Great. I hope they don't screw up the armors in some sexiest crap in the North-America release.
Phantasy Star Online 2 tops 700,000 users
By
Jonathan Toyad, Associate Editor
Sega considering international servers for free-to-play MMO sequel.
Sega has announced that the number of registered players worldwide for the recently released Phantasy Star Online 2 has reached 730,000. The company also said that the game's peak so far has been 91,513 concurrent players, which occurred on July 7.
These numbers were charted from the game's full release from July 4 up until July 26. In addition, Sega said that it may open up international servers for the current version of the game.
Phantasy Star Online will also get an August update divided into three parts; the first part will be out on August 1, followed by the second part on August 8. The third and final piece of the update will be out near the end of the month; no date has been disclosed as of yet. The updates will feature new enemies like the Summer Rappy and Fang Banther, as well as new summer-themed outfits and hairstyles for avatars.
Phantasy Star Online 2 will be released in North America and Europe next year. The PS Vita version of the game will be out later this year in Japan.
By
Jonathan Toyad, Associate Editor
Born and raised from a jungle-laden village in Sarawak, Malaysia, Jonathan Toyad has been playing games since the early 90s. He favors fighting games, RPGs, and rhythm titles above every other genre, and occasionally spaces out like Pavlov's dog to video game music on his iPod.
83 comments
Any signs of a console version 360 or ps3? if not they need to get the finger out there asses and get 1 out soon!!!!!!!!
@Slagar As someone who played it, its an odd combination of PSO and "PSPo2" than PSU.
- Photon Points are stuck to the character [PSO]
- Ranged weapons are set to their own elements (opposed to having the opportunity to pick your own ala PSU), but they at least have photon arts) [PSPo2]
- you can evade [PSPo2 has it too but you needed at most 50 PP]
- You attack in real time (well, the PSU variant but better). The "combo timing" system existent on both PSU and PSO is also here.
- There's a new weapon that combines a pistol and a sword, YES you can switch between the two and YES every character starts with one (I think, though my FOcast has it).
- Ranged weapons don't eat up Photon Points. [PSO]
- This game has actual physics (if older Phantasy Star games had it, this one is FAR better).
- The game doesn't freeze when someone goes in to your quest party.
- OH, AND THE DUNGEON EXPLORATION FEATURE IN THE ORIGINAL PSO DOES NOT EXIST. You can only explore areas through quests.
1 Like @Scholar_Of_Time - "OH, AND THE DUNGEON EXPLORATION FEATURE IN THE ORIGINAL PSO DOES NOT EXIST."
correction~ until you complete a certain quest for each lvl, then you can explore each lvl all you want.
@Slagar I know when they had the open beta, some GS users downloaded the Japanese version of the game and tried it, and most of them had positive reactions to it from what I could tell.
From what I've seen with screenshots and stuff, it looks a little closer to PSO than PSU, but it probably isn't exactly like PSO. I actually had some fun playing PSU too for a bit, so I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing if it's a bit like that game.
i liked PSU but stopped playing years ago when all my friends left one of em got me to try the WoW trial out and is what got me stuck to that so blame him for me playing WoW -.-
might try PSO2 someday just hope its not a cash shop piece of shit
Cool. I was always interested in playing the og PSO but I refused to pay the online fee. If the game is any good when it comes out I'll probably give it a shot.
PSU was a completely dissapointment for me after years of PSOI+II! Played as a ranger...a gun had only 1 attribute instead of max 3.So i had to carry 3-4 different guns with me.Limited ammo! Gone zero...back to the camp. No light,hard and special attack which you can chain into a 3-hit combo! Button bashing :( Found (took me 2 months) 4 needed parts to craft an item just to see the crafting failed! I quit playing PSU after 6 months. Hope PSO 2 is closer to PSO than to PSU.
I think it's about time somebody did an MMO on a handheld device. The persistent-world grinding of most MMOs makes them the perfect candidates for something you could do while you're away from your big screen, e.g. on the bus.
The PS Vita version will be junk ill stick to the PC ver been playing on the JP ver and so far im loveing it best pso game yet
@BillyColeman How do you know the Vita version will be junk? And isn't it the same game? We don't really know how that all is going to work yet do we?
If they bring PSO2 out in the US and Europe, I'm sure the playerbase would instantly triple after a brief period of time.
5 Like That's great, however I'd prefer a simple, single-player, RPG: a Phantasy Star V.
Phantasy Star was SEGA's greatest RPG series, why they've abandoned it since Genesis time is... incomprehensible.
Is it really too much to wish for Phantasy Star V and Shinning force IV?
@snxx While I'd love another single player PS game, PSIV ended the story began at the start of the series. I think Sega sees Phantasy Star as a platform from which they can experiment as I notice fans of the series tend to be ready to try anything, so I doubt we'll see another single player PS game for quite sometime.
I'd honestly like to see Sega try to roll out a new RPG franchise for those seeking a single player experience, I tend to enjoy their stuff when they try.
1 Like @snxx I too want a new Phantasy Star RPG and a new main Shining Force strategy game. The only new Shining Force that is remotely close to the original series was Shining Force Feather for DS which wasn't even release outside Japan.
3 Like @snxx I have to agree with you. While I like the PSO games a lot, there's something to be said for the original Phantasy Star games. They did a lot of stuff different from other RPGs of that time.
If Sega were to even make a retro-ish downloadable PS5, that would be pretty cool. I wonder if they'd ever consider bringing those games into modern times?
@Ovirew That's exactly what they will do. Re-Release its older Phantasy Star titles for download in HD.
Word is PSO2 for the EU/US will have seperate servers to the Japanese side."If" and "when" this game makes it out of Japan I urge anyone interested to just go ahead with the Japanese version as from past experience with PSU Sega have ditched the western servers for them already. They are still keeping the Japanese ones open for maybe a couple of years still.
Also on top of that the western PSU servers had half the content and events compared to the Japan side, along with that the western servers were neglected regulary and at times experienced a drought of any new content for over 4 months. Also earlier this year the servers were lagging so much that 95% of players could not play the game for almost 2 months until Sega finally listened to customer complaints and fixed it.
It's this complete lack of care and support that killed these games off prematurely in the west where as the Japanese servers thrive with new players and regular updates.
I'm saying this because I and many other players got burned by Sega and their favoritism of their home land, dont let them do it to you either.
Join the Japanese servers!
@kekejefferis eh japan got the shaft as well or did you not know that the 360 ver had players from japan on it? anyway at first sega did a good job with psu up till they made ppl wait for 1up cup aka famitsu cup. after that wait the expansion was cool for about a year but after that if you were still playing you have only yourself to blame. i think ppl know when to quit and if something stinks and is not geting a fix you dont stick around as for PSO2 i think ppl should give the US/EU ones a go and if sega starts shafting players then move on but too not try and go off of how psu was ran is dumb
I like the idea of free to play gaming, and I LOVED the first PSO (got to play it on the Gamecube, I never had a Dreamcast).
I only hope Sega does it differently than their other game, Spiral Knights where you are almost forced to pay in order to enjoy the game.
Then again, this game was entirely free to download and install... I expect to pay for a copy of PSO2 at least.
I hope my fears are unfounded.
Spiral Knights charged too much ontop of it. Box-price charges of $50 dollars for some in-game item packages.
Just think of all the poor Rag Rappy's that were needlessly slaughtered trying to reach this goal. AND MORE TO COME!!! :D SEGA, BRING A CROSS PLATFORM NEXT GEN VERSION OUT FOR THE WIIU, 720 AND PS4!!!
@nini200 1. There is no such thing PS4. 2. What the hell is 720?3. I can assure you that your wish will never come true as SEGA is already abandoning all 3 physical form media and will officially do so on 2/11/2013.
@LindBergh2007 1.PS4 is in the works, already mentioned by Sony.
2.720 is the speculated name for the sequel to the 360.
3.Seriously doubt that as they still release console games...
3 Like Shit just got real. A free Phantasy Star Online? There goes my real life or that little that was left of it.
I wish Localize more of their games, if they only knew we enjoy gaming just as much as they do.
Now I'm torn between this and FFXIV version 2.0. MMORPG on consoles Kick Ass!
Thanks to World of Warcraft screwing up the market for international sales. Plus some players over here dislike anime genre and asian games too.
Which sucks because it leaves little room left for those who enjoy these franchises.
Just learn Japanese or Korean like i'm doing. It'll help you in the long-way and you'll gain some actual skills that can be used in the real-world somewhere whether it be reading an article or a job that requires Bilingual language.
@servb0ts hmm their already localized sales are saying otherwise, sadly it's too big a risk
@shadowboy88 That only solves half of the problem, though I agree Japanese is actually very easy to learn (seriously, I'm terrible at learning other languages and I picked it up pretty quickly). There's also the issue with latency. Very few eastern games can be played well from the west, and the few that do generally require a proxy of some kind in order to avoid huge delays. The problem is those proxies aren't always dependable. It sucks ;\
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