Latest News and Updates

A word of warning: There is a good chance that this may end up not being a Phantasy Star title.* However, some interesting clues that I will mention have led me to believe this could be of interest.

 

A teaser page has been posted by Sega of Japan.* It features*what appear to be flowers*with orchestrated music.* After some credits (listed below), it allows you to click the center flower.* The screen darkens, the music changes into something more 'oldschool',*and eventually a silhouette of a dragon appears.* Then there is*the message "We're making RPG now!".* After clicking this, it shows a final line of text telling the user to check out Weekly Famitsu on September 26th.

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I've*been able to spot this page on*SoJ's Homepage*as well as the JP PS2/PC PSU Homepage.

 

Director: Kazuya Niinou (Director and Planner on Etrian Odyssey and Trauma Center: Under the Knife)

Producer: Kodama Rieko (Various credits on Phantasy Star I, II, III, and IV as well as Producer for Skies of Arcadia)

Sound composer: Yuzo Koshiro (Music credits*on Ys series, Beyond Oasis, Shenmue, and Etrian Odyssey)

Character design: Mota

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You can find many more notable credits for these developers by searching around. I just felt like giving some of their more interesting RPG highlights primarily.

A very interesting and informative article was published at Famitsu.com Wednesday concerning the history of Phantasy Star Online and Phantasy Star Universe as well as the tumultuous nature of online games from a business standpoint. Click "Read more" below to keep reading!

 

Takao Miyoshi spoke at Japan's CEDEC 2008 this Tuesday, bringing to light some interesting facts about the development and management of online games, in particular Phantasy Star Online and Phantasy Star Universe, with his lecture entitled "Network Game Development and Foreign Expansion."

 

Miyoshi began with a quick history of the birth of PSO. SonicTeam focused on three points when it came to the conception of the game.

1. The game should allow players all over the world to interact.
2. It should focus on cooperative play and communication.
3. It should play a part in the spread of online game popularity in Japan.

Years of planning and research went into PSO to help achieve all of these goals, and inspiration was pulled from numerous sources. For example, Diablo inspired the speech bubble system. Miyoshi notes that while Diablo's chat log was nice, it could be difficult to immediately identify who said what. As a result, the idea of using comic book-like speech bubbles was implemented. As PSO's communications system continued to be developed, symbol chat and word select were created to help remove the language barrier that any normal communications system would face. Panzer Dragoon is another title which played a part in early development. It supplied PSO with a base for the visual morphing system used in creating a your character.

 

While Phantasy Star Online was a major success, it still fell victim to many flaws which could not be corrected due to the Dreamcast's lack of a hard drive. One of the largest problems with the game was hacking; more specifically item duping, stat modding and character data corrupting.

 

Miyoshi then showed a graph which displayed PSO's Japanese user population over the game's first two years. Shortly after its release, there was a sharp decline (attributed to widespread hacking and cheating), though with the release of PSO ver.2, the population made a large jump. This rise did not last, however, as the user base took an almost immediate nosedive the following month and continued to decline at a steady rate for the next year and a half. With all of this in mind, the game staff realized the importance of having countermeasures for hacking as well as giving regular content updates.

 

 

Moving ahead, many of the advances made with the introduction of Blue Burst carried over to PSU. These included server-side saving and game patching to help combat hacking and cheating. Furthermore, the game was planned to have regular content updates on top of developing a continuing story from offline. Lobbies which would support massive numbers of players were also introduced to the game. Nevertheless, the PSU ran into numerous problems of its own. At launch, the servers were unable to handle the massive influx of players, changes to the billing system caused strife and in general, complaints about the game lit up internet blogs. This of course got the attention of SonicTeam, further reminding the staff of the importance of their involvement and care for the game.

 

The article ends with a chart some may find surprising. This graph displays the change in population for Phantasy Star Universe over the past two years. Note the massive increase in players on the Japanese PC/PS2 servers (dark blue line) in the first month of service followed by a sharp decline over the next five. Though the player base did grow again over the following nine months, it began to fall once more and has leveled out over the past five months. The Xbox 360 servers (green line) have held relatively steady over the past two years, though the local PC/PS2 servers (purple line) have not fared nearly as well, facing a steady decline, gaining only a small boost around the time when Ambition of the Illuminus was released last fall.

 

A brand new title in the Phantasy Star series was just announced by SEGA.

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Entitled Phantasy Star ZERO, this will be the series' first outing on the Nintendo DS. ZERO is said to be a completely new game, though it will borrow heavily from the Phantasy Star Online series. This new title will feature a single-player story mode as well as multi-player online through Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection and local area networks (both up to four players). Multi modes will allow for communication through visual chat, which allows players to draw their own artwork or write their own text for their teammates to see.

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Keeping in touch with its apparent predecessor, Phantasy Star ZERO will have the return of many race/job combos from Phantasy Star Online. This includes ones such as RAcast, FOmarl, HUmar and HUcaseal, but a few newcomers have also been revealed like the HUnewm and HUmarl. Furthermore, this new title will feature many new areas and lobbies to explore. Three such areas include the Glacea Ravine, Riou Snowfields and the Ozett Swamp. Information is a bit scarce on this new title, but we can expect to see more details in the coming months, as ZERO is slated for a Japanese release this winter.

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Stay tuned! We'll be sure to bring you the latest info as it arrives! Special thanks goes out to Toadthroat over at the forum for bringing us this information! Feel free to join in the discussion!

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Update: Famitsu scans

Update #2: The official Japanese PS0 website has been launched! A few important notes from what the site offers include the confirmation of character creation and that there will be a total of three races (human, newman, android) and 14 race/job combos in the game. Also, the main stage will be the Earth and its moon.

 

There are a variety of things to announce regarding Arika's Thanks Festa, Global:

 

1. Congratulations to Carma (artwork: 1, 2, 3) and Skids (photoshop: 1, 2, 3, 4)! These entrants will soon be proud owners of a small Bamboo Fun drawing tablet (by Wacom), a PSU wristband, an inflatable GH101, and (an added) 50 silver Casino Voloyal coins.

 

2. PSOW members can vote here for their favorite works from a special selection of entries. The winners of this round will be able to select their prizes from the pool of unlocked in-game items. Voting for this round will take place between today and the 19th.

 

3. Everyone who put in an entry will be on the receiving end of 15 silver coins for use at Casino Voloyal! Make sure to run your in-game account ID by Arika so that they can be sent off to Sega.

 

A big thanks goes out to everyone involved!

Just in case anyone had doubts that Phantasy Star Portable would decend upon the US market after its impressive launch in Japan, we've heard from sources that an official announcement is on the way. No further information has been passed on to us yet, but it sounds like Sega of America is gearing up for a US release of the title and that we can expect to see an official announcement of some kind in the near future. I guess you could call this an unofficial announcement of the official announcement.

Be sure to keep an eye on PSO-World as we continue to follow the impending announcement and subsequent release of the US version of Phantasy Star Portable. Also, be sure to visit the PSP Forum to chat with other PSO-Worlders about this latest Phantasy Star title!

As mentioned here*and here, Sega is requesting that users submit tickets to their support site.* Ever since the server move, many players have noted a drop in the quality of their connection to the PSU servers.* I'd recommend that everyone having latency issues (and of course any others) file a report so that they can hopefully be resolved sooner rather than later.

According to IGN, the PlayStation Network will receive enhanced capabilities this fall with the PSP in mind. All models are of course supported.

 

First off, the PlayStation Store will be accessible directly from a PSP. You can download the demo for Phantasy Star Portable (and other things) directly.* This is as opposed to using a PS3 or PC.

 

Most excitingly, there will be infrastructure capabilities for PS3 owners. Many games that currently only support ad-hoc multiplayer will be able to be played online (without the use of a certain unofficial application). Users will not only be able to find games, but also be able to take advantage of text and voice chat. Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G is the first announced title to be supported. I imagine there is also room for a title that has cleared 600k copies (and is currently the 5th best selling PSP game in Japan).

As mentioned on the Japanese 360 page and in this thread, server maintenance will be starting an hour earlier tonight. The noted reason is to correct an issue with Howzer in the A difficulty version of Ambition's End 2 (Episode 3 Chapter 5 Act 2). Japan received this update earlier today.

 

Update: Howzer is now level 160 on the A difficulty of the relevant story mission.

Both the Japanese 360 and English update pages have been posted for this week. Here's a look at the new incoming content:

• Seasonal Lobby: Fireworks on Neudaiz (August 22nd through September 26th, also applies to PSUv1 players)
  • De Ragan's Breath will be available from NPC Vendors.
• Story Mission: Episode 3 Chapter 5 (Titled Ambition's End, Accessible from GUARDIANS HQ)
• Coop Mission: Flowery Pursuit C-S2 (Accessible from the Saguraki C.D. lobby, leads to Ohtoku City)
• Rare Mission: Phantom Fissure C-S (Has a chance of appearing at random at Neudaiz mission counters)
• New S2 Difficulties: Sakura Blast, Sacred Stream, White Beast, Hill of Spores, Dancing Birds
• Neudaiz GUARDIANS Boost Road (August 22nd through September 26th)
  • Features Hill of Spores, Dancing Birds, Flowery Pursuit, Sacred Stream, and White Beast
  • This road begins in the Shikon Tanze route, heads into Ohtoku City, and ends up in Ohtoku: Shitenkaku.
• The event Maximum Attack G comes to a close, however reworked missions will be available.
  • Free Mission: Maximum Attack G' C-A (Accessible from GUARDIANS HQ)
  • Free Mission: Program DF' C-A (Accessible from the transport crystal at the end of MAG')
  • Gifts from Beyond will be staying to allow players to turn in their remaining Weapons Badges.
  • Hit the Counter! will still be accessible to those players that haven't received their milestone prize.
• More weapons (up to 8 star) and boards (up to 9 star) will be available in the NPC shops.
• A new music disc*will be available at Casino Voloyal.
• Lots of new items will be obtainable from the new missions and new difficulty levels for older missions.

Going off prior JP updates, there may also be some modifications to the current NPC material boards in this update. As a reminder, GBR points will now be shared across all characters on the same account (as mentioned in a prior system update). I know that many players have been looking forward to the new S2 ranks as they contain 150+ level enemies. Enjoy the new challenges and drops!

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I'll be sure to update this post if any additional changes are discovered after maintenance.

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Update: The new music disc is PSU Disc 76.

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Update: There was also a Casino rotation after this maintenance.*