Updated!

There is an extremely long interview posted on 4Gamer, but near the end, it seems Sakai has been watching the international Phantasy Star community for quite some time.

Basically each area will have its own separate server. They plan to have Europe and North America share the same server.

They are also eying on expanding into other parts of Asia, but it's not at a stage where it can be talked about as of yet.

Since the laws of handling cash items is different in each country, it's difficult for them to have everyone share the same server.

Since game culturalization will be necessary, there may be some changes to the game's contents to reflect each nation. (PSUBLOG Comment: Find the list of seasonal lobbies that were data-mined a while back.)

Was shocked at how quickly the Character Creation demo was completely translated into English through a mod.

His official blog entries are translated overnight too . (Who would do such a thing?)

New weapon categories and new classes are coming together. He thinks they'll make it so that the weapon categories could be used by 2 classes, however, all classes will continue to use the Gunslash.

Aside from that, other tidbits from the interview include:

PSO2 started development back in 2008, back then they were discussing whether the title should be PSO2 or PSU2.

They basically decided upon the cross platform play concept back in 2010.

The development progress for the PlayStation Vita and Smartphone versions are currently underway, but it's not at a level which they can show you yet. You should wait around TGS for more information about those versions.

The Free 2 Play model was decided upon since the beginning.

Were a bit worried that people wouldn't like meeting unknown players in multi-party areas, but the reception so far has been mostly favorable.

The highest amount of characters that can be created on each ship is around 2x the maximum number of concurrent connections.

What Game Culturalization Means For You?

Though this section is sort of speculating, we can piece together the puzzle left by Sakai.

In the 4Gamer interview, Sakai mentioned that contents specifically produced for overseas audiences could be re-imported back into the Japanese version. Back in March, Shougai talked to Sakai about the international version of PSO2, during that time, they didn't publicly announce whether it was coming overseas. According to Shougai, Sakai (not speaking officially) said that if they do release the game overseas, they'd have to consider implementing new components and make some adjustments to suit the needs of each nation. He gave an example where he'd have to develop additional parts for darker skin tones in Character Creation, etc.

Another example of this Culturalization was back when he brought the Hangul translated version of PSO2 to a Korean gaming show. He mentioned in an interview how they wouldn't implement a PVP mode initially at launch due to low demand. Though, if they decided on actually starting a Korean version of PSO2, they'd certainly consider adding it into the game.

Blog Updates

Next week, he will reopen character creation.

Since there were so many maintenances, players who purchased the premium set (or items that expire in 30 days or more) felt they lost out on time utilizing such services. Sakai plans to respond to this in the future.

There is now a new clause to the Terms of Service that asks those who discovered bugs or any major flaws to report them to the administration team instead of releasing it to the public.

Posting major flaws and cheats to external sites including twitter and video hosting sites violates their Terms of Service. Again, please report them to the administration team.

Bikini Costumes are coming up soon in Scratch. ( Rejoice!! )

FUN Scratch Content Rotation

Items available in the FUN Scratch will be rotated periodically. The following items will be removed from the FUN Scratch on July 18th, 2012.

オールバック All Back

メイドカチューシャ Maid Katyusha (Maid Headband)

ナースキャップ Nurse Cap

ウエディングケーキ Wedding Cake

追加ロビーアクション01 Additional Lobby Action 01 "Entrust"

追加ロビーアクション02 Additional Lobby Action 02 "Shake Head"

追加ロビーアクション04 Additional Lobby Action 04 "Delighted"

追加ロビーアクション16 Additional Lobby Action 16 "Bed"

[via psblog]

A Deluxe Size August?

mw in August?

In April, Sega held a character creation contest, the winner would have their very own character in the game. In an interview inside the July issue of Dengeki PlayStation, Sakai hinted that a character would appear in the lobby to deliver client orders. During the month, if you clear all of their client orders, you'll receive a special item (details unknown).