Sega taking Phantasy Star Online offline in Japan

http://schtserv.com

"but we don't want to be around once the legions of MMO-addicted GameCubers catch wind of a cancellation on that platform."

Didn't the Gamecube servers go off in April?

You can still cheat your way around to play it on the Dreamcast.

It's crazy thinking back realizing the Cube's online capabilities were basically made for two PSO games only....

Tina, people like you make me wish it was possible to shoot people in the face over the internet.

Private servers FTW!

.... wait, can you do that for PSO?

people still play this crap?

The charm was lost on me.

That the Xbox version is going offline isn't a surprise. But private servers for the Xbox version aren't an option since the connections are all made through the Xbox Live service. This isn't much of a loss, since Episode III and all of the Plus Pack missions happened only on the Gamecube versions, and Episode IV happened only on the Windows port. People who still want to play online have lots of options available to them and know what platforms to go for.

I still enjoy PSO occasionally, but Phantasy Star Universe has supplanted it in all the functional ways. The fact that many of the PSO dungeons and weapons will soon be available in PSU also makes the old game a little redundant.

PSO still had a big fanbase when they took the GCN servers down. It was quite unfortunate...but it is a good game.

Anyone who has played Blue Burst (PC, Episodes 1, 2 and 4) and hasn't Ryuker'd back to the community in a while may want to know this:

- The servers are being shut down at the end of March.
- Anyone who had a playsega.com account and paid for a month's PSOBB time (ie. Not PSU) gets to play the game for free after January 9th.

http://www.psobb.com/index.php
http://boards2.sega.com/psobb_board/viewtopic.php?t=77148

The future of the Xbox servers is looking grim too. If they go, there'll be no more official English PSO servers (and once the JP Xbox server goes, their Blue Burst server will be the very last official version left). Blue Burst is actually still doing well in Japan (they even have their own online manga: http://psobb.jp/community/manga/ ), but their client doesn't work on standard Western computers IIRC, so there's no chance of migrating to a non-illegal server.

Restricting the 'free' period to previous subscribers is a right shame; I'd love to see the ship lobbies flooded with veterans and newbies once again (hell, I can't even remember the last time we filled a Block, the 'purist' veteran community is THAT dead). If anything changes on that front, I'll send a Guild Card Joystiq's way and get prepared to go down partying with the thousands of you who want to give the game a last, proper hurrah (and check out Episode 4 while they're at it).