Article: Interesting statement on the official Japanese PSO site

[gideon]

DooMStalK writes, "I was looking at the official Japanese PSO site (using Altavista's translation service), and I noticed a noteworthy paragraph in their news post on hacked items http://pso.dricas.ne.jp/osirase_2.html#ti-to. The post is kinda old, but I haven't seen the bit about retaining information before. (Note: I cleaned up the translation quite a bit)
<To users who possess illegitimate items>
When server maintenance takes place on March 17th, players with illegitimate items will not be able to join a team. Playing with illegitimate data in PSO holds a possibility of having your service blocked, and is an annoyance to fellow players. After throwing away all illegitimate items, you may play online again.
In addition, information about players with illegitimate items will be retained on the server. Your service may be discontinued without warning on the basis of this information. Please acknowledge this.
2001.3.17 Sonic team "

A bit old yes... but still news worthy for the cancellation tidbits

That's a little irratating. First it's the message that confuses everyone, now you have the possibility of being banned. So are they going to go to each team and anyone who has a hacked/modified item will be permently banned from the servers?
Moreso when does this end? What's next? A segabot in each room seeing you dont do too much damage? or steal a weapon from someone else?
I feel i paid the 49.95 i should be able to enjoy it without having SEGA infringe on my rights also.

well, considering that you paid for the game alone, you have all the rights in the world to play it... offline.
do we pay to play online? no, so we don't quite have all the free rights there that we have with what we paid for

The game is phantasy star ONLINE, and the main feature is the online ability so yes we do have the right to play online and use whatever items we wish. I am not going to throw away items i traded for if sega determines they are not 'legit'.

This whole pay to play online thing is quite silly. I paid for a game that has online play, and id expect for those rights to play online not to be taken away. It is a feature of the game, just as much as offline play is. Its like any game with online play, you bought that feature. Unreal Tourn. is a single player game with an online feature that I paided for. If I am not able to play online due to a bug of some sort, I expect that bug to be fixed by the developer. I dont expect them to ever tell me that I cant play online ethier. (Not that they could) It is a little diffrent since the games online features are hosted by SEGA. They do have the power to ban users. Have these powers been used yet? Has anyone really been banned? Or is this just scare tactics? I bet its just that, too scare users.

this whole thing is a load of BS. First of all there are a few ways to get around these meesages (not letting you join a team) and get in the game. Second the only winners here are the hackers and the cheats. They get in, trade all there items away for legit ones and then the tradee is now stuck with them. It is unfair and very extreme to ban someone just because the "Have" a hacked item on them. Sega hasn't thought this out very well.

[Argonne]

Ah, I love scare tactics. Look at all of you who posted, and those who didn't. Sega has everyone running around talking about this, realizing that the word WILL be spread around enough to become "fact", and, once again, Sega averts a larger crisis with a few choice words, and therefore does not have to back them up with action.
Also, Sega does have the right to ban anyone they choose from their AMERICAN servers. Because these are a free service to the users, no TOS was signed. While you might say, "Well, that means that I can dupe and be a jerk all I want, because I never said I wouldn't..." Sega can do the exact same thing. They can say, "Since we never agreed to a TOS, we never GARUNTEED that these servers would be up and running."

The only reason they can't just abruptly do this in Japan or Europe is because the gamers promsed not to do such and such, and Sega garunteed them a server to play on as long as these rules were followed. This means that Sega can ban ANYONE they want from any server, but, in Japan or Europe, they need PROOF that the player actually did these things. In North America, they could ban someone just because they felt like it.

I'd beg to differ. The simple fact of the matter is that, with the world 'Online' in the title of the game, it is advertised as being an online game, which is what people pay for. If someone is banned without just cause (hacking the servers, threatening players/staff/etc, so on and so forth), then they are indeed breaking the law. Anyone who has paid for Phantasy Star Online is thereby guaranteed the right to play the game online, just as it is advertised. To do this any other way would result in false advertising, saying that it's Phantasy Star Online, but you can't play it online for some dumb reason. Personally, I think they should just tack on the user ID number of whoever finds/purchases the item. If there is no user ID number, the item is instantly destroyed when the server parses the users inventory and bank account upon connection. Would this increase initial load times for connecting to a server? Sure. Would it increase the size of the save files? Almost assuredly. Would it be worth it? Most definately. Especially if it keeps us, the customers, happy, and the legal team of Sega out of the courtroom.

[Argonne]

Ok, that is a point, but I'm saying that IF you do something WRONG, then all-mighty Sega will take away your ability to go online. And even if Sega took away your 'right' to go online, you would first have to be online to do that, right? Thus, by going online for mere minutes even, you have fufilled the online part of PSO. With no TOS dictating the amount of time constituting as an 'online' allotment, Sega is free to boot people.
On another note, we all know that these servers aren't going to be up forever. So when they do get shut down, are you going to pull Sega into a courtroom, demanding that they keep them up for the 15 people who still play? No, you're not, because by then the next big thing will have hit and poor PSO will be old news.

So when they do get shut down, are you going to pull Sega into a courtroom, demanding that they keep them up for the 15 people who still play?
Nahhhh... by then, someone should have figured out a way to create their own PSO server somewhere. Or at least create PSO quests.
(Maybe not a server, now that I think about it... Dunno how one would get past the ship select query at the very beginning... oh... sorry... programmer in me. =)

[Argonne]

MAybe, if someone had insane amounts of time and cash to burn in doing this fan-made server. On another note, if you cant program a server, then don't comment on difficulties that you can't understand(not that I'm saying programming a server is as easy as making the code type out your name!). Don't worry, though. Undoubtibly another great game will have hit and poor PSO will make its final trip to Funcoland....

[Delta]

Truly, setting up a server isn't a diffucult thing - you just need to have a grasp of how different protocols work. Fan servers would be popping up everywhere is SEGA open sourced their PSO server protocol when they decide to shut the doors on the official boxes. Take the original Quake for example - anyone with a fast connection and a bit of knowledge in networking can set up a server, hence there are still some Q1 servers out there.
Anyway, it would be nice to get some actual specs on the PSO servers. What OS are the servers running? How does the PSO client software (DC users) find PSO servers? Are they looking at a specific IP range? Am I rambling?
*slaps self*
Sorry... I thought I was on Slashdot for a minute. ^_^;;
Anyone have any info on these boxes?
-Delta

[DynStatic]

See we can't have fan servers because we cant type in an IP. I guess maybe in PSO2? I think they should make PSO2 beable to host games up to 4 or 8 people. you and your friends :) and also go onto the main servers.

[Delta]

That's what I'm wondering... how does the PSO client software (the DC) find the servers? Logic dictates they just have an IP range and the PSO client software automatically queries the IPs in that range.
Simply stated, if Sega has a set of servers at 255.255.255.0 thru 255.255.255.20, it will only query that paticular range.
Getting a fan server up would mean grabbing an IP in that range and setting up a box.
That's my hypothesis anyway.

[HunterX]

(Quick disclaimer: The following are just conjectures about how I think PSO's servers function due to experiences using PSO's online mode. So, 9 chances out of 10, my guesses won't hold water at all. ^_^;;;;)
That's what I'm wondering... how does the PSO client software (the DC) find the servers?
From what it seems, the PSO client could first query a main server (or servers) for a list of all existing servers on the network (which would make yanking down or adding servers rather easy to do). The server query address (or addresses) would probably be the ones "set in stone" (so to speak) and would have to be usurped before a fan server could even function. A possible solution would be to set up DCs on a dial-up (or, actually, a broadband LAN, even; however, I don't have a BBA, so I don't know about the feasability of putting a DC on a LAN) server with IP masquerading and claim the query address internally for the LAN. The mini-LANs could then report their "ship" addresses to a main server to allow for multiple ships to exist. (Of course, this again is all based on conjecture.) Finding the ship query address shouldn't be terribly hard, though -- one could simply follow the instructions for connecting a DC with a modem to a broadband connection using Window's Dial-Up Server (on the forum) and then turning on a packet sniffer on the Windows box and watch packet transfer. 'Course, that would be a lot of work, though. ^_^
And, then again, after that hurdle, you've got tons of other hurdles to leap as well. But I'll leave that to another post.
Fan servers would be popping up everywhere is SEGA open sourced their PSO server protocol when they decide to shut the doors on the official boxes.
Problem, though: Sega doesn't really have to open-source their servers if they do shut down. The only reason Quake servers have such wide proliferation on the 'net is that server binaries were released with the Quake client binary -- people didn't have to go through the mess of packet sniffing to figure out how things work in order to create the server. The server's (and the client's as well, but that's not important) code was open-sourced only out of the kindness of Carmack's (and id's) heart for people to muck about in the code -- they didn't have to, but they did.
But, given a world-full of DC hackers, someone'll come up with some sort of server solution once the servers finally die. Which probably won't be for a while if the PSO servers are a part of sega.net.
(Right now due to lack of equipment to work with -- that, and lack of time -- I'm looking into fan-created download quests. Too bad there hasn't been another English DQ released by Sega so I can do comparisons and stuff. ^_^;;;;)
*looks at original article* And I'm waaaaaaaaaaay offtopic... Sorry, folks. ^_^