Welcome to the "MMO survival primer" – The War Z, developed by Hammerpoint Interactive and published by Arktos Entertainment Group. To understand the differences between Day Z and The War Z, we decided to interview the main producer of Arktos, Sergei Titov, and Hammerpoint Interactive designer Eric Nordin.
IGN: Okay, let’s dot the i’s: What was your reaction to the success of DayZ?? Was The War Z in development before the DayZ alpha release in April??
Sergey Titov: We were thinking about a game about zombies last year, and then we started developing an MMO based on quests in a huge infected world. The goal of the players is to search and “discover” new areas on the map while completing in-game quests. When DayZ first launched, we were very excited that players wanted to see another game we were working on.
Our reaction was like, “Wow, that’s cool.”. Looks like we’re not the only ones making a game about the zombie apocalypse.".
When we saw the popularity of DayZ and its growing audience, and how players and the community responded to it, we realized two things.
First, our thoughts that everyone would love the idea of a zombie MMO turned out to be correct.
Secondly, we decided to abandon the idea of gradually revealing things as you progress through the map and quests. The player will have to explore the world himself, receive information and quests from various notes, diaries and the like left by NPCs and even players.
The short answer is that while we started developing our game before DayZ, we were encouraged by how DayZ became so popular. And yes, some of our latest design decisions have been influenced by the DayZ forums.
IGN: Will The War Z be similar to DayZ, or will it be something new and different from DayZ?
Eric Nordin: Most of our team are DayZ fans. We love how DayZ captures the feeling of being alone in a big, hostile world where your biggest enemy isn’t the zombies themselves, but the survivors as well. The survivors themselves are also no different from you. They are afraid of people who are also trying to survive. We want to achieve the same feeling in TWZ.
The main difference between TWZ and DayZ is that DayZ is a mod for a hardcore military simulator. We are creating a standalone game where the world is completely recreated in a zombie apocalypse, so players feel completely immersed in this environment.
We want players to see signs of the struggle and destruction of people who are fighting zombies, and also to have that same feeling of fear and anxiety when exploring an infected world.
IGN: How are things going with the in-game world?? There will be some kind of division, as, for example, in APB, or everyone will play in the same world on the same map?
Sergey Titov: There will be one world, which we call “Colorado” (Colorado is one of the US states. approx. lane.), but we also have a larger number of different already developed worlds, which are based on real locations like New York, Los Angeles, Paris and so on. We will release new worlds/maps when they are ready for all players for free.
IGN: What things can players encounter along the way??
Eric Nordin: You start fighting five years after the infection has spread throughout the world, so most of the people either died or became walkers. Cities are in poor condition, resources are scarce and scattered throughout the world. About a year before you begin your journey, the “military” discovered special mutated zombies.
These zombies have stem cells that can be extracted and used to create a vaccine that cures people when infected. People all over the world are hunting for these “special infected”, but the special ones themselves. zombies can only be found at night, and most importantly, they are very rare, so players will have to go to places where zombies walk in droves. Big cities, big villages and so on. If you enjoy hunting these special zombies and extracting the stem cells, you can sell them to merchants in "safe settlements" for gold coins – the most valuable currency in the game.
While exploring the world, searching for food, weapons, ammo and equipment, players will find “notes” and “diaries” – pieces of text left by players and NPCs. For example, you can find a diary that will tell the story of a family that left their home and ran away from zombies, and then began to die one by one. If you read carefully, you will find various clues that will lead you to a place with improved equipment. Another scenario is to find notes from players. These notes can help survivors or lure them into a trap. You won’t know what will happen to you.
TWZ will have dozens of settlements, villages and huge cities around the world that players will explore for various rare artifacts. You’ll team up with other players to explore cities at night if you want to find a special. zombies or upgraded equipment. Players will also be able to fight and fight off other groups of survivors if they are enemies.
IGN: What’s the situation with weapons during respawn??
Sergey Titov: If you play on hardcore, you will get something like a basic weapon. In normal mode, you will have to look for it, but it will spawn not far from your spawn point.
IGN: What about zombies? Losing them is just as difficult as in DayZ? How fast do they run? Will we have to fight various hordes of zombies, or will it be something else??
Eric Nordin: Our zombies move more slowly than the player. With some patience and enough stamina, you can escape them, but it won’t be that easy. However, if the player doesn’t have a weapon or is out of ammo and zombies are hot on their heels, they still have a chance to throw them off their tail. Also, zombies cannot climb stairs or walls, go through them, open doors, etc., so the player can climb into a house, barricade the door and remain safe.
The player will face one https://magic-red-casino.uk/withdrawal/ zombie or hordes – depends on the location. When choosing the right tactics, route of movement, camouflage (you can buy a “zombie smell” spray, which allows you to pass unnoticed in some situations) or type of weapon (weapons with a silencer are our choice!) the player will either kill hordes of zombies and escape undetected, or be attacked by hordes of zombies attracted by loud sounds, smells, etc.
IGN: Necessary supplies can only be found in the vicinity of cities? How are you going to entice players into situations where they will encounter zombies??
Eric Nordin: Supplies will be found in places where they belong. In other words, if you are looking for a weapon, then find a police station, a military checkpoint, a gun store. You can also rummage through cars. Try to look for NPC diaries, read them and perhaps they will lead to some hiding place.
The same applies to other items that can be found in the game. Obviously, it is much easier to get something from a lonely house with at most two or three zombies than from a police station in a large populated area overrun with hundreds and thousands of zombies.
But more importantly, I think most of the time it won’t be us luring players into the zombie darkness, but other players laying traps for you. After all, people are much more dangerous than zombies in the world of TWZ.
IGN: How players will survive? Will they have to worry about basic things like food and water?? Will there be a time change in the game?? How will the player be treated and what medical problems may arise??
Eric Nordin: Players will have to worry about food and water. Their main task is to look for places to rest and recuperate. They also need to use medical supplies to heal wounds and restore health. They’ll also have to worry about the zombie virus. Once bitten, the player gets blood poisoning and must find a vaccine against the zombie virus in order to be cured. If he doesn’t look for her, he will slowly but surely turn into a brain-eating evil spirit.
Food and water are common resources in the game world. But finding medical supplies and a vaccine is much more difficult. The vaccine is especially rare and is available exclusively in shops in safe settlements or from other players.
The game has a change of time of day. Each cycle takes a small number of real hours, so the player can play both at night and during the day.
IGN: Why did you decide to give the player a choice of first and third person views??
Sergey Titov: Based on our experience with the previous game that we sponsored (Online Warmongers published “War Inc Battle Zone”), we realized that players like it. Essentially, there is a group of players who want to play exclusively in third person. So we decided, why not give them that choice?? Plus, first-person view is preferable for combat, while third-person view is much better for exploring the game world.
IGN: What do you think gives a game like this the ability to have up to 250 players on one map??
Sergey Titov: I think that the world of the game should be tangible. There must be enough people on it for interesting things to happen, and the server must be able to connect to as many players as possible to create interesting interactions between groups of people.
IGN: What types of associations are you planning for players?? Will they be able to form groups, clans??
Eric Nordin: Players will be able to form clans, clans will be able to create alliances or fight each other. Players will be able to make friends with other players, join the game as groups, and will be able to communicate with group members, friends, and clan mates. Everything will be controlled from within the game. In addition, there will be individual and clan leaderboards.
IGN: What are safe settlements?? You just can’t fight there? But won’t this ruin the entire system of the world, in which the player’s life is constantly in question??
Eric Nordin: Safe settlements are settlements built to protect against zombies during the day and provide good protection at night. There you can find shops, message boards (they are designed to post messages about searching for partners, groups, or notifications about a mission that other players can take on and the reward for it). There you can also find what we call “mail”, where players can transfer items from their backpack to their “global inventory”, which can be accessed by your other characters from the menu.
In general, safe settlements are a community center for players.
Fights in safe settlements are allowed, but if the player kills someone, they will not only immediately receive bad reputation, but will also be attacked by the NPC sentries guarding the settlement.
IGN: What types of social elements will be in the game and how will they affect gameplay??
Eric Nordin: In addition to standard things like chat, we will offer players the opportunity to leave notes: short messages that other players can find.
Players will be able to write anything there, not to mention curse words: they can, for example, inform other players about danger nearby or lead them into a trap by writing that there are cool objects nearby in such and such a place. You can call for help in the same way: if you are almost dying or infected with a zombie virus, you can leave a message for other players in your area and promise a reward for their help.
This is how different interesting situations can happen. For example, one of our engineers posted a note that he needed a vaccine, and in exchange for it he would give a very rare scope for an assault rifle. One man found her, came to him and killed the poor fellow and started looting. But in the end he was killed by another person who had just come to help the engineer.
We will also allow players to trade items, although they will need to consider whether they can trust the other person. For example, will he respond honestly?? Maybe after you put an item in front of him to exchange, he will simply kill you and leave with it? We tested this part of the game and came across interesting scenarios of people’s behavior in similar situations.
IGN: How the RPG system you want to include in The War Z will work? What skills will need to be learned and how will they be used??
Eric Nordin: Let’s start with the survivors – your playable characters. Initially, you can create up to five survivors. During character creation, you choose how you want to play this game – in normal or hardcore mode. Normal mode means that once your survivor is killed, his personal inventory (backpack) will be inaccessible (locked, for example) for a certain period of time.
Hardcore mode means that your character will die forever, that is, all your experience, points, inventory, etc.n. will be lost. As you progress through the game, exploring the world, discovering artifacts and rare items, killing zombies, or helping other players, you will earn experience. You can use experience points to learn skills from several skill trees.
Each skill tree allows you to train in a specific area.
Weapon proficiency, medicine and survival skills, surveillance, etc.d. For example, you can learn how to heal small wounds more effectively, with more health restored when using a bandage. Or you can increase your endurance, improve adaptation to darkness, etc.d.
IGN: Why do we need normal mode?? Do you think there are players who will want something like DayZ lite?? How much downtime will players have in normal mode??
Sergey Titov: We, in fact, do not think of our “normal mode” as “DayZ-lite”. We believe that there are a significant number of players who will want the experience of surviving in a hostile environment and interacting with hostile players, but do not necessarily want to waste the enormous amount of time they have invested in developing their character and their inventory.
We still haven’t set the exact downtime, but it’s safe to say it will be between 24 and 48 hours. The main thing for us is to provide opportunities to make the game more fun and attract the most hardcore gamers, as well as those who want a slightly softer game.
IGN: What kind of regular updates do you plan to give to people who buy The War Z??
Sergey Titov: Let’s start with the obvious fixes and updates, such as balance changes, bug fixes, etc.d. They will be released on a regular basis. We will be releasing new items, new weapons, new characters, etc.d. We will also be releasing big updates such as new game worlds available to all players. For free.
And of course, expect good gifts from us for all major holidays.
IGN: What is ultimately the goal for someone playing The War Z? Is there a maximum level? I believe that if you play on hardcore mode, your goal is simply to survive as long as possible, but what about on normal??
Sergey Titov: There is no maximum level in the game. And yes, the ultimate goal is to survive as long as possible. Normal and Hardcore players will have their own leaderboards and we will also have special servers that only hardcore players can join, these servers will contain rare items that will not be available on mixed servers. In addition, for each world there will be a set of “missions” that must be completed in order to complete the world 100%. These missions range from the standard "kill this many zombies" to more complex ones such as "open a vault at a military base" or "find that rare item".
As you explore the world, you will find what we call "memories" or "echoes". These will be diaries left by people who died in a fight with zombies. Once you find them, you can play through these scenes as co-op missions with your friends.
IGN: Let’s move away from the topic a little… What does an MMO mean for your studio?? When people hear this they often think of more traditional things like WoW or EverQuest. Why do you call The War Z an MMO??
Eric Nordin: For us, MMO means exactly what it means – massively multiplayer online games. We allow a large group of people to interact with each other in the game world. Unlike WoW, we don’t limit you to playing on certain servers, we give you the opportunity to choose any server and play with your friends.
IGN: So you guys want the game to have a one-time purchase, but you can also purchase money and gold in the game. Will there be a way to purchase all this through micro-transactions??
Sergey Titov: When we thought about how the game would work, we put ourselves in the shoes of the players and asked ourselves what we, as players, want. We don’t want to pay subscription fees because we may not have time to play games regularly. We don’t want to be forced to buy every update, such as new maps, just to play the game with friends. We don’t want a "pay to win" game model. So we said, “Okay, we’ll go for a one-time payment, which should be below $60.”. That’s why we’ve settled on a price of $29.99 and are offering discounts to people who pre-order.
As for in-game transactions, we tried to make everything as convenient as possible. In other words, players will be able to make micro-transactional purchases in the game, but they won’t be upgrading weapons or doing anything that will give you a power advantage. Instead, players will be able to purchase things that will help save time, such as reviving their character in normal mode, buying slightly more effective food, health kits, etc.d.
To obtain these items, they must spend gold coins, which can be obtained by hunting special, mutated zombies, extracting their stem cells, and then selling them in safe settlements or purchasing them in the game.
So, in essence, players will be able to play the full game without even participating in micro-transactions, but the option is there for convenience. In addition, we will give players the opportunity to rent and manage their own server in the game without leaving the game itself.
IGN: When can we play the beta??
Sergey Titov: At the moment we are conducting an internal alpha test, and most likely we will do a closed beta test later this summer selectively for players who have registered on our website and for those who have pre-ordered the game.
I’ll add on my own that something unusual is brewing. It’s worth buying and seeing what it’s like
