The end of the open beta draws near, and has been extended!

In a recent announcement, ST has decided to extend the beta by 4 days to June 13th the reasoning for this is because that is also when the AOL cup will be ending.


ST has also revealed a few facts about the full release. First, New difficulty modes and episode 2 will be added, along with episode 4 showing up soon.
Second, Battle mode and Challenge mode should be up soon.
Lastly, there will be new quests along with GM events coming up real soon.

while there are no specific dates set for any of these updates, it is assumed that some will appear immediately after some server downtime when the beta ends. And as a reminder, your characters WILL NOT be deleted at the end of the beta.

The status of wedding lobbies is currently unknown at this point.

Yes, not only is the gamecube getting it, but also Blue Burst! (at least the JP version) Wedding bell in lobby 10.

Oh and ep 2 challenge mode stage 4 is going up

I had a chance to speak with Clumsyorchid today about a few issues, here's what was revealed.

The next patch will contain the word wrap feature.

Corrupted files that are being downloaded are apparently coming from download accelerators and are requested not to be used.

There was apparently a glitch with the team point system, and points should be available soon.

Last night the JP BB servers were updated. Here's what happened.

First, players are now able to buy a sword for their team leader. When in the same team with the leader, players get an additional 20 atp. 8000 team point cost.



Towards the Future has been released.

a new quest that you must buy called 『災禍の中枢へ』 or To the Center of the Disaster which costs 3000 team points has been released. This features a new boss for episode IV.



Also Singing at the beach has been extended by one week because of reaching 100 million kills. The final cup total for the Login Cup was 126,004,727 kills. Congratulations to everyone who participated.

When check is inserted on drawing option in options menu, when turning back the text in Japanese, the word which depends on the future is sent to the following line.

You don't have to listen to PSOBB in window mode if its not the active window anymore

Better support for hyperthreading or dual processor systems has been implemented.

With the mouse wheel zoom up/down of camera point of view can be changed for use in camera shots.

Mailbox size has been increased to 50 mails and these can be recieved while offline as well since the game is server side. To see more mails, use the pageup and page down keys.

Also, it appears that rare monsters will no longer be appearing in challenge mode.

Also the timings of some of the challenge mode doors have been changed.

Happy hunting everyone. Edit: Thanks to Tancient for a few corrections.

It has been confirmed by Clumsyorchid that characters WILL carry over into the retail version of PSOBB. You can find answers to that and other common PSOBB questions here.

Phantasy Star Online Blue Burst, which has had its community page updated with new sections has had the download file added. However things have been off to a rough start. On the night of the 9th, many players found that their games had been rolled back.

On top of that, many players have found themselves unable to login to the game due to 903 and "Server Full" 916 errors. However players that are currently logged in at this time are still playing. Clumsyorchid has posted an update about the situation

Posted an announcement about the 903 errors, we are working to address them asap. We hope to get them up fast. Also, our boards went down due to the traffic increase

As of this time, if any players are online right now, until further notice is recieved, try to keep your game going by putting weight down on a movement key as it is currently unknown how long it will take to get the situation fixed and doing so with stop the auto-disconnect.

Edit: Thanks to Ryna for this info, apparently there's a glitch in the beta that is causing people to Level Down by causing them to loose their exp, so be careful and keep your eyes peeled for when the problem is done with. Apparently it has something with what team name is used, so for now if you're using a name that has no problems, please stick to that name until the problem is resolved.

Blue Burst USA has gone live, a day before it was supposed to begin. There are currently no details at psobb.com, however if you look here you can now sign up. Players are already online so what are you waiting for already?

A number of players have been recieving the beta software for PSO Blue Burst USA early from Computer Gaming World magazine. (myself included.) Some players also have had thoughts of using their JP accounts to try to log in early to start in english mode earlier than anyone else and to see if this means the servers are indeed connected. However these players are being faced with a problem. As soon as they log in, the game switches over to Japanese again and there is no way to switch it back to english once it has been done, thus forcing a reinstallation of the USA files.

Basically to sum it up, If you have a JP account and the PSOBB USA beta files, do not attempt to log in until you have a USA account. The status of connected servers at this point remains unknown.

EDIT: A fix has been found to this problem, and indeed confirms that the servers will likely not be linked (at least for the beta) as I tried this new method and it wouldn't log in with my JP account.

-------------------

riconew wrote:
I have found a way for PSOBB EP4 players to install US version correctly.

1. uninstall your PSOBB EP4 JP version
2. install PSOBB US version
3. get the patch of PSOBB US
4. install PSOBB EP4 JP version
5. get the patch of PSOBB JP

Then both PSOBB EP4 and US version can work correctly.

--------------------

Our thanks to riconew for this fix.

Its been 1 week since the start of the Login Cup. Here are the stats as of Tuesday 8:45 AM EST.

40,282,296 kills

4 secrets revealed:
10 Million: Phantasy Star Online Blue Burst episode IV keychains with mags attached.

20 Million: A set of Phantasy Star Online posters.

30 Million: A PSO 32 Megabyte USB memory stick

40 Million: A set of SEGA games.


However earlier in the week, a bug was found in the shortest time completion goal and that has since been shut down so that has been replaced with the highest number of individual kills a player makes.