DayZ : Changing MMO's

I’ve yet to play the massively popular ARMA II mod DayZ. I’ve seen guides on how to do it and it just looks like a chore, especially when you consider that it’s today officially been announced as going standalone. Over the next few weeks we’ll discover exactly when we’ll be able to get our dirty mitts on DayZ: The Non-Mod Version and how much it’ll cost. As it stands though, you’re expected to buy a game (actually an add-on, you can play the mod with the free-to-play version of the base game and the Operation Arrowhead add-on) and then tinker endlessly to get the mod itself working.

Before Christmas though there’s going to be a Minecraft-esque release that allows you to download the current version of the game, for a price, and then have the rest of the updates for free. I think a lot of people, me included,  have been waiting for it to happen and it’s good to see that it has.

How Many People Will Play?

Let’s just think for a second though – if a lot of people are waiting for DayZ to go standalone, if they’re waiting to avoid having to buy ARMAII (although I hear it’s a great game) – then what does it say that over a million people have now logged into the servers and tried their hand at zombie survival? What I’m saying is this: if that’s how many people want to play when it’s a relatively expensive chore to set up, how many people are going to be willing to buy it when it goes standalone? This is a game that’s going to break some records, perhaps going on to become one of the bestselling titles this year. It might even be able to beat out the likes of Counter-Strike and DotA as the most successful mod-to-full-game of all time.

Massive Survival

Of course, ordinarily this sort of thing wouldn’t interest us MMO folks. It’s a shooter, with zombies. That’s not exactly the most interesting of combinations (although I’m not sure any MMORPG fan can complain too much about another genre’s originality). DayZ is a shooter with a difference though, it allows you to play alone or team up with others in an attempt to survive. Zombies aren’t your only threat; you must cope with long treks with low ammo, the idea that the enemy could be anywhere and, more than any of that, the fact that other players aren’t always going to be friendly. It’s about as close to a zombie apocalypse as we’re ever going to get and if playing with large groups of other players is your thing, DayZ will be a must-play.

Real Survival

It’s not unusual to see stories of Fallout/Elder Scrolls style scrounging, tense village searching that results in a little bit of ammunition or access to a vehicle that may or may not offer you a moment’s protection. Driving down the road, even a second’s swerving can lead to you crashing your vehicle, suffering a serious injury and dying in the woods. That’s one of the things that I feel DayZ has going for it: Zombies aren’t the only way of being killed. First and foremost, DayZ is about survival, it’s about not trusting others and being ready to shoot before you’re shot. From what I’ve heard it’s about sneaking through long grass while approaching a town in the hopes that you’ll see them before they see you. Just don’t focus your efforts too much on the one target: you’ll end up getting shot in the back.

Zombie MMOs

There have been zombie MMOs in the past, but they tend not to be very good. Either they focus too much on poor shooting elements – I’m thinking Dead Frontier there – or they focus too much on the RPG elements, on boosting your character and ultimately becoming a zombie-killing powerhouse. Come to think of it, most Zombie games come down to one of those two options. Is the survival seen as boring? Is the idea of building a game around the idea of tension, around not knowing what’s going on (think Alien, not Aliens), such a dumb idea?

Obviously, after a million people have taken to DayZ in less than six months, it’s fair to say that anybody who would have answered yes to those two questions would have been completely, utterly wrong.

Read our Elder Scrolls Online preview here->

The Elder Scrolls Online

I was thinking about this while playing Skyrim and New Vegas this week actually. A lot of what those games are about is survival. Sure, you don’t need to eat and you’re not likely to keel over and die completely randomly (not unless you’re on hardcore mode), but you still have to make a living, you still have to buy weapons and improved armour. Bethesda make survival games and The Elder Scrolls Online is likely to lose that element in the transfer to MMO. It’s going to end up playing like World of Warcraft or The Old Republic, relying on lore from the other games to justify its place in the series. That’s my impression of it, although I hope I’m completely wrong. So with games like DayZ and The War Z offering opportunities to scavenge dead bodies, conserve ammo, search abandoned towns for better weaponry, will the inevitable rise in games looking to break off just a piece of this new genre’s pie force the developers on The Elder Scrolls Online to look again at what they’re missing out on?

Breaking the World

So I suppose the question is: how much would you like to survive? Starting from the very get-go with no weapons, you’re forced to run from battle, you’re forced to rely on people around you to a certain extent. And when you fall and end up injured, allies who once fought alongside you will have to question whether your equipment is more important to them than your assistance. If you have something worth stealing, friends will turn on friends in a heartbeat and it’ll be up to you to start again and, if you choose to, seek your revenge. That’s one of the nice things about DayZ, it’s all about decisions and living through a zombie-infested wasteland on your own terms. Remember though, everybody else is doing the same thing and even the friendliest of smiles may hide the evil plan of somebody only just stopping themselves from shooting you through the head. If that’s not an accurate zombie sim, I’m not sure what is.

Can you handle Zombies? Even that many!?

Conclusion - DayZ Preview

I haven’t played DayZ yet. If I had the time or patience to play around with file, I’d have done it, but the release of a standalone version means I’ll be buying it the day it’s released. It’s as simple as that. It’s a genre changer, a chance to take part in a massively online shooter designed to suck you in and make you a part of the world, made for you to change events and save lives. Maybe I’m romanticizing it, but in my mind the sky’s the limit for this game. It’s going to spell a new direction for MMOs and I can’t wait to see where other developers decide to take things.