Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis Roadmap - Schedule for future updates in 2021 after launch

Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis is finally available worldwide. However, some players may notice that the new online game launched with very little content when compared to the base PSO2 launch. In fact, this amount of content is more reminiscent of how PSO2 originally launched in Japan 9 years ago.

When PSO2 first launched in Japan in July 2012, it only had 4 Expedition fields: Forest, Volcanic Caves, Desert, and Tundra, and 3 character classes: Hunter, Ranger, and Force. The Japanese version incrementally added more fields, classes, and additional features like Sub-Classes through frequent updates that happened every month or two.

The English global release of Phantasy Star Online 2 launched in May 2020 with a lot of content up to Episode 3, which Japan took 3 years to reach. The English release then fast-tracked its updates in just one year to catch up with the original Japanese release, which took about 5 more years to get the same amount of content.

With the English client having caught up with Japan, it enables Sega to prepare New Genesis content for both servers at the same time. This has been evident from the simultaneous launch between both Japanese and Global servers—not only the actual launch but also the maintenances and even their extensions as well. That means players in the Global client will have to prepare for a totally different frequency and amount of game updates; more in line with that of the Japanese version.

Sega had published a tentative roadmap scheduling post-launch updates for the rest of 2021 at the Prologue 4 stream that aired on May 25. You can see the chart right below:

As the team is currently busy preparing for PSO2's 9th anniversary in July, the actual updates will begin from this August. It appears that the first priority will be character classes. New Genesis has 6 classes at launch: Hunter, Fighter, Ranger, Gunner, Force, and Techter; that's already twice the amount of classes from the initial Japanese PSO2 launch. The team will first bring back the Braver class in August, with the Bouncer class following later in Fall. They will also add more quest types like Defense Quests and Trigger Quests, while also adding a Mag Evolution Device Share System and bringing back the Title System.

The first major update for New Genesis is currently slated to arrive this Winter. It will raise the level cap from 20 to 35, add a new explorable region outside Aelio, and bring more skills and techniques to existing classes.

The global version of Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis is currently available on Xbox One and Xbox Series X, as well as PC via Microsoft Store, Steam, and Epic Games Store. If you are playing this online game, you may also be interested in checking our guides for the title.