Article: JP Server Announcement

[Ryna]

After experiencing some setbacks with the Phantasy Star Universe, Sonic Team has outlined its action plan in this <a href="http://phantasystaruniverse.jp/news/wis/?mode=view&id=34" >news announcement</a>. uhawww ("http://www.pso-world.com/user.php?op=userinfo&uname=uhawww" ) was kind enough to provide the following translation:


"To everyone,
We thank you for purchasing Phantasy Star Universe.
We realize the sudden termination of the game server for Network play was a great inconvenience to you all, and again, we apologize. We continue to work out the server and character issue that have arrisen since the game's release, and we have posted all of our available resources to bring the situation under control. Concerning the reopening of the Network Mode server, we issue the following report.
September 6: Reopening the Network Mode Service for normal use to the players.
Throughout the month of September, we will monitor the game's operation and immediately tackle any problem that may arise.
October 1: Official service will restart. All players will have their free month renewed (Ending November 1)
September 6: Reopening the Network Mode Service for normal use to the players.

We will have the problems with charater data and universe/My Room access repaired by this time. Please realize that due to load, you may have problems with Login, My Room, or disconnections between 9pm and 1am (JST). There is also the chance for other unexpected troubles during this time. We ask for your patience and understanding, and please report any issue to our inquiry site.

Throughout the month of September, we will monitor the game's operation and immediately tackle any problem that may arise.

During September, we will be performing intense root cause analysis and verification of the both the cause of these failures, and our fixes for them. We ask that you make use of Network Mode to assist us to this end. Furthermore, if the need arises, we will be prepared to enact rollbacks. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, however we do not forsee this happening on a frequent basis.

October 1: Official service will restart. All players will have their free month renewed (Ending November 1)

Incumbent upon the forseen success of our tests, all players who have registered their game key will have their free 30 day period reset.

Temporary change to SEGAlink

Until the official service begins, you will no longer be able to purchase Guardian Licenses (Though you may still register your game key to play if you purchase the game after this point). All customers who have registered their Credit Card information with SEGAlink will have official correspondance sent via mail. You will not be billed until the end of the official service's first 30 day cycle.

To those of you who have enjoyed Phantasy Star Universe, both online and off, we realize this is disheartening news. All of the staff members here are suffering. We have gotten many comments about these transpirings, both positive and negative. We will continue to build upon, change, and construct the PSU service. This is a promise from us all. We implore you to assist us as best you can, in inquiry, comment, and by playing through September. Any and all information will be posted to the official site.

Again, we ask for your understanding, cooperation, and forgiveness."
You can discuss this news in our Phantasy Star Universe forum ("viewforum.php?forum=20" ).

[Alucard_Zer0]

you know im glad sometimes we don't get games in the states till later on, this way ST has time to figure their shit out and get it straight. so we don't have this problem when it comes state side. thanks JP for being the lab rats for the rest of us!

[AndyPandy]

Aye, I'm glad i held out htis time. I think I will wait for the 360 version, maybe by then it will be stable.

I will let some other mugs test the game for ST haha.

[TimeBombPlus]

lol i agree exactly. this is why i'm glad i didn't pre-order. most of the glitches will be worked out come stateside time. so we'll be able to get on and play with ease unless more crap happens.

[AnnabellaRenee87]

aparently the beta wasent a good enough stress test they SHOULD HAVE let more people in...

[AndyPandy]

Yeah, well they had enough people wanting to test it for them for FREE! I'm just wondering if ST are out of their depth with these types of online games....time will tell.

[AnnabellaRenee87]

gess they took all the people from the PSO develemant team out back and shot them then went and hiered new people stright out of collige or something to see if they could make a game then forgot to address all the users loging in at the same time (shees just grab a copy of windows server 2003 enterprise edition it can address over 1,000,000 users and up if you know how to set up active directroy and chiled domains) lol maby i should be a PSU GM i obviously just solved there network problems...

Oh, it was good enough. The problem PSU is facing is pretty common. They underestimated the popularity and their fans, and now the system is being stressed to and beyond it's limits, revealing bugs that could have only been noticed when the system was under stress.

Beta testing is all fine and dandy, but no amount of it can find every problem, and no amount of it can actually "stress" the system. You could have 10,000 players, 100,000 players during a closed beta, but it won't matter because it won't give reliable results. At most, it'd allow you to ESTIMATE the requirements to avoid stress from bringing the system down.

And open betas are worthless. More often than not, people see them as "Oooh! Free Games!" and just take it as that. Such people do nothing to support the community or developers, and they complain and whine when their free game doesn't work right, or suddenly costs money. Finally, in terms of bug finding, open betas are almost utterly worthless, because as I've stated, most people see it as a free game, and don't care about anything else.

It's possible to stress test with an open beta, sure. But many people tend to avoid beta tests of all sorts, the reason being that beta tests are known to be full of bugs and instabilities, thus, unreliable. People prefer to have a complete product that'll work properly for the most part. Problem is, this has never actually happened. In this case, the problem is that the network hardware was based on estimates, most likely, and they underestimated how much stress a few million players could put on the system.

As for some of the recent bugs, they may have never noticed them before because the system was never under such an extreme amount of stress.

Anyways, point is, it's a month's delay in official service, and they're using it to test the network hardware SPECIFICALLY, to see how they can clear bottlenecks, network-related bugs, etc. And they ARE repaying players that suffer rollbacks, etc with a free month, so meh.