NBrid

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Written by: sandhrew

 (Part 1 by sandshrew, Part 2 by BoneStorm)

Many members of NBrid bought this game, and proceeded to get caught up
in the world of Phantasy Star. This really isn't a game you beat, but
work on your character's development. People have spent countless hours
building up their character and item stash (sometimes 100 hours or more!).
So anything that is a step backwards is just an annoyance. And unfortuently,
there are many ways for PSO to make you take a step back...

Recall PSO!!! (sandshrew)

Sega needs to recall the games because my sister lost her unknown sword
after she identified it because it wasn't in her inventory!! She checked
everywhere!!! (I swear.) I also think that Sega should fix their servers
on PSO because it keeps disconnecting me every game I finish. And this
is what really ticks me off... Yesterday, I was playing online and someone
joined (oh yeah, I was in Forest 1), and after they joined, my character
got thrown in side a place where there was no way out because the doors
were locked!!!! So I had to waste a telepipe just to get out of that hole
and return. And I was only on level 20 when it happened, so the monsters
were beating me pretty badly.

O.K. I think I wrote just a little too much. I was thinking about making
this a board entry, but I started to think, "What things wrong has PSO
done?" A LOT!!! So why not make this an editorial? So, we got hyped up
over nothing (almost nothing, but you know the game is cool and all).
Over the 6 months before the release of both Shenmue and PSO, they have
all been hyped up... I mean c'mon, is SEGA sucking that bad?

Is PSO nothing more than a POS? (BoneStorm)

One night I was nearing the end of one of my many late night PSO marathons.
When all of a sudden my game freezes up. At first I'm confused, then when
I see the game reset without saving, realization of what occurred sets
in. When I load my game again. I'm back a few levels, lost everything
I just got, and lost everything I was holding before that wasn't equipped.
AHHHHH! This has happened to me twice since (losing various degrees of
stuff), and I know it has happened to others. This is all too common of
an occurrence.

The most common PSO crash is the dreaded BSOD (Black Screen of Death).
Anyone on a Windows based PC knows about these (except there it's 'Blue').
This has happened to me and others many times. How Sega let such a major
bug through we'll never know. It seems to be related to your connection
online, and sometimes seems just like bad lag just before it hits.

There are other ways for the game to mess with you. Server crashes occur
more than one would like, and if you happen to be dead at the time, say
bye to your weapon and cash. I once played a Quest with a timelimit. Unfortuently
for one player, they were dead when time ran out and lost their weapon.
None of this compares to losing your entire game. Say something happens
while the memory card is being read or written to, you now have an unusable
game save. Another way to lose everything is if your DC's internal memory
is reset losing the serial number for PSO. All you can do then is call
Sega for a new number, and start over at level one.

There are a few things you can do to minimize damage. if it ever does
freeze up on you or you get the BSOD, wait! You may get lucky, and it
may save the game before disconnecting (assuming the game doesn't just
reset on you without saving which sometimes happens). You may want to
unplug the phone line or hit A+B+X+Y+Start to help it disconnect and save.
I know doing both those has saved my butt a few times. Also, whenever
you take or put an item in the bank it saves it. So anything you don't
want to lose, be sure to put in there. Still, people have lost even bank
items, so nothing is ever safe in the world of PSO...

Who is to blame? Well you can blame Sega and Sonic Team for making such
a buggy game and servers that crash more often then Windows 95. However,
now I also blame two similar types of people: pirates and cheaters. It's
thanks to you pirates that serial numbers are even needed. If you wonder
why you lose all held items when you don't save properly, it's because
of you cheaters. It would be too easy otherwise to save your game, give
a rare item to someone else, reset, and then reload your own game so now
both of you have the item. Don't even think of taking out your memory
card, you will instantly be disconnected. Alas, it is still easy enough
to give others items without losing it yourself.

With the addition of certain Game Shark cheats (even some that can be
used online), many rare items are no longer so rare, and neither is seeing
level 100 characters. So all this serial number, game save mumbo-jumbo
that Sonic Team supposedly worked so hard on (sure they did...) to curb
cheating has become a mute point. It's still so easy to cheat, and makes
these annoyances that we non-cheaters have to deal with pointless. I don't
know why people feel the need to cheat. By skipping directly to level
100, you miss out on the whole point of the game, and on all the fun.
In fact, cheaters make it less fun for everyone by making 'rare' items
and occurrences not so rare anymore. There really is no such thing as
a 'rare' item in PSO anymore.

While all these cases flat out SUCK, I, and most others, head back to
PSO the next day. After all, the fun is in building up your character,
so doing it again should be no big deal. If you disagree and think it's
just more work, maybe should play a different game.