Phantasy Star Online 2! Open Beta now!

[Meow]

This update looks super cool, can't wait for the casino among other things. Episode 3's first area looks cool enough but I would really wish that they go back to some cool, darker more PSO-era styled levels too. Things like the ruins level or the old seabed facility areas - something with that darker mix of sci-fi in there. Not that I dislike a lot of the current areas either!

Anyway can't wait

[JezMM]

Just in case anyone here doesn't read the bumped.org blog on a regular basis (you should, they highlight articles in the Tweaker) there's a small bonus thing to tie into the Sonic Lobby this week.

 

Say the phrase: 誕生日おめでとう in the chat box in-game, and next update you'll recieved a SEGA logo lamp for your room, a shortcake, and a 50% Tri Booster from the Visiphone.  The phrase of course, translates to "Happy Birthday", d'aw.

[gato]

Annnnnd PSO2 was hit by the DDoS... Man this bring me memories of my years playing on Schthack XD

 

 

In the meantime, people over at PSO-World are freaking out because... We have a clue of who is behind it, and it points to being one of us westerners. So people are throwing their arms at the sky and claiming SEGA is about to pull a "China RMT" on us (when they IP blocked the entire country because of clues that pointed the RMTers were located in there, not like players outside of Japan were supposed to be playing this to begin with but...).

 

I'll try to keep you informed as more updates appears.

 

 

 

Now I kinda feel bad for waiting til later to wish Sonic a happy birthday ; _;

[PSI Wind]

*sigh* I knew it. SEGA better be smart about this whole thing.

[gato]

Speculation from 2ch doesn't point at us right now, instead they are blaming a Chinese hacker who has been attacking several non Chinese sites lately.

 

In other news, Dark Falz Loser came for its scheduled appointment to dish some time warping ass kicking to a chunk of our population and came back very disappointed and sad because no one was there waiting for it 

 

Cry for IDOLA... the foreveralone

[JezMM]

In other news, Dark Falz Loser came for its scheduled appointment to dish some time warping ass kicking to a chunk of our population and came back very disappointed and sad because no one was there waiting for it 

 

Cry for IDOLA... the foreveralone

Considering how PSO likes to try and keep its world fairly in-universe (calling servers "Ships" etc), my personal headcanon for the servers getting hacked will be that someone broke all the elevators so all the ARKS members are stuck twiddling their thumbs in their My Rooms right now.

[gato]

Ahahaha, that reminds me of a time (back in the first days of the server) when all of block 20 go blocked from the rest of the ship, meaning that if you were to log out you wouldn't be able to get into b20 until it got fixed. (this is back when b20 was the HUB all the English players met and played and not the trainwreck it's known to be nowadays)

 

The survivors decided that the wisest course of action was to buy an Afro hairstyle and party in the lobby until everything got fixed (I myself got an Afro that day, but it looked ugly in my character so I had to skip and tell everyone I wasn't "a chosen one"), I believe a team was also born that day from that incident, aptly named the 'Fro Council.

 

Man that brings me memories... It's why I get a little sad whenever my team mates (all awesome people mind you) go on their b20 hating sprees, I seem to be one of the few there who finds sentimental value in the primordial pool of the English speaking community.

 

 

 

Anyway, it seems there is going to be an announcement in a few minutes (or 12 hours, PSO-World can't timezone and it got me confused as well)

 

EDIT: Bumped says follow-up will happen at July 20th at 13:00 JST, that's 00:00 EST so I guess I'll have to find something else to do in the meantime... *goes to play Starcraft 2*

[gato]

More info... Sort of...

 

 

 

By (probable) coincidence PSO-World has also gone down during the last hours, I have no info about the why's and who's but I doubt is the same thing that's attacking the SEGA servers if 2ch previous speculation is true.

 

More bad news come from SEGA, they claim to have been taking measures against the attack but they were postponing their 13:00 (JST) announcement til 18:00... Then they gave a little more info about what services are down and won't say anything else til June 23th at 13:00 (JST).

 

 

So... "Happy Birthday Sonic" I guess? . _.

[gato]

Meanwhile, in the Darker's Den...

 

 

 

 

Someone give [Apprentice] a hug... please ; _;

 

 

 

 

But there are some good news at last! After almost a week to give their fans time to try Final Fantasy XIV, SEGA has announced they are slowly bringing their services back! So far only the patch/update server is up and the game server is "in maintenance", Players of the mobile version are out of luck tho since SEGA has announced it'll take them more time to bring back that service.

 

Keep an eye open for SEGA's next announcement which will happen tomorrow at 1:00 AM! most fans hope to have the service back by then or this Saturday so stay tuned! o/

[JezMM]

Some worrisome news.  The PSO2 servers are back up, but many western players have been unable to connect so far.  The community has noticed that all these players have certain ISPs in common:

• Comcast

• AT&T

• Cox

• Time Warner Cable

• Oceanic Time Warner

• Charter

• Bell Internet (Canada)

• Virgin Media (UK)

• BT Infinity (UK)

Supposedly some Verizon users can get in, some can't.  Deutsche Telekom (a German ISP I assume) appears to be working.

 

We'll have to see how this pans out and whether it's part of SEGA easing the load on the servers being back up or whether it's an intentional, permanent decision to block these popular western ISPs.

 

Apparently if you can't get into the game, you won't be able to access the main PSO2 website either, so use that as a testbed if you wish - this is a link to the article announcing the return of the servers: http://pso2.jp/players/news/?id=3851

 

I haven't tried the game yet, but I'm a BT Infinity user and as expected, the site times out for me when I try to access.

[PSI Wind]

I'm able to access the site and play the game. Verizon ISP.

[gato]

I'm sure my ISP is Telecom but I can't access.

 

I'll give it a few days and wait for tonight's announcement before start looking for VPNs. (or quit :U)

[gato]

So I asked a teammate how was b20 doing during this times and...

 

 

 

Well, this is sad... (and you can tell it's probably EQ time due to how full everything else is)

 

 

 

There has been some developments, SEGA is aware of all the errors going on to execute the launcher, about the random disconnects when switching blocks and the fact some authentication emails aren't being sent, they acknowledge this was an undesired side effect of the measurements they took against the DDoS attack and they plan to get working on it and see what they can do.

 

 

In the meantime people who are using VPNs should be aware of how much they log in or off from the game, there has been reports of people getting temporally banned from the game due to the many random locations are trying to access to your account (read: you using a VPN), SEGA assumes this is because someone is trying to steal your information so they close access to it, Meji has made a thread with all the info you need to know about it, with info about how to get your account back in case such thing were to happen.

 

 

As for myself, I don't think I'll log in until this mess is clarified. :x

[Conando]

Yeah, the site doesn't even load for me. Comcast user, so it seems like that should be a given. Not only does SEGA refuse to release it in the West, but now they're blocking out Western players.

[ElectricAngel]

What's strange for me is that the site loads, and there are times when I can access the game and other times when I can't. Strange stuff. I hope SEGA can fix this fast enough so that everyone can play again.

[JezMM]

Got bored enough to try properly and yeah I can't access the game as a BT Infinity user.  Luckily I have plenty from the Steam sales to be getting on with and I always tried to slightly distance myself of getting too attached to my progress when I was playing, should this be the beginning of the end for western players.

 

Most of the more esteemed members of the PSO2 Reddit though are saying there's no cause for alarm about it being permanent until we know more.

[Candescence]

So I finally managed to reinstall PSO2 on my new desktop and log in, and, after getting some crap out of the way upon logging in... Holy crap, looking at the F/SN items, that shit is expensive in the player shops. Rin's outfit (Absolute Layer) is roughly 2 million, Excalibur is 9 million, and for some reason, Ea is less than 2 million despite looking fucking badass. Sure, Excalibur has that cool Invisible Air effect, but hope you can turn it off so you can see the sword itself. I'll probably save up for Ea, Rin's outfit and Archer's outfit first (for my swordsman, my second female mage, and her assist dude), though.

 

Still, my strongest char is about level 56, I think, and almost up to the next level, so I'm not entirely sure how viable Clotho's time attack orders are. Also, I may have to do some spring cleaning with my storage, or sign up for on-time-password for the extra storage space, because I've almost run out. Geez.

[gato]

Good News Everyone!

 

 

 

SEGA has took measurements against the 107 and 249 errors  and some people who couldn't log in have reported to be able to join back! (I can access the site now, but haven't tried the game).

 

But of course! Since this is SEGA we are talking about, people who reported to be able to log in (read: Mostly Verizon users) last week can't access now . _.

 

 

 

I'm so freaking confused right now...

 

[PSI Wind]

First: http://www.reddit.com/r/PSO2/comments/29n4yt/there_is_no_ip_ban_updated/

It's not an IP ban. Anyways, I can confirm I can't access PSO2 anymore. Thanks Verizon, ya dicks. Fix this please.

[JezMM]

Interesting, I'll try and log in again tonight I guess.

 

From what I've heard though, the past week or so has been hell for the people who can get in, random disconnects and other issues all over the shop.  Some folks described it as unplayabley bad.

[Candescence]

So I've been tearing my ass through the darker mothership EQ a few times today, and I'm sorta terrified by how efficient everyone is at murdering things. Once again, I'm a Hunter when the biggest melee-class fad going on right now are Bravers, and I feel so fucking slow. And to make matters worse, my Braver class is on level 26, and I really don't want to grind.

 

On the bright side, though, I somehow managed to get a 10-star sword (Dalvada Sword) with some damn sweet stats and an extra potential unlock for murdering the shit out of Darkers. Of course, I also need to burn through a lot of money and grinders to get that and get the blade back to +10... To make matters worse, I'm sorta broke after buying that Ea camo. Which is a fucking awesome camo, don't get me wrong (it makes Over End look even more awesome than it already is), but I also can't find a good party for TACOs right now.

 

Also, anyone else think the new crafting system is just plain intimidating and strange? It doesn't actually craft shit, it's just a mechanism for potentially making lower-level swords into incredibly powerful ones. Which is neat for those who want to put the effort into making stellar equipment without having to rely on rare drops, the ability to access items and crafting components from your storage directly from the crafting station is completely bizarre, and there's absolutely no customization involved. Also, the results are apparently DEX-dependent. What.

[JezMM]

So I've been tearing my ass through the darker mothership EQ a few times today, and I'm sorta terrified by how efficient everyone is at murdering things. Once again, I'm a Hunter when the biggest melee-class fad going on right now are Bravers, and I feel so fucking slow. And to make matters worse, my Braver class is on level 26, and I really don't want to grind.

 

You can level quite a bit on the current Limited Quest in the Mothership.  Use some boosters if you have some.  When it was first unveiled I was at level 50-ish and I managed to level up to 55 in a matter of about an hour per level using it (combined with the client orders that my partner character was doing while I was offline, and Xie's client orders related to the Limited Quest).

 

Also you can get a nice chunk of easy EXP once a week or so by taking all of Franka's boss enemy drop related client orders and just buying the items you need off the player shops.  They aren't overly expensive for the most part.

[Candescence]

Well, I might as well give it a shot. Might be neat for levelling up my alt mage char as well.

 

So... Anyone want to set up an SSMB team or something? I dunno if there's any other team I'd be inclined to join, to be honest.

[JezMM]

Just tried out the game again today and still no luck for me (BT Infinity user).

[gato]

About crafting, most people say weapon crafting is useless unless you don't have a good weapon or want something to carry you through the early levels of the game (that DEX loss is really noticeable) and unit crafting is only good if you don't mind losing the unit's individual bonuses (set bonuses remain).  But tech crafting is almost essential, the difference between a regular Il Megid and an Umbral one can make the difference between killing things with a single cast or not (same goes with Il Barta, which really uses that damage boost to deal some ridiculous damage to bosses). 

 

Also keep in mind that unlike weapons and units crafting you'll really want to get a Great Success on tech crafting, otherwise you could end up with something worse than the original tech.

 

As a side note, Tech crafting is the only "craft" on this game where you feel like you are actually customizing something (tho like almost everything on this game, players will always pick the "do more damage" recipe instead of the others)