Alpha Trial Announcement Set For 24th

[AzureBlaze]

Mike was correct.
I just got this letter in the mail now, here is the google translate of bits of it which appear to be relevent. It seems ANYone who signed up for the alpha trial gets this, so it should be common amongst PSOW users. But if you were not able to sign up, you would still like to know. This is a combo of google & my own attempting to clarify the word order.

"Hello friends!
The current intensive development of "Phantasy Star Online 2" is,
Notice the date it was decided α test winner at last! "

"Also, everyone submitted to the registration lottery to participate in testing of α,
We offer exclusive wallpapers Merumaga rice gratitude!
Please use the download size of your choice! "

everyone who entered this thing gets wallpaper regardless of if you're in or not*

"Winners announced via email june 24th"
MORE winners will be announced so even if you don't get in right away you still could later.

"We are going to post some pix on the official site so watch it closely"

Opinion:
Excellent news. Especially the 'adding more alpha participants' as time goes on. A lot of the usa/non native entries are probably very 'iffy looking' if they are running human checks over the entries not just machine/randomize picking them out of a hat. The more people in this thing the better. Them throwing everyone a bone with more pic / vid content over at the official site is great/should keep the news more active for it. 2nd planet with its own tiny moon on horizon is rather pretty/interesting addition (do we get to go there? & etc). Does the grass seem rather low -rez?

Insta-Edit:
They DID post new pics on the site already. Go and see
http://pso2.jp/
Right away! (The wallpaper is the 3rd image in the gallery) For rock throwing monkies & more of those prickly 4 legged things.

[NoiseHERO]

The email came with a wallpaper?

[AzureBlaze]

A link to a wallpaper.
It's the 3rd image on the abovementioned site, in various sizes, but someone has pasted a mini JULY calander onto it in one corner. But in the biggest size the leaves/wall/hedge whatever that is looks smearey a little bit and the grass seems to be low rez or made out of big pixels or something. The people all look fine though. It's a decent graphic for a wallpaper, and a nice thing to keep people watching.

[Zaix]

Why is Monday, July 18th red on the wallpaper?

[Mike]

Why is Monday, July 18th red on the wallpaper?

July 18th is a national holiday.

[r00tabaga]

Why am I not seeing the wallpaper or new pic? All I see is the movie & original 15 images. Help?

[Arika]

Here is the link to wallpaper : http://pso2.jp/download/mm/wallpaper..._1920x1080.jpg

anyway, hope many of us here got as many alpha tickets as possible. I know we all really want it.

[Zyrusticae]

I'm not terribly excited.

Seriously, you guys do realize what you're in for, right? It's an ALPHA. Most games you don't even see them in their alpha state, and many games are barely even playable in beta right up until release (which is kinda a sad thing to see in game development and definitely something that should be avoided, but last-minute or even POST-LAUNCH completion is very common in the games industry).

The game is going to have limited customization, move sets, weapon types, environments, and a seriously ridiculous number of bugs. If the game IS, in fact, eminently playable then that is a minor miracle in and of itself.

I'll be curious to see just how complete it is in its alpha state, but I'm not holding my breath for any real info. The game is going to be less than half-finished so there's a lot of info we're not going to be able to get anyways (because the development simply will not have been done yet).

[r00tabaga]

Did you expect it to be the full game? 'Cuz none of us did. Everyone knows what an Alpha is Z.

[AzureAsh]

It's just a shame that I was far too busy with my exams to actually go back to PSU JP to get a ticket, but I don't exactly mind as I'll just wait for the actual game to come out.