps not, but you realize that, particularly in parties of 3 or more, there may be one person who is dying to play with a Japanese person, and thus invites him to an English speaking party, whereas his comrade is much less enthusiastic about not being able to scream for a heal or call for help. Then you have a peculiar double-bind where this player doesn't want this Japanese person in the party, but wants to stay in the party because he needs to hit a certain area/kill a certain mob/anything else. This is a major problem.

There's also the point of foreign grief players. In a purely English-speaking party, it's pretty easy to tell when someone is trying to grief you; if you tell them not to do something, and they do it anyway, that's a pretty good hint. Any foreigners, whether they be German, Japanese, Korean or Italian, can simply claim not to understand English and then do everything in their power to ruin your time at the game, and it will probably take you a lot longer to catch on. And if you think there haven't been people quitting over stuff like this, you are deluding yourself. Grief play is exactly what drove Blizzard to put an impenetrable language barrier into World of Warcraft. Companies that do not protect their consumers lose customers. Simple fact.


The only good reason to seperate servers is xenophobia

No. There are technical, business, cultural, and legal reasons to do it, all of which I've enumerated very clearly. Please do me the favor of replying to them if you would like to dispute my view on things.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: VAL-0251 on 2006-05-11 10:18 ]</font>

[Sev]

For this topic...

Sega knows what they're doing I'd say. If they link them they link them, if they don't they don't. If you have access to another server do, if you don't you don't.

When it comes to PSU... Sega are the only professionals that I really wanna listen to. So whatever they do, should be in the best interest of the player.

As far as this whole argument dealing with the language barrier and cultures... I agree with Physic. No ones forcing you into anything. There really won't be a time in game where you have to play with someone you don't want to. If you don't plan to play with someone because they don't speak your language, then don't. No ones forcing you to struggle over any kind of language barrier. If the very thought of players that speak another language being able to join your game is a bother... Then... That's your own problem really. We're all human, and I'm sure people of other languages don't wanna have to climb the language barrier either. From what I notice though, they deal with it and move on.

Parn also has a good point, it shouldn't be surprising though. This is people that we're dealing with... People. They're not all the same, and if you can meet an American racist, you can meet a Japanese racist. No one should at all be surprised by this. Although from what we hear about the culture, they're very courteous, that's basically just a stereotype. They don't have to be nice if they don't want to be.

Still... My experiences with racism tend to sit more with American players. I actually love it when I'm hated for being American rather then for being African American. Isn't that twisted?

[Saiffy]

On 2006-05-11 01:14, VAL-0251 wrote:
I'd like to point out that PSU does not HAVE any international roots, or ANY roots for that matter. The game is not even set in the PSO world; there is no Coral, no Ragol, no Pioneer 1 & 2. It's based off the Megadrive Phantasy Star, as I understand it. The game's roots are whatever the Sonic Team decides they are.
He meant past PS games with online capabilities, which is PSO, which until BB had US, EU and JP servers you could easilly jump between.

Do you realize the public relations disaster any one of these situations would be? Any developer or marketing professional so much as SUGGESTING something like this would likely be fired on the spot.

Further, what is there to change between localizations? The text? That is quite literally five minutes worth of coding work. Copying and pasting new text blocks from the translators's emails and committing the changes to the patch. Trust me on this, testing and developing are what I do for a living. This is not a valid fear in any form.
Nice thought, doesn't work in practice, only in theory.

Uh...again, as someone who lived in Japan for a summer...Japanese players are not all courteous. In fact, many of them are outright racist. As a gamer for 16 years now, it was one of the most degrading times in my life to have my competancy as a gamer called into question because I am an American.
Personal preference, I don't care if Japanese people insult me for being Canadian, or english speaking, or just being from the Western World, because I don't understand it, I don't mind.

There are logical limits to everything; if there were not, it would be a valid assumption to say that the new puppy you got will eventually destroy a major metropolitan area by wagging his tail, because he's growing so fast.

In this case, the logical limits are the technical hurdles that make this sort of integration...tricky, at best, and outright ridiculous to support at worst, and the fact that, in any culture around the world, there will inevitably be some jagged edges. Someone will get offended by someone in another country, and then it will be Sega's problem. They are not in business to play arbiter in conflicts spanning half the globe. They are in business to make money.
Your analogies just suck, you remind me of a certain shark (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/03/01)

Folks, integrated servers are a bad idea, both for the end gamer and for Sega's business. Technical and legal reasons, both. Now, if they wanted to allow you to move freely between regional servers, that'd be fine. Considering you pay for the game, I think you should have the freedom to go wherever you please, and if you folks think you'd be more comfortable playing on the Japanese servers, then by god, you should be able to go there.

However, integrating them completely results in many technical, legal, and cultural ramifications that makes it a lot harder for many, many people to enjoy the game, and therefore makes it a lot harder for Sega to make money.

Take care, everyone.


Anyone can take things out of propotion.


Firstly, yes, they are personal issues, but those that would prefer to play with Japanese players are--once again--the exception, not the rule. Again, basic, basic fact of human relaxation; when you want to relax, you boot up a game to have fun. Struggling to communicate is not fun for most people. Some folks get a kick out of it due to the cultural experience--this is why we should be allowed to connect to Japanese servers if we please.
When I did c-mode on GC PSO with Japanese players(Because they were way more reliable and generally better than english players, and someone can call me out on stereotyping, I dare you), if they spoke some english, great, I'd talk, if they didn't, fine, we'd use vague word select or not talk. Both language groups knew what they needed to do.


I have an idea, why don't they make one big server for...people! Not for Americans, not for Japanese, for people!

[DarK-SuN]

I see lots of technical babble (all correct, mind you), but everyone seems to be forgetting how PSO had "Linked servers".

It wasn't everyone in the same damn server in Japan (be rational, people!); each region had its own server, but people were free to travel to any server they wanted, may it have been a US server, a EU server or a JP server, no matter what their region of origin was.
If they do that for PSU it'll be the same, servers in japan, server in US and server in Europe, where players can log into whichever they desire.

If you wanna go play with someone else in another region, either because you have a friend there or because you just wanna go play with Japanese players, and don't mind the lag, so be it!
If you're too picky and seeing people speaking in a language you don't understand and lag is too much of an issue for you (not sure how, PSU Beta had servers in Japan and I, from Europe, was playing perfectly fine), just stick to your own region's servers and don't go to the others, but let the people who DO want to travel to other servers do so instead of whinning.

About PSOBB; it had seperate region servers, but only for Japan.
Europe and US servers were linked, for those who don't know.
It's likely that PSU will end up being like this (I sincerely hope not, I prefer to have them all linked, but at least EU and US should be connected), but we'll have to see what Sonic Team ends up deciding.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: DarK-SuN on 2006-05-11 12:23 ]</font>

[chibiLegolas]

On 2006-05-10 14:42, Pob wrote:
If there's anything like challenge-mode, the servers have to be linked. Not enough non-JP players play challenge!



Here Here!
Seperating the 2 servers is like saying lets seperate the internet into it's geographical regions (if it's possible). Why would americans want to visit a Japanese website or email them huh?
*rolles eyes*

It's ONLINE play. And I'd like to play with the Asians as well as the Europeans alike. If the all the servers aren't going to be linked together, then the new large cities/lobbies seem awefully empty, no?



On 2006-05-11 12:07, Saiffy wrote:I have an idea, why don't they make one big server for...people! Not for Americans, not for Japanese, for people!


Amen!


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: chibiLegolas on 2006-05-11 12:59 ]</font>

[physic]

the point of the fact of it being dif in GC was simply because the servers were linked, and most content was online, in that case all new things has to be available. AN example of something we would never have had or had much later was maximum attack. That was a quest sponsored by a japanese game magazine, psobb s later one had to wait for aol or whoever to sponsor it. We had famitsu simply because it would not make sense not to have it on LINKED servers. Anyone who plays games reads manga, or watches anime knows that translation isnt the process that companies act like it is. The reality is they probly dont need 3-9 months to localize any game, but this is teh norm for localization.
PSOBB shows the best case scenario of being two months behind on updates, simply because the game started 2 months later.
Somehow they were able to get around whatever technical issues there were in pso v1 v2 and pso GC. that implies it is a matter of choice not technoolgy. Business? in reality only they know what business models they are dealing with and what costs vs gains are. The cultural divide is basically like some people said the player divide, anyone can eb an ahole, NA people practice and are very talented at this. JP people, who knows half the time i dont know what they are saying. I will tell you this depending on NA people for Challenge mode sucked, because there simply wasnt enough people on enough of the time, who had real interest in cmode till months later.
A bigger community is better for the game. Having the same releases and unlocking is for the better of the game, and having the option to play with japanese or not is better for the game.

What is the advantage to seperate servers? you say better connections, but the people i have played with in the past rarely noticed any problems specific to region, they were as likely to get lag on an NA ship as a JP ship. And the ability to pick different servers on the fly was used.
Cultural ISsues and comfort aare personal issues, and if teh servers are connecetd you will have the option of not playing with jp people, if your "friend" invites people he knows you dont want to play with, that sounds like an issue of you and your friend rather than the foreign person.
Legal issues? FFXI has managaed to avoid any legal issues i know of with a teen rating and a disclaimer. IN america anyone can sue you for anything and you can lose a case because teh judge doesnt like your face. whats teh history of such cases and the legal precedents. What are the legal issues of international communication? WHat responsibilities does aim or this site have? i dunno but there will be some legal issues regardless ofregion, and apparently for 3 out of 4 pso games it wasnt an issue. I see no real advantage to seperated servers, other than an intangible comfort level of the players which is most likely different from person to person.

[PhotonCat]

Been reading what some of you guys where saying...

Yeah, if some of you wanna play with JP players that's fine BUT all of us shouldn't be forced to.

I rather play on an North American server with only English speaking players. That doesn't mean I am racist. I do not like to play with ppl I cannot talk to.

I hate how a lot of "Japan-maniacs" think the JP are perfect angels and Japan is a place of perfection. If you think that you are dead wrong. I am not gonna go into details but should look up some stuff about Japan...

Most JP don't want to be bothered with Non-JP speaking ppl anyway. It's the truth. I've seen it in so many online games(like FF11 - JP ONRY O/NA X)

If we where sharing servers with Russians, or Cubains, or Africans who didn't speak English, would you want to play with them? Or you just wanna play with JP just because they're Japanese and make anime?

[voxie]

I think having everyone log into the same server would be excellent. It'd be one big metropolis, with people of all ages, races and languages, much like Picadilly Circus on a Saturday night http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_smile.gif

[Spellbinder]

On 2006-05-11 13:30, PhotonCat wrote:
If we where sharing servers with Russians, or Cubains, or Africans who didn't speak English, would you want to play with them? Or you just wanna play with JP just because they're Japanese and make anime?



I'd play with them too. It's how I made online friends in Germany, Canada, and Thailand in a different MMO.

[PhotonCat]

But really teh biggest reason to hope for connecetd servers is, not getting jerked, frankly as long as the servers are connected, everything that comes out for jp comes out for the NA the same day, No waiting months for that quest, or option, no special items they only gave in jp quests.

Um that's not a problem either...

In WoW, for example, the servers are separated regionally and all the servers are pretty much updated at the same time. All the servers have the same content, no one is "the better" one.

That is likely what's gonna happen with PSU if they have separated servers(which I hope they do).

And about some contest they had with PSO, (forgot which it was), they had it on both EN and JP servers but the EN players couldn't get any of the REAL awards(I remember the JP got like RL things like games and CDs, etc). WTH was up with that? That's not equalism.

[DarK-SuN]

I see people complaining, again, about not wanting to play with people they can't understand.
Refer to my post and you'll see you can still only play in your own US servers, you're not forced to go anywhere else if you don't want to; just let people who do go wherever they want.

I for one am in Europe and I want to be able to go to the US servers because I have friends there playing (and they also wanna be able to come to the EU servers since some of their friends are also there).
Don't complain about something that is pure choice; don't wanna go to another server, fine and you don't have to, but others do.
Japanese rarely (read: never, unless they know someone there) go to the US servers anyway, so you're safe from ever playing with someone who doesn't know english.

Let's be logical here, people.

[pineapple]

The people against linked servers don't seem to understand how this as worked in the past. The server's aren't 'integrated' every country still has their own servers, but you get the choice of playing on one outside of your country. Also, you can switch servers any time you feel like it. No one will be forced to play with people outside his or her country.

If the servers are separated they most likely won't be updated together and won't have the same content, look at BB.

[VAL-0251]

Not much time; have a final soon. Again, don't really know who said what.


He meant past PS games with online capabilities, which is PSO, which until BB had US, EU and JP servers you could easilly jump between.
The operative sentence there was "Whatever Sonic Team decides". PSU is a new game, completely separate from any of the versions of PSO.


Nice thought, doesn't work in practice, only in theory.
Uh, please elaborate? I've 'translated' a few web programs for our Japanese Rotary partners since I started this job. I have DONE it in practice. It took five minutes of searching through files for text blocks and copy/pasting them from my translator's email. The compiler does the rest of the work I need it to do. It's not like I'm reverse-engineering here, and have set text blocks, pointer tables, etc.


Personal preference, I don't care if Japanese people insult me for being Canadian, or english speaking, or just being from the Western World, because I don't understand it, I don't mind.
Until one of them that has a mild understanding of English decides to start trolling you. Or even a middle-school kid that just got a few insults translated and is spamming them at you. Think it doesn't happen? Ask the African-Americans who are overt about their race, or the homosexuals who are overt about their orientation what happens to them on MMOs. There are hateful people in this world, and the sad truth is that they get even more hateful over the internet. Companies that don't take steps against this lose customers and get bad publicity.


Your analogies just suck, you remind me of a certain shark
I don't understand what I've done to warrant a personal attack, but okay. Feel free to ignore my points, I suppose.


Anyone can take things out of propotion.
I don't understand what this has to do with the block of text you quoted.


I have an idea, why don't they make one big server for...people! Not for Americans, not for Japanese, for people!
If you can find some way to get around the technical problems and make sure the ill-intentioned people from over the world don't start racial drama, this would be a wonderful idea. In theory, it is a utopia, and I'd be delighted if it was possible.

I don't think it is, however.



It wasn't everyone in the same damn server in Japan (be rational, people!); each region had its own server, but people were free to travel to any server they wanted, may it have been a US server, a EU server or a JP server, no matter what their region of origin was.
If they do that for PSU it'll be the same, servers in japan, server in US and server in Europe, where players can log into whichever they desire.
This is more or less what I've been saying all along, though from the subtle implications here, we might disagree on one thing.

Are you promoting having them strictly listed by region, and allowing players to tab between these regions like menu options? That's what I'm suggesting.

Are you promoting having them all lumped together in the same list? That would cause problems for Sega because many people on the internet are too lazy or ill-informed to check regions on things.


Seperating the 2 servers is like saying lets seperate the internet into it's geographical regions (if it's possible). Why would americans want to visit a Japanese website or email them huh?
*rolles eyes*
Where did I say that, precisely?

I visit Japanese sites all the time; I'm very partial to work of the flash maker Sikamoto, for example. I'm not suggesting you aggressively segregate servers, like World of Warcraft did. I'm merely suggesting that forcibly integrated servers are a bad idea for a number of reasons.

However, you should have the freedom to go over. Your money, your choice. I've lost count of how many times I've said that.


the point of the fact of it being dif in GC was simply because the servers were linked, and most content was online, in that case all new things has to be available. AN example of something we would never have had or had much later was maximum attack. That was a quest sponsored by a japanese game magazine, psobb s later one had to wait for aol or whoever to sponsor it.
Ahh. That's much more clear, thank you. I agree that is very silly, but I also question the good sense of allowing 3rd party companies to finance the game in a regional way. Hopefully Sega has learned from mistakes like that.


he reality is they probly dont need 3-9 months to localize any game, but this is teh norm for localization.
For systems that are already up and running? And working? No, I'm sorry, that's incorrect. For consoles, this is the norm because the graphical output must be completely retooled (NTSC vs PAL, for example), but for something like an MMO that is already up and running, it is the very definition of easy, once you have the translations done.

Perhaps Sega made the mistake of releasing stuff before translations were completed? That would explain a lot, and would be one of their least intelligent business moves since the days of the 32X.


Having the same releases and unlocking is for the better of the game, and having the option to play with japanese or not is better for the game.
That's...what I've been saying. You're entitled to choice. That includes NOT being forced to play on an integrated server. There's a difference between 'integrated', which is one server servicing multiple regions, and 'open', which services one region, but lets extraregionals come and go as they please.

Integrated servers are a bad idea. Open servers are a wonderful idea.


What is the advantage to seperate servers? you say better connections, but the people i have played with in the past rarely noticed any problems specific to region, they were as likely to get lag on an NA ship as a JP ship.
This is anecdotal evidence, I'm afraid. It's a basic technical fact that longer connections are prone to more lag and more failure, and I don't think there's anything you can do to argue with that. I can give examples of my friends on the East Coast who couldn't play on Japanese ships because of a bad hop somewhere, too.


if your "friend" invites people he knows you dont want to play with, that sounds like an issue of you and your friend rather than the foreign person.
I was referring to pickup groups. And please to not try to dodge the issue.


Legal issues? FFXI has managaed to avoid any legal issues i know of with a teen rating and a disclaimer.
There were a few cases brought up. To date, they haven't made it to court, but remember that any time there is a threat, the high-priced lawyers must be paid to make it go away.


IN america anyone can sue you for anything and you can lose a case because teh judge doesnt like your face. whats teh history of such cases and the legal precedents.
This is a reckless exaggeration. The court records have, in all cases I'm familiar with, given a point by point issue of the violations of the law or the lack thereof. The American court system is pretty competant.


What are the legal issues of international communication? WHat responsibilities does aim or this site have? i dunno but there will be some legal issues regardless ofregion, and apparently for 3 out of 4 pso games it wasnt an issue.
They have the responsibility of moderation, which is how the makers of Ultima Online got sued.

And, in 3 out of 4 of the PSO games, 'communication' was so tightly censored that innocent cultural idioms got nixed. If you're comfortable with having your speech tightened that hard...then I suppose you're comfortable with that. But I seriously doubt many Americans, who hold "Freedom of speech" and "personal choice" so sacred won't be as understanding.

Also remember that non-integrated servers are cheaper to maintain and administrate.

Remember, this game is not marketed to you or your group specifically. It is marketted to be as broadly appealing as possible. Therefore, any generalizations from self, any "my friends", anything like that is not valid for the purpose of Sega's needs.

[pineapple]

It wasn't everyone in the same damn server in Japan (be rational, people!); each region had its own server, but people were free to travel to any server they wanted, may it have been a US server, a EU server or a JP server, no matter what their region of origin was.
If they do that for PSU it'll be the same, servers in japan, server in US and server in Europe, where players can log into whichever they desire.


This is more or less what I've been saying all along, though from the subtle implications here, we might disagree on one thing.

Are you promoting having them strictly listed by region, and allowing players to tab between these regions like menu options? That's what I'm suggesting.

Are you promoting having them all lumped together in the same list? That would cause problems for Sega because many people on the internet are too lazy or ill-informed to check regions on things.


what you are promoting is exactly how it has been done in the past on PSO. Each region had it's own server set, it came up with the player's region first and then allowed the player to switch to other server lists that were explicitly labled as EU or JPN.

They had a really good system in the past for linking servers, if you were familiar with this you probably wouldn't have so many objections. They have never been integrated the way FFXI servers are.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: pineapple on 2006-05-11 14:27 ]</font>

[Saiffy]

And I'll remind you, ST will handle updates, not you. I thought it was common sense, though.

[Sev]

See... This is exactly what I don't understand about the court system in America...

We don't want our speech censored, so we always complain and whine if our freedom of speech is tampered with. Yet if you don't like something that was said to you in an online game... You can sue the makers of that game? All because someone spoke to you in a way that you found offensive? You can easily see where that doesn't make sense... Moderation or not, people are going to find a way to say what they want. If they wanna offend, they'll do it, it's that simple. That's why I don't think you should hold the makers of the game responsible if they labeled the game properly, and made reference to the fact that you may run into abusive language.

It really just sounds like Ultima didn't apply the proper label to the game... Or didn't put across the fact that comments made in game are the comments of that user alone. All parents should have some understanding on what they're child is doing. If they're on the internet in any form, they know that harmful material can reach their kids.

There's no Utopia in this world. Anyone at anytime is capable of rubbing someone else the wrong way. And as an African American gamer myself, I get rubbed alot. Like I said... I'd rather me insulted for being part of a nation, then be insulted based on my skin and from generalizations that are basically... Created in America. Whether insults were translated by someone who does not speak your language, or whether they come from people who live in your region does not matter. Insults are insults. If they're in a different language obviously no one cares... I can still assure you that most of the insults you receive will be from people in your own region and not elsewhere.

After about 6 years of being connected to the internet. I can bet on that much. Really, cultural differences have never mattered to me because I'm who I am. If not for that, I'd get offended by every little comment. When you've gone through enough of 'em, you basically stop caring because they're opinion of you isn't who you are.

Edit: ... God I hate English... Such a strange language...

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Sev on 2006-05-11 15:19 ]</font>

[Spellbinder]

On 2006-05-11 14:24, pineapple wrote:




It wasn't everyone in the same damn server in Japan (be rational, people!); each region had its own server, but people were free to travel to any server they wanted, may it have been a US server, a EU server or a JP server, no matter what their region of origin was.
If they do that for PSU it'll be the same, servers in japan, server in US and server in Europe, where players can log into whichever they desire.


This is more or less what I've been saying all along, though from the subtle implications here, we might disagree on one thing.

Are you promoting having them strictly listed by region, and allowing players to tab between these regions like menu options? That's what I'm suggesting.

Are you promoting having them all lumped together in the same list? That would cause problems for Sega because many people on the internet are too lazy or ill-informed to check regions on things.


what you are promoting is exactly how it has been done in the past on PSO. Each region had it's own server set, it came up with the player's region first and then allowed the player to switch to other server lists that were explicitly labled as EU or JPN.

They had a really good system in the past for linking servers, if you were familiar with this you probably wouldn't have so many objections. They have never been integrated the way FFXI servers are.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: pineapple on 2006-05-11 14:27 ]</font>


Quoted for truth and empahasis. This is what we're talking about when we say linked servers, or at least I am, not complete integration.

[Dahilia]

On 2006-05-11 13:45, PhotonCat wrote:
[quote]
And about some contest they had with PSO, (forgot which it was), they had it on both EN and JP servers but the EN players couldn't get any of the REAL awards(I remember the JP got like RL things like games and CDs, etc). WTH was up with that? That's not equalism.



That reminds me of WoW's video card contest they had when honor (the PVP award system) first came out. I don't think it was an international contest; North America only...

The contest (PSO's) could have been a third party promotion instead of Sega themselves, hence why it was Japan Only...

We got Yahoo and AOL cup, and that hideously awful mag...

[RFB]

On 2006-05-11 15:53, Dahilia wrote:


On 2006-05-11 13:45, PhotonCat wrote:
[quote]
And about some contest they had with PSO, (forgot which it was), they had it on both EN and JP servers but the EN players couldn't get any of the REAL awards(I remember the JP got like RL things like games and CDs, etc). WTH was up with that? That's not equalism.



That reminds me of WoW's video card contest they had when honor (the PVP award system) first came out. I don't think it was an international contest; North America only...

The contest (PSO's) could have been a third party promotion instead of Sega themselves, hence why it was Japan Only...

We got Yahoo and AOL cup, and that hideously awful mag...



Indeed, the Graphics card contest was just NA, because it was sponsored by nVidia.

And the PSO contest was JP only, because, well, it's called "FAMITSU cup" http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_wacko.gif

[VAL-0251]

what you are promoting is exactly how it has been done in the past on PSO. Each region had it's own server set, it came up with the player's region first and then allowed the player to switch to other server lists that were explicitly labled as EU or JPN.
That didn't seem to be the context of the discussion here; sorry for misunderstanding. I know for a fact that this wasn't how it was done in Blue Burst. At the very least, the Ship list didn't give you the slightest clue as to where the server was hosted.

In that case, I wholeheartedly agree. "Linked" or "Open" servers are a delightful idea, I wouldn't think to debate that. It's the fully integrated servers I object to.


And I'll remind you, ST will handle updates, not you. I thought it was common sense, though.
Why are you insisting on lobbing hooded insults my way? Please either give me reasons I'm wrong or simply say you do not agree with me.


You can easily see where that doesn't make sense... Moderation or not, people are going to find a way to say what they want. If they wanna offend, they'll do it, it's that simple. That's why I don't think you should hold the makers of the game responsible if they labeled the game properly, and made reference to the fact that you may run into abusive language.
Well, at least the way the American system is wired, there's a reasonable expectation of government on the internet to some extent. No, the makers can't be responsible for everything that goes on, but they have to give some measure of oversight.

This is a big issue because of the fact that there's no easy way to say what is and isn't that 'measure of oversight', and it's not normally brought up in court, because most disputes like that are domestic, and it becomes a civil suit between two parties. UO, however, put the fear of God into the companies about that. It was/is THE game of MMO freedom. You can PK any PC you can manage to kill, with the exception of set newbie zones, carve them up, and eat them. I am not exaggerating one bit. Suddenly, companies could be held accountable for stuff that went on through their servers. Cultural differences make inadvertantly offending people a lot easier, so on, so forth, it's one huge headache for businesses nowadays. It's nice to say that the internet is a place where nothing should be taken seriously (and it shouldn't), but the fact is that tons of people consider the internet Serious Business (tm).

History lesson aside, I'm pretty much in full agreement with you.