It’s been a long time since we’ve written about DayZ, the multiplayer zombie survival game that arguably helped usher in the current onslaught of sandbox survival and battle royale shooters. Bohemia Interactive has been pretty quiet since the game’s creator, Dean Hall, left the studio. But it sounds like 2018 could be the year DayZ finally regains the spotlight.
his week’s update offers some discouraging news for the game’s most devoted fans. The pace at which Bohemia introduces new patches slowed significantly in 2017, and the studio says it won’t have another major release before the end of the year. The goal is still to pack all of the game’s launch features into v0.63, albeit in their unfinished forms, but there’s just no way for Bohemia to deliver all of that content before 2018.
“Large chunks of the core gameplay loop are just now getting more settled,” DayZ Lead Producer Eugen Harton wrote. “There are still core features that are heavily work in progress, or not implemented - for example vaulting, swimming, and vehicles - and unfortunately that means that despite all the progress we've made on the other parts of the game, this is still not enough for a potential Experimental release.”
The next build will include an almost overwhelming array of new content, from new zombies, animals and crafting options to an improved economy. Bohemia is overhauling the spawn system, building a new damage system and the level design team is even giving some of the buildings on Chernarus a second pass. Many of the new mechanics have proven more complex than expected, forcing Bohemia to update its release timeline for both the Experimental and Stable releases of DayZ v0.63. But the good news is that 2018 won’t just be the year we finally get the DayZ beta. Bohemia says version 1.0 will be ready next year, too.
For more on the immediate future of DayZ, along with Bohemia Interactive’s plans for the DayZ beta, check out the dev team’s status report. Then head down to the comments and let us know if you’re still playing DayZ with any frequency… or even still interested in playing a finalized build of the game that paved the way for the recent survival game renaissance.
DayZ is available in Early Access. The launch build hits PC, PS4, and Xbox One in 2018.
Be sure to check back with Player.One and follow Scott on Twitter for more DayZ news in 2017 and however long Bohemia Interactive supports DayZ in the years ahead.
