Current Status: Can't share links and stuff. PM me.

Yo yo. After watching Jason play PSO as well as hearing Jeff talk about running his own PSO server I had the idea of having our own GB server running! I was thinking if there was any interest I would love to set one up and play with people. I'm thinking I would rent out an Amazon EC2 instance to host it. I have been messing around with server stuff and got one working locally, see below.

Any interest? I'd write up a tutorial to connect with a client, it isn't too complicated and I'm able to run it on Windows 8.

PS: I'm not sure if I could legally link the client files here, so I dunno how that would work... hell I don't even know if this is okay to post. Mods, lemme know!

I'd be down, to try it at least and play with some GB duders. . Haven't played BB in like 8 years, but would be kind of fun to go back.

@belegorm: You're the only one who has expressed interest on here... but this was tweeted later that night.

I'd definitely hop on and try it for a bit, at least. I haven't played much PSO since about 2006~ though, so I'm not sure how likely I'd be to stick with it, but I really loved it back in the day.

I have only ever played about an hour of PSO on DC years ago, can you play the story mode section online? I would love to try out the game if you get a server going.

Zombocom is the correct name for any server.

I'm up for playing PSO with some duders.

I love some PSO. I'd be interested.

Yeah I would be interested, only ever played PSO offline with friends never tried online stuff.

Would be way more interested in a PSO2 server, as if that will ever happen :P. But yeah, sure why not?

There's no way to run your own PSO2 server unfortunately.

@winsord: No worries, I'm not expecting anyone to play for a long time. We'll just see what happens.

@pazy: You should be able to play those online!

Any ideas for a ship name? I just threw in ZomboCom for fun, I'm open to any GB related-names or whatever.

Yeah I know :( Japan is actually going to get yet another PSO soon too on the vita. Seriously Sega.... you suck.

Welcome to ZomboCom.

I'd probably play on the server it this thing really gets made :)

If there were some kind of guide to getting in, I would totally be down. I've always wanted to go back and play more original PSO but just never got around to it.

I'd be up for sinking some hours into PSO again. I never did play blueburst that much.

Also, The A-Striker seems like an obvious choice for the name.

Sounds pretty great to me. I haven't played a PSO game since the Dreamcast days, well, except for a short-lived run through PSO2.

Just a quick update. I am so close to have it working, I have been able to connect to a remote server hosted on Amazon and mess around in the game. Unfortunately I'm having issues with the ship server, it's extremely buggy and only accepts my connection about 1 in 10 times. No promises that I will be able to figure it out either. :/ If anyone has set up a server before (tethealla) let me know.

I loved the traditional Phantasy Stars, but never played any of the online ones. I'm definitely interested in giving this a shot. I've also never played an MMO, so...

@sinusoidal: PSO was the most user friendly MMO pre-WoW so I wouldn't worry about it. Some of it's mechanics aren't explained particularly well but if you use a wiki/guide you won't have any problems.

@casty: That Tethealla website really burns the retinas. It's like I'm back on Xanga.

PSO is heavily reliant on port forwarding, so check some PSO private server forums (SCHTHACK, Ultima) and see what ports you have to have open.

Oh man I hope you can get it up and running. I haven't been too thrilled with the communities on other private servers so having a GB server would be awesome. :D

Only time I ever played PSO was single-player on the GameCube and it seemed like a mess. I'd be potentially interested in getting into this community though. Hit me up if you work it out and I'll join in.

I'd be so down for this, I played on one of the Blue Burst servers a couple years ago. That wasn't much of a hassle to get into.

Playing online in Dreamcast PSO was the most fun ive ever had in gaming.

Sure, I'd screw around with it. How would I even get the game at this point?

Hell yeah PSO. I'd love to play this game again.

Legality seems a bit questionable. According to software licensing agreements, Sega is within their rights to shut down or seek to prosecute anyone running a personal server or downloading the game for free, yet people have been doing it for years now and Sega has neither done nor said nothing about it, so take that as you will. Considering PSO2 came out a couple of years ago and is free-to-play, I can't imagine they're particularly concerned over the very few remaining playing this one. There are a few fairly high-profile sites with the complete game and patches for their servers up for download.

Just the thought of a perfect mind Bana which I think was 45/0/5/150 for my soul eater using FOmar gets my juices flowing. (Obviously not a great mag for a battlemage but it's uniqueness, difficult to level and obtain, plus God buffs means it puts Nidras and the likes to shame)

@casty: I would love to help get this thing rolling. I'm a web developer by day so I have some expertise with servers, even if I haven't run a PSO server before. Drop me a line if you're still struggling with it.

I remember the last time I played on a private server I was able to download the client from the official site, probably not now

I'd give it a shot if you got it up and running. =)

Wooooow. Seeing Castelak is a blast from the past.

@beardyduck: You're a goddamn genius. ;) It was a MTU issue on my computer's end. I changed it from some other manual number to 1420, although automatic may work. I can connect right away now.

@pollysmps Hi!

Current plans:

Right now I'm just running a server using a flat .dat for the "database". I want to set it up using MySQL and then maybe I can just have an account sign-up link for people to use, otherwise people would need to send me a message and I'd need to create accounts manually, which would suck for everyone.

Question for you all:

I can set the drop/exp rates globally on the server. What should we do concerning that? If I bumped them up, I wouldn't want to go too crazy. I like the idea of a "close to the original" PSO experience.

300% EXP gain and equivalent increase in drop rate would be perfect.

I run a server myself for some friends and we ran with 2x EXP rate and our drop rates are roughly 25% higher than the original game. We also did a bit of redundancy cleaning up in regards to what drops for what Section IDs as well (and added items to the drop table that could only be obtained from events we didn't have.) That's probably a bit too ambitious and it took quite a while, but I definitely think a slightly accelerated EXP gain would keep things a little more arcadey and refreshing.

Not played since the Dreamcast. Sounds like fun!

So, is there a client I should download or... what? I'm not sure how the PC version was set up.

Maybe only 150% for the exp, 300 would mean you might be 35 by the time you beat Falz on normal. The drop rates at 300 seen fine I'm sure I still won't get my TJ sword. I'll farm syncestas for our great gps in case they get a Lavis from a Sinow Red and want that sexy double canon.

I have literally no idea how to go about joining you guys but I am interested!

Well, I dunno if this is gonna work cause I can't share links or information on how one could connect. I understand why that is not allowed though. Sorry to get everyones hopes up.

Dang.

It's a true bummer this can't be discussed openly. I already had my nostalgia jaunt through Blue Burst a couple years ago. Here's a screenshot from those fun times.

Why don't we all just play together on one of the existing servers like Ultima?

Difference in lvling and drops rate is much nicer on this with the slight mod. Already hit 15 but need a ranger to help a brotha out to feed my mag for the superior PB. This really is the best co op game of all time. So natural to do a full combo, wait for the swing animation step back ever so slightly then before he even finishes start my next combo.

This really explains why the Souls games were easier for me than most, I was already used to watching, learning, then raping mobs. :p

I'd be down to play 1000%. I love me some PSO and I love me some Giant Bomb. So it'd work out!

I played BB for most of the official servers run. I also played a bit on a grey market server but the increased drops and exp ruined the experience for me. I would be down to play again with some bombers however.

I was(am?) in the PSO2 GB guild but it dried up and I stopped updating the English patch.

After only one day, back to dreaming about PSO.

Yup! Such an odd thing to happen but after my thousands of hours in the previous games I guess I'm not that shocked. This game really never gets old.

It's taken several years for me to find an administrator oozing with as much arrogance as those associated with "Kingdom of Loathing", but at last, I happened upon Ephinea PSOBB. Wow. Sodaboy (appropriate name--he certainly doesn't behave like a man) has the public demeanor of a fresh, steamy turd. POS attitude, POS implementation of the game. Probably explains the low number of active players. Avoid this site at all costs.

Is this at all possible on a Mac?