Development
Development of Phantasy Star Online began after the completion of Sonic Adventure. Sega's Chairman Isao Okawa had a strong belief that internet gaming would come to be important, and the company's Sonic Team division was instructed to develop an online title. As there was no precedent for online gaming on console, the developers looked to Blizzard's PC RPG Diablo for inspiration on the game's mechanics. During development, the game was initially known as The Third World and had a vague sci-fi theme, before art director Satoshi Sakai produced a piece of concept art featuring a dragon and the decision was made to link it to the Phantasy Star series.
Phantasy Star Online was released bundled with a demo disc for Sonic Adventure 2.
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