News

Between 3:40a.m. and 7:30a.m. Pacific, the Phantasy Star Universe servers and SEGA's websites were unavailable due to a hardware failure with SEGA's internet service provider. Though service has been restored, the ISP may need to replace some hardware which would require the service to go offline again for approximately an hour. Stay tuned to this report and chillaura's post at the official message board for further details.

 

Update: Chillaura made another post in reference to the possibility of a short downtime, stating that they are waiting for a decision from SonicTeam before taking the servers down. If necessary, it could be done tonight or tomorrow, but there's also a chance that the procedure could be handled during Thursday night's scheduled maintenance. We'll be sure to keep you posted.

 

Update: With not further official mention of this, it seems safe to assume that any hardware replacement was taken care of during normal server maintenance downtime Thursday night/Friday morning.

An interview with Satoshi Sakai, producer of Phantasy Star Universe and now Phantasy Star Zero, was published in the September 20 issue of Nintendo Dream. Fan site Shougai PSO posted a synopsis of the article which you can find translated here. For quick reference, here is a list of new game details Mr. Sakai revealed.

• Phantasy Star Zero is a completely new title set in a brand new world.
• Zero's gameplay mechanics will be based heavily around PSO's. But despite this, the developers hope that the unique style will attract more fans to the series, even those who have never touched a previous Phantasy Star title.
• The Nintendo DS was selected as the platform for this title to help broaden the age range of players.
• Zero was selected as part of the title to invoke thoughts of a new beginning for the series.
• You will be able to play with people you've never met over Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. No details were given on if or how Friend Codes will be used, however.
• PS0 will not support voice chat or vibration functions.
• PSO's word select system is a possibility, but has not been confirmed.
• PSO's symbol chat will not return for this game. It is being replaced by visual chat, allowing users to draw their own pictures using the stylus.
• Many common item and technique names will return from PSO.
• The developers hope that, despite this game taking place in a completely new world, it will still bring out feelings of nostalgia and other fond memories.

Stay tuned for more information on Phantasy Star Zero. We expect to see new details rolling in more quickly as we approach the Japanese release of this title in three short months!

According to a recent homepage update, Sega will be releasing Phantasy Star Zero to Japan on December 25th of this year.* That's only three months away! Compared with PSP, the announcement and ship dates for this title are quite close.

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.