Server shutdown dates
Phantasy Star Online Ver. 1 and 2 (US) - 31 October 2003
Phantasy Star Online Episode III C.A.R.D. Revolution Trial Edition - 15 September 2003
Phantasy Star Online/Phantasy Star Online ver. 2 (North America) - 1 October 2003
Phantasy Star Online (Microsoft Windows) - January 2004
Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II ver. 1.0 - 26 March 2004 [2]
Phantasy Star Online Ver. 1 and 2 (PAL & JP) - 2 April 2007[[3][4]
Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II (GC Ver. 1.1 and Plus Version) and Phantasy Star Online Episode III C.A.R.D. Revolution - 01 April 2007 [5][6][7]
Phantasy Star Online Blue Burst - 31st March 2008
Presumably the official servers for the Dreamcast version of Phantasy Star Online were to be shut down when the servers were officially closed. However, the Dreamcast servers were still accepting connections, except the connections would be dropped after some period of inactivity. Those servers were shut down on April 1, 2007, no longer accepting any connection, the same time the servers for the Gamecube version was shut down. There is no record of this, however, it is a myth that recurs when asking those who would be involved in the running of bots on the various SEGA servers (illegally, further lessening the probability of such actually occuring).
It has been announced that SEGA will terminate support for the Japanese XBOX version of Phantasy Star Online Episode I&II effective January 31, 2008. It is assumed this will also effect the European PAL and North American versions of the game. Many users have been shocked by the news, assuming XBOX PSO, the least used of all versions, had been safe from termination in April 2007 along with the Dreamcast and Gamecube versions due to the closed nature of XBOX LIVE. [8]
[edit] Free Month
A couple of months before the SEGA servers (for Phantasy Star Online for the Gamecube) were shut down, Sega had annouced that they will host a "free month," which would allow all users to log in, and play for free to enjoy the last month of activity.
The specifics involved that you would not be allowed to pay for, or create a new account on their servers after January 29th. Paying on the 29th allowed one to play during the month of February.
Nearing the free month, users started to notice that the free month would be only available to those who had already paid for the month of February, requiring one to pay for one month in order to get the "free month" for free. In this frustration, one user, who remains unknown to this day, found a method to crash any user logging into the servers, which would potentially corrupt any saved data. Users were urged to not go online by many fan sites (such as pso-world) to lessen the hardware problems users would obtain when going online. The cause was resolved to be a "crash bot," which was patched later on in the free month, running on Sega of Japan's login server. The method was later leaked after the SEGA servers went down. It involves simply sending a piece of data, known to cause a crash, while logging in. For some unknown reason, the servers allowed communication of clients during the log-in phase, which resulted in all clients logging in to be affected by this piece of data. That reasoning behind the attack had caused a small uproar, leaving users wondering what kind of server allows unmonitored communication at a critical phase when logging in.
