After Maximum Attack G+ ends on March 12th, the following bonuses will be enabled on the regional PC/Playstation 2 Phantasy Star Universe servers:
You can discuss this news in our Phantasy Star Universe forum.
Right on the heels of Tuesday's MAG+ announcement comes some saddening news for the local PC/PS2 Phantasy Star Universe servers. GM Edward posted on the official forum that the English PC/PS2 servers will be closing Wednesday, March 31, 2010. Next week's update on January 29 will be the PC/PS2 version's final update.
As of January 29, 2010, no new PC/PS2 subscriptions will be available for purchase, however any players who are subscribed as of that time will be able to continue playing for free for the remaining two months until service is ended. Keep in mind that this applies only to the PC/PS2 version of Phantasy Star Universe. The Xbox 360 version will continue to be supported with future content updates.
PSOW user Artea has created a thread detailing this news. Feel free to join the discussion to share your memories of the game's past or vent your frustrations (responsibly, of course).
RIP English PC/PS2 PSU
October 24, 2006 - March 31, 2010
Sega of America has anounced a Title Update will be released for Phantasy Star Universe on December 11th. This update will include the following changes:
Today marks the third anniversary of the North American release for Phantasy Star Universe! When the game was first released, the level cap was 50 and players were struggling to earn enough meseta to craft 5-star weapons. With the small mission selection, most players spent their time repeatedly playing Plains Overlord. These were the days when players were willing to pay a premium for Crea weapon boards.
Things have certainly changed quite a bit since then! The first expansion, Ambition of the Illuminus was released two years ago with new job types and items. The current player cap is level 160 and players strive to grind their 12-star weapons to 10/10. The most popular mission for the last two years has been the incomparable White Beast. Numerous S-Rank weapons have become so common that players simply sell them to the NPC vendors rather than let them collect dust in their player shop.
While the game's heyday may be behind it, there is still a lot to look forward to. The upcoming Supplemental Update will rebalance the game and introduce a large number of new items. In addition, players can expect to see Maximum Attack G+, S3 Missions, and the conclusion of the Ambition of the Illuminus storyline. You can share your best memories about Phantasy Star Universe in this topic.
Reported on the official forums by GM Edward, there are a few event missions that will be posted this week. They'll end on October 8. They are based on the previous Winter Event missions, however with an S2 difficulty added. This difficulty is AOTI exclusive and features enemies that are LV150+.
There will be an update at Desert Arms Shop as well as a rotation at Casino Voloyal. There is already a thread started in the forums.
Update:*The Japanese Xbox 360 homepage has been updated. In addition to reiterating the above info, it also mentions an update to the NPC shops.
Update: The English update page is located here. It confirms everything listed above.
As compensation for the June/July lag issues, the following boosts are being implemented for the PC/Playstation 2 and Xbox 360 servers:
Credit goes to gamewarp for bringing us this news. You can discuss this development in this forum thread.
Previously mentioned, many 360 users have been able to obtain the August 11th dashboard update early by way of a preview program. It was recently discovered by some that installing a game post-update will result in less space taken up on your hard drive. As of right now, there don't appear to be any performance changes in comparison to installing a game prior.
AngelusInsomnus from the official forums has reported this detail for PSU. Formerly, PSU itself took up 6.8 GB of space. With this new update, you can reinstall the game to drop it to 6.4 GB. For reference, Ambition of the Illuminus takes up 1.92 GB of space.
Each of these missions will receive a new S3 variant (exclusive to AOTI)! In addition, the Neudaiz Fireworks Festival will begin. Players will be able to help celebrate by buying Fireworks traps from NPC stores. Finally, new items will be available at the Casino and from the new missions. You can share your thoughts on this update in this forum thread.
Update: Compensation for recent server trouble has been announced.
"While games like World of Warcraft took the world by storm and pushed the genre forward, the Phantasy Star franchise stagnated. PSU still hasn't moved beyond a simple lobby and limited instances for battle. To make matters worse, Phantasy Star Universe suffered from a severe lack of content and places to explore, yet still carried a monthly fee. When the game launched, there were even areas that existed on the disc as part of the single player game that were locked once you went online. Lame."What do you think? Are these comments still valid?