It's free and they're almost always some open parties available for people to join (or create your own team and randoms will almost certainly join and help you level up).
I'm usually around on Tuesday evenings (UK timezone) but the guild meets other days too.
Do you have any characters already leveled up? Or would you be starting from scratch?
The Dreamcast has it's own community servers and isn't compatible with Schtserv. Though I believe that might just be because Episode 2 wasn't release on the DC. I do have an account for the DC servers too but I wouldn't recommend them. The DC takes too much hassle to get online for the value when most people on the DC PSO server are there for the novelty rather than the grind.
Blue Burst (PC) has it's own community servers too. But I've never owned nor played PSO on the PC.
- you don't lose any unequipped items when you die (this is super annoying on the DC)
- you can level up your character to 200 instead of 100 (or 150, I forget which). Which is very useful in Ultimate campaigns (as well as lengthens the game)
- GC also comes with Episode 2, which is something like 6 extra dungeons. Some of them look absolutely gorgeous too.
The DC PSO is a fantastic game, but he Sonic Team basically doubled the scale of game when they released it on the GC.
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Edit: thinking about it, `Ultimate` mode might not even be available on the DC version. Or if it is, it's only available on the v2 of the DC version (there were two versions available for the DC). Ultimate is like another mod for Episode 1 because it comes with new skins for the mobs and the campaigns happen at different seasons and/or times of day.