Done by SOE, the guys from Everquest and Planetside 2.
I wanted to tell you about an exciting new free-to-play game we’ve had under wraps here at SOE for some time. It’s called H1Z1. It’s a massively multiplayer game in which players fight for survival in a world where death is the only sure thing. The H1Z1 virus devastated mankind and left nothing but death and destruction in its wake and a world nearly empty of human life where the remnants of humanity are in a fight against extinction against those infected with the virus. It’s been 15 years since H1Z1 was first encountered and what’s left of the world before is overrun with the Infected. Humanity has been reduced to hiding in the shadows, searching desperately for food and water and anything that can help to survive even for another day. But the Infected aren’t the only dangers in the world. Everyday life in the Apocalypse means dealing with all kinds of wild animals and the brutality of other survivors, as well as finding your next meal and a safe place to sleep. It also means scavenging or crafting anything that can help you live just one more day. In H1Z1 every minute of every day is borrowed time and fearing for your life… unless you are the Danger (talking to you Walter), but life can and will go on… even in circumstances as dire as this. Humanity has not given in to the Infected. There are still pockets of humanity and the fight goes on!
Our vision for this game is very simple but ambitious. We are starting with what I would call “Middle America” – an “anywhere and everywhere” town. The world is massive as you’ve come to expect from our games. Over time we will grow the world until we have our own version of the U.S. after the death and destruction brought on during the H1Z1 epidemic. It will be our own version of America. We’ll have urban cities and desolate wide open places. All connected seamlessly. Our focus is building a sandbox style of gameplay where players can build shelters out of resources in the world. They can even work together to make amazing fortresses complete with weaponry to help defend against both the Infected and other players. Players also have access to a very deep crafting system that can let players make a huge variety of awesome stuff, including weapons (I made a 1911 the other day) and things like Molotov cocktails, explosives… and other fun surprises.
I will also go right to the heart of the question a lot of players will have – “There are a lot of survival / Zombie games… how is this one going to be any different?”. First off, it’s a persistent MMO that can hold thousands of players on servers we host (yes there will be multiple servers with very different rule sets). Why is that a good thing? It means a thriving economy (oh yes… there’s trading). It also means you have potential allies in the all-out war on the Infected… and many an enemy as well. It uses our proprietary next-gen Forgelight engine and that means we’ve had a lot of really cool technology to work with to make the game we wanted to make. It’s also designed from the ground up for our players to become part of the design process. The Roadmap system that we built for PlanetSide 2 will be used extensively to clearly communicate what features we’re working on and what you can expect and when. You’re also going to be getting awesome access to our developers. We’ll be opening it up for Player Studio creations too so expect player-created items to make their way into the game. The main thing that differentiates H1Z1 from the other great games in the genre is the emphasis we are putting on player ownership and building. We want you to be able to form roving gangs that are headquartered out of an abandoned warehouse that you’ve taken over… or a house you’ve built from scratch after having cut trees down and secured the resources to make it. We are giving players the tools to make their own towns, camps and defenses, and they can decide how to set up their base (which is in the world btw… not instanced). We’re building in all the social features you’ve come to expect from an SOE game (grouping, proximity voice chat, voice chat for your gang, and many other cool social features).
To use a simple reference I’m sure everyone interested in this game will get… we want our players to make Woodbury from The Walking Dead if they want to. Or take over a prison. Or fix an old car so you and your friends (yeah we have multiplayer vehicles) can run zombies and players over mercilessly, and revel in the sheer delight of hearing a zombie scream as you light it on fire, or craft a gun to take down your friends and enemies alike. Our goal here is to provide emergent gameplay that will allow our players to make the world their own the way they want to. One of the best things about H1Z1 being an MMO is the fact that with a lot of people playing, we’re able to see all different kinds of gameplay. If you prefer a quiet life as a farmer raising crops… we’re going to make sure your zombie apocalypse fantasy is complete. If you’re like me and you want nothing more than to kill everything that moves, by all means see how that goes. It’s going to be a blast!
Yeah with how Planetside 2 turned out and how EQ Landmark and Next are looking, I can say I’m very interested. I also like to see that they’re planning multiple servers with different rule sets, that could really help keep up interest.
It might be nice to have an AAA budget behind this popular concept. On the other hand, part of what makes these games so compelling for their audience is the fact that they can go entirely “off-script” so to speak and just dink around, or be complete trolls. I doubt SOE will allow the kind of behavior you can find in a typical DayZ stream.
I’m not so sure that would be an entirely bad thing. Though with different server rules you could have a place set up for full no holds barred behavior.
And the title doesn’t have spelling mistakes, woah! :P
I don’t know Telefrog, I think even big companies understand that the success of Dayz, Rust, etc is in the “wild west” style of everything goes. From what the director comments on the Youtube video, they are going for that.
I somehow trust more SOE for this project than Bohemia for Dayz:
I think it’s more easy for a veteran MMO developer like SOE to make another MMO game in the same style, but putting zombies in it this time, than taking a developer like Bohemia with their engine, AI and netcode and expect of them to make a good MMO experience.
Though even then, I think technology isn’t there to really make the ideal zombie-sandbox-survival-MMO game.
Let’s imagine a game like Dayz, a fps with a huge landscape, dotted with forests, villages and cities and camps. Imagine living on the wilderness, and having to go to a city for supplies, and with the dangers shown by Walking dead that act represents. Avoiding several dozens of zombies on the outskirts, and then you stealth your way from house to house, turn a corner, and find a main street filled with 70-100 zombies. Ugh, street blocked, have to find a side street to reach a supermarket… then a bandit ambushes you, you shot him, and in that moment you have 50 zombies coming from the main street to bite your ass.
In other words. Is even possible to have a game with 3500 zombies in a 200km2 terrain with around ~200 players, with the zombies having a decent AI (for a zombie, auditory and visual ranges, with different states of behavior) and all being played smoothly like in a single player game?
I don’t think so. BF4 barely works with 64 players, Dayz doesn’t have enough zombies and Planetside 2 have… what, 600 players per instance? And the movement and gunplay doesn’t feel as smooth as a single player FPS.
I’m talking of 3700 moving entities to handle for a server, and hundreds in spots like big cites. It would an experience plagued with lag.
John Smedly has one of the worlds greatest jobs…I’m a bit jealous!
Anyways - SOE has been doing a LOT of things right over the past few years, and they have a vast userbase which gives them probably one of the best telemetry readings in the business, since their games are spread out over a large variety, instead of just having one game to draw data from. This means that they have a vast database with information about what kind of players like what, and they are clearly using that to great effect.
Many companies stagnate and continue to do with they have always done to make money and eventually get into trouble (Blockbuster, my company, and many others) but SOE looks at the market, and see that EQ and EQ2 are no longer going to cut it in the future, and that the next wave of genres is out there. Thats what they are doing with Landmark and thats what they seem to be doing with this as well.
Personally, I think new MMO’s are more about choice then previously, and thats also a focus of the press release. Something that ESO doesn’t get, and that EQ and EQ2 doesn’t have.
I am really looking forward to see what SOE does next, and with their new all-encompassing monthly plan instead of one for each game, they do stand extremely strong compared to their competitors.
I love the idea of a DayZ game getting the kind of budget that SOE can sling at it, and I’d be happy to see an engine that’s less clunky than BI’s Arma foundation or Unity being used, but I have my doubts that Sony is going to be okay with people force-feeding other players Drano, or running around naked while broadcasting Christmas music when other players are trying to scavenge food. DayZ and Rust players live for that kind of weird shit that would be classed as outright griefing by most other players.
That said, I think Shellfishguy may have a point. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to have some more moderation. I know plenty of people that would love to play DayZ, but won’t precisely because of the trolling and griefing.
Smed is already started the look for feedback. Up first, monetization. And like Razgon already said, Planetside 2, Landmark, annual EQ and EQ2 expansions etc. SOE has been pretty damn busy.
Apparently playable in first or third person.
John Smedley @j_smedley 6m
btw you can play H1Z1 in First or third person modes. up to you. Vehicles are 3rd person (ground vehicles)
A friend of mine posted this on another forum. Reposting :
Small dev team right now: 20 guys.
When Dying, loot stays at death location.
They are still figuring out the tech so they dont know how big they can get it.
They will slowly make the map bigger throughout updates.
take place in “Anywhere, America” Midwest/East Coast US
fresh spawns are essentially just civilians
Combat: a lot like hard recoil - via CS:GO
reticle/sights will stay where the recoil put them. you have to compensate after every shot.
FOV slider confirmed
trying to make sure that aiming is difficult in both first person and third person mode.
wildlife and hunting confirmed
Wolves and Deer exist
they actually have a problem right now where the wolves kept killing all the deer and are trying to find a balance there, so there will be like a circle of life.
Wildlife and Zombies can interact in the same way, zombies vs wolves naturally
it will still be alpha when we get into it.
The alpha will be more of a way to find what will be fun, what to add and stuff, and beta will be where the bug hunt happens.
server player amounts not determined yet
types of servers still being determined, as in PvE focused Servers or vice versa
still playing with loot. doing it like the DayZ mod where it’ll respawn in randomish intervals.
the goal is massive amount of massively sized servers, but will start with a few massive servers
big issue is how to get around things like stream hunting because there will probably be less servers than most
going for modern guns, going for realistic gun spawns based on location. some places(the south) could totally have a lot of guns in the houses, where the opposite could be true in other places
right now there is both med packs and healing based on eating
working on the bodily harm/injuries system
crafting bandages can be found and crafted, saline bags were just added
rust level crafting is “the goal”
they are working on getting a bow and arrow in there.
ATM cars are just kind of there in full condition, but they could easily add the “this car is missing ______ component(s)” system
Character customization is very basic ATM, will expand later, should be easy to expand.
Anti-Cheat is transferring over from Planetside 2, and is very successful over there.
Dynamic weather is being added. rain is just getting to the point of actually making the ground wet, character shining a bit, bushes wet, etc.
containers and inventory system can be complicated: how to present it in the UI, how many default spots on spawn, how many to have on different clothes/gear
debating how hard it should be to switch guns, ie: carry 3 guns at all times, or multiple clicks and in inventory management just to swap from one gun to another.
debating on equipment weight being accounted for, can be tricky, must feel right.
again, fun is a main concern here
proximity chat confirmed
has whole Planetside 2 back-end, so they can add components from that very easily
still debating how playing with friends will work, sending an invite that needs to be confirmed so you can see where our friends are.
arson is gonna be a thing. needs to be figured out still though.
Performance is the #2 priority behind fun. Taking it VERY seriously
not sure if suicide will be an option
too early to tell if Mac version will be a thing. might make it if there is demand.
unsure if planting crops is going to be in it.
feedback will be a huge factor, this sub will be pivotal.
it is surprising how short the development cycle has been so far.
micro-transactions will never directly effect PvP combat. probably not even things like bandages will be buy-able.
craftables/ingredients/anything gatherable will probably not be buy-able.
biggest thing ATM is just getting the game to a stable, playable state
micros could be things like boosts in things happening, like in PS2
definitely working on getting around the combat logging problem
trees destructible, best tree destruction, ie getting them to fall when chopped down
live stream of current build next week, possibly monday, the 14th.
early access via steam roughly 4-6 weeks from now for $20
small, 20-ish man dev-team
day night cycle. it is accelerated.
not sure how climate will be handled when game becomes as big as it could be
placing items uses physics(PhysX?)
ragdoll bodies confirmed.
possible feature: pissing and shitting
air vehicles are possible(the engine) but not sure if it will be there in the end
PS4 version is pretty much confirmed.
official H1Z1 twitter: h1z1game
