It’s been a week since DayZ Standalone launched and the devs have dished out some numbers on how things have gone.
According to the update three patches have been deployed, 400,000 players have entered Chernarus and the alpha servers have been pushed hard with 40,000 concurrent users. DayZ was also top of the Steam sale charts on Sunday so things are going very well so far.
In related news, Dean Hall also posted a list of planned updates. Regarding zombie numbers he says that they “absolutely plan to have more zombies” but they need to optimise the game’s dynamic objects first. A multithread server is also planned for early 2014 to help with an increase in player numbers and zombies. Respawning zombies and loot takes a similar form to player spawning and it’s apparently “very close to being implemented”.
Cooking and gathering resources are half done and these will be pushed to severs “when they are done” which could be early 2014. Expect to see useful gas cookers and the creation of fireplaces.With cooking also comes resource gathering of wood and stones which will become part of the crafting system.
Related to eating stuff to survive are the animals and hunting which is also apparently quite close to completion but it does impact the server so we have to assume that a lot of the new features are going to be added once the servers are optimised.
The team are also working more on anti-hack but they hope to identify and address more problems as the alpha test continues.
So far I’ve been enjoying the game despite the fact it’s a little rough around the edges. This evening I saw a zombie suddenly spawn into two zombies which was not fun as the bastards made a nasty hit and I ended up bleeding out. My advice is that if they start chasing you, just run. Run like the wind!
