Well, I was not too long ago considering finally upgrading my DC PSO to version 2 now that the price has come down, but if this is permanent, there's no way in hell I'm paying cash out of my own pocket for this now.
I'm astonished nobody's mentioned it yet, but Sega recently saw fit to cut off U.S. servers access to the rest of the world on the Dreamcast PSO. I've confirmed that it affects both ver.1 and ver.2 users, and I can only guess that Euro servers have been severed off from Japan as well.
I would like to believe that this is only temporary, but not only have I heard no mention of it from Sega on their PSO site or on the "Information" booth in the actual game (as though they ever used it), but, well, it only makes sense. Recently, countless Japanese players have been playing in the U.S. instead of their home servers, and not because they wanted to play with U.S. players. U.S. and European players have been doing the same to Japan's and eachother's regional servers. I certainly never saw large groups of French and Spanish players hanging out in major Japanese blocks a year ago, that's for sure. All this overseas activity costs Sega money, and I believe that's why they wanted to cut it off completely.
I don't know about you guys, but I am severely pissed. When I was most into PSO, early last year, the biggest reason I had to go online was to meet and play with my Japanese friends. It was a challenge attempting to communicate, but it was a unique experience in bridging the cultural gap and the language barrier through use of the word select and our knowledge of eachother's languages. I learned more about Japanese, and just before they cut off access to the JPN network I tested what I'd learned from the year of Japanese classes I just completed by playing a successful game with a JPN player who didn't speak any English, without having to resort to the Word Select more than about 10% of the time.
And yet, now I'm not even sure I can MAIL that person anymore. I'm still searching my Guild Card list in the hopes that I'll be able to at least contact the remaining Japanese people I know who still come on, even though I won't be able to play with them. ;P There are also a couple of people in England whom I know I won't be able to meet online anymore. For a good 1/3rd of my contact list, I may have no way to contact them ever again even if they are online.
What's more, the word select is almost completely worthless now. One of the major selling points of the original version of the game has been completely abandoned. Back in my heyday, one of my best memories I had was of a non-passworded game played on a European server, where throughout the course of the existance of the team, one player of each major language setting joined the game and played for awhile. Seven players total, and among us there were something like 5 different languages, and yet we had a great time. I was translating German into simple English for a Japanese person, at one point. That was the reason I loved playing on European servers the most, where people of every language would hang out. You don't get that kind of exposure in America.
I may not pay for the service I'm getting now, but I am certain that if I were, I would very likely refuse to spend my hard-earned money on it anymore. I may get the Gamecube version of PSO after all, but after this, my faith in Sega to regulate a playable online environment has been shaken once again. I would not buy the GC version at all if I had confirmation that Sega would be likely to do this again during my span of participation in their online community. If any of you with a Dreamcast PSO ver.2 are equally angry about this attempt by Sega to cut bandwidth, I encourage you to write them and tell them you may discontinue your online use of the game as a result of their choice. I want do so myself, but my complaint is not worth as much as a ver.1 user. Sega may not get enough money from DC PSO game sales to be worth upholding this selling point, but they still get a steady no-strings-attached flow of cash from its remaining users, who opt to continue paying the price of playing online.
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Suenia on 2002-07-21 02:41 ]</font>
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Suenia on 2002-08-02 11:13 ]</font>
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