PSO question...

[flavio75]

Hello everyone

I have a question about Phantasy Star Online. I was going to buy this game, but I just found on the net the following information (probably these are old news for many of you, in this case please excuse me for talking about it again): this game requires a serial number and an access code to log in, but it seems that after you play online for the first time, the online mode of the game can then only be used on the same DC unit the registration was completed on. If you try to use the same copy of the game with another DC, it will refuse to connect. My question is: is this true ?

And if it is, how can exactly the game do this ? Does every DC motherboard have a sort of unique ID that can be used to recognize a particular unit ? Or does the game simply save its serial number both somewhere inside the DC and in Sega's servers the first time you connect, then when you connect again it checks if the information saved in Sega's servers matches the one found in the DC unit ?

Thanks to everyone,

Flavio

 

[Fabrizo]

Yes, its true. I bought a used copy of PSO and about a week ago found out that I was unable to play it online because somone had registered it already. You can call sega and have them reset the serial number ands access key, but if the person who registed the CD in the first place tries to go on with another copy of the game the serial code will become useless again.

As for how the DC works with the two codes, I belive what it does is after you have put in your cd codes, and signed online, sega sends your DC the REAL cd keys, and then logs them into the PSO servers. If somone else tries to register the game with their DC it tells their system that it already has that code in use, and thus will not let you register as well. I could be wrong, but im pretty sure it works somthing like that.

 

[flavio75]

Quote: from Fabrizo on 11:08 pm on April 9, 2002

You can call sega and have them reset the serial number ands access key, but if the person who registed the CD in the first place tries to go on with another copy of the game the serial code will become useless again.

why ? Suppose Sega resets the old copy. If the guy who had the CD in first place buys another copy and continues his game with a new different serial number and access key, why should that disable the old copy again ?

after you have put in your cd codes, and signed online, sega sends your DC the REAL cd keys, and then logs them into the PSO servers. If somone else tries to register the game with their DC it tells their system that it already has that code in use, and thus will not let you register as well.

Wow how complex ! Anyway, I suppose all this means that the DC does NOT have a motherboard ID itself, right ? Because if it does not, and if the game saves something in it to make sure the user is playing always on the same unit, then there might be the way to copy the data saved in one DC flash memory to another DC, making the game believe they are the same unit and so allowing you to play your game from any DC you want Am I right ?

Thanks again,

Flavio

 

[Fabrizo]

Flavio75: "If the guy who had the CD in first place buys another copy and continues his game with a new different serial number and access key, why should that disable the old copy again ?"

Me: Because the guy will probably never spend the time reseting his internal memory, and will run his new copy of the game using the old serial number and access key. The disks themselfs are all the same, the cases just have different serial and access numbers in them.