Phantasy Star Online… Offline…then Online again?
Posted by Graham. Filed under G, News, PC, Retro. Tagged with Dreamcast, Fan Sites, Fan Stuff, Homebrew.
 
For anyone that didn’t know, the European and Japanese servers for the highly popular Dreamcast title, Phantasy Star Online, were to be shut down, yesterday, on the 2nd April (2007).
But reports from fansite, Dreamcast-Scene, indicate that the servers were turned off- as they were meant to be- but then randomly went back online! To much glee from the many PSO fans out there.
There has been no further update on this story, at least not from the DCS crew, and I have not taken my Dreamcast online for quite sometime now, so have not been able to check whether the servers are indeed still up. So if anyone can confirm if the servers are still up- that would be grand.
No doubt though, the servers will definitely go offline at sometime, (most likely soon, if not already), as Sega concentrate on their newer titles; Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst (PC) and Phantasy Star Universe (PS2, Xbox 360 and PC). But we can only hope that some homebrew servers will remain active, like Schthacks server, so that Dreamcast fans can continue to get their fix of the Phantasy Star world.
[Source: Dreamcast-Scene]
Comments on this article
There have been 2 responses to this article.
You realize that server is still technically illegal, since you can connect to it with Blue Burst–whose servers are still active, right?
Angelo
Posted April 3rd, 2007 at 11:16 pm.
I would consider this to be one of those big gaming Grey Areas.
If you are using it to access Blue Burst on the PC then sure it is illegal I guess.
But for all those who still really want to play normal PSO, especially on their DCs (if you can on Schthacks still) - this ‘grey area’ is the only solution.
Personally I am one of those crazy people against game copying, downloading etc… However, I do ‘accept’ it if there really is no other way to get the games- so for systems that no longer exist with games that are almost impossible to find, I tend to turn a blind eye.
-I know someone at work who copies all their PS2 and Xbox games, and I had a massive go at the guy. But if he were copying DC or Saturn titles, I wouldn’t mind so much.
-In my eye (and I’m sure many others) if Sega choose to turn off their servers, thats fine by them. But I would also hope that they can turn a blind eye to those that succeed in setting up their own servers.
-I should note that even though I ‘accept’ these conditions, that does not mean that my room is full of burned games or Roms of games I couldn’t find.
So Angelo are you against playing PSO on Schthacks server? Or is it just that it’s possible to play Blue Burst on it that you think it’s wrong?
G
Posted April 6th, 2007 at 3:41 am.