PSO campaign - Help get it back online! WRITE LETTERS NOW! (Deadline 09/04/07)

[segadreamcaster]

Hi all,

Ok, if anybody here wants to help in an attempt to save the official EU Dreamcast Phantasy Star online server, listen up!

As you may be aware the EU Dreamcast Phantasy Star online server went offline a few days ago, as a result I am running a campaign to try to persuade SEGA to either re-instate the server, or give the Dreamcast community a chance to pay for the servers ourselves. Obviously we do not know the cost of the latter at this stage, but the opportunity would be a start. (Please note: this is not a request for money)

Here is a run down of the current situation:

First things first, I know this has little to no chance of being successful, but whilst there is any glimmer of hope I am willing to try and I hope you are to.

This all started when I decided to do a bit of research into the IP address of the EU PSO server. The upshot of it is, I found out where the servers are located and who has control of them, its a company called NTT Europe who are based in London and NOT SEGA, sega have a contract with NTT Europe for a number of different things, including the EU Dreamcast PSO servers.

I then contacted NTT Europe and was put in contact with a guy who seems interested and eager to help and has said he will look into it personally. The upshot of the conversation was that he could not currently say with any certainty that they hosted the server, but he did say that SEGA definitely have an account with them and that they DO HOST servers for SEGA.

After I had told him the story of what has happened he seemed very intrigued and interested, including a comment about how impressed he was that I tracked them down....lol (not that hard). Anyway, he said he had contacts directly with SEGA-europe and that he would contact them to see what is going on...he also said he would talk to the tech guys to find out what is happening with the server. Unfortunately it seems there will be no progress on this now until after Easter, but hopefully there will be some movement soon after.

So...whats next? Well I await his response, but in the mean time I have decided to start a letter campaign, so that I can put together a pack of letters to send into Sega-Europe straight after Easter

WRITE YOUR LETTER:

Guidelines:

Include an explanation on why you would prefer to play PSO on the Dreamcast hardware as opposed to other hardware platforms.

If you played PSO online for your Dreamcast before, please recall some of your fond memories of playing online.

If you have never played PSO online before, please write about why you would like to play it online.

Add any addition comments you might want to include on your own.

Include your full name, regional location, and email contact. A home address is not required. Just include your City, State/Province, and Country. (If you are outside of Europe/Australia it may be better to make this part up )

Please take care in writing your letter! Do not just scribble 1 paragraph, and do not make a long-winded tail. Aim for half a page to 2 pages.

Please email all "Save PSO" letters to: [email protected]

Please make sure you include your username and the boards you are from in the E-mail.

Get going guys, can't promise this will work, but we'll try it....

DEADLINE FOR LETTERS: 9th April 2007 (9pm GMT+1)

I am having to enforce this very early deadline as time is not on our side, please support this campaign!

[Anti Hacker]

*moved* This is to do with PSO, not PSU

[K_I_R_E_E_K]

Hi sega dreamcaster, i don't know if lordnikon aproves this, he said that he didn't want online consoles to be related with this "last hope".
did the same at psoworld but removed it after 10 minutes.......
If lordnikon aproves then......
WRITE YOUR LETTER....NOWWWWWW

[Arrogantelf]

WTF? everyone knows what to do really. Heh.

[segadreamcaster]

OK everyone, if anybody here still wants to write a letter, please send it in within the next 21 hours....

Thanks!

[K_I_R_E_E_K]

no more letters, there were 16 or so.
any news i will comunicate, do not expect miracles

[segadreamcaster]

Hi everyone,

I sadly have bad news, the campaign has failed and SEGA have decided not to help us. Although I have fallen fairly silent over the last three weeks, I have been contacting SEGA and NTT Europe on a regular basis to try to get things in motion, sadly all was in vain, as I picked up the official response from my door mat this morning and this is how it reads:

"Dear Craig,

Thank you for your letter and your campaign pack which have been passed to me by Mike Hayes.

SEGA are proud to have such devoted customers and we are extremely grateful for your commitment to Phantasy Star Online. Unfortunately PSO has reached the point where the number of active players no longer justifies the manpower and resources required to operate and maintain the game servers. This situation is unlikely to change in future and regrettably we cannot re-open the servers, even in a limited capacity.

With regards to your second and third proposals: both of these would involve releasing our server-side code. This software remains the intellectual property of SEGA and it cannot be distributed to a third-party or released into the public domain for various reasons, including copyright and confidentiality. The game bears the SEGA brand and the Terms and Conditions make reference to SEGA. These would both need to be changed. Additionally, the authentication software and database would still need to be stored and maintained by SEGA because we cannot release these to a third-party.

We would encourage all fans of PSO to try Phantasy Star Universe and its forthcoming expansion, Ambition of the Illuminus. If you prefer something closer to the original, PSO Blue Burst for PC has an active and strong community.

Thank you once again for your loyalty to Phantasy Star Online.

Yours sincerely

Ryusuke Ito
IT & Network Director"


So, that is pretty much the end of the road folks...we tried our best but we all knew this was the likely outcome, feel free to send any messages or letters into Sega-Europe if you wish, I suggest you address or ask them to be sent on to "Ryusuke Ito" as this is obviously the person we would need to contact.

Thank you once again to everyone who supported this effort and I hope to see you all again sometime on a private server somewhere...at least we have that to be grateful for.

Thanks again everyone and enjoy that Dreamcast!

Cheers, Craig

[Cranberry]

The private servers totally killed off the official server population. Now with Blue Burst supported its completely killed off the Blue Burst population too. It's only a matter of time before those go down as well. Really Sega only has themself to blame with the terrible support they gave. It is the worst support I have ever seen from a company.

Things could have been so much different if they had just supported their servers like we were paying them to do.

[K_I_R_E_E_K]

Hi everyone, .........
..........
..........
Thanks again everyone and enjoy that Dreamcast!

Cheers, Craig

i am happy for all the efforts, i love to see that may still car about the servers, unfortunatly not enouph to make sega turn back on the decision.
you heard sega, get to bb and give us some money, don't like pso, then get PSU and pay to play online.....yeah....pay

[God-IX]

[SIZE="1"][COLOR="DeepSkyBlue"]Well, there are always private servers..... not too bad, but it i something sega oe often, just give up, nothing o surprising.

It was anice try to save it, but they don't want to pay money, so, they make you do it, of course!

Well it was fun while it lastd, but sounds like everyone who wants to keep playing, now pay to play, as sad as it may be



But now I think this thread is done.

I am not a mod however, and I could be wrong[/COLOR][/SIZE]