DayZ Standalone Public Alpha Goes Live Next Week?

We've come to the end of June basically and there's still no DayZ Standalone. Hair is being torn out, shoes are being ripped apart, underwear are being soiled... all of this is happening because everyone wants to know when the public alpha will go live? Well, cue the holy choirs because Dean “Rocket” Hall has set a window and it's so much sooner than you think.

Now don't get angry if the public release hits a slight snag or a minor delay, but straight from the horses mouth here's what the status is of the DayZ Standalone, with “Rocket” dropping the details at the Rezzed convention, saying...

Right now they're in the position where they really just need feedback. There's a lot they want to do or a lot they might think about changing but they really need player feedback first, so they need to open up the alpha to the public in order to do so.

The Rezzed presentation is quite long but very informative. We learn that players can use duct tape to put contraptions together and create makeshift explosives or traps (however you can't duct tape butt cheeks together, but maybe with enough persuasion Dean will add the option). We also learn that there are diseases and dangers around every corner, so antibiotics and health scares are a real threat and it means that players may be less inclined to kill in order to survive and they may actually attempt to communicate before killing on sight.

Ultimately, though, players will be players. People who venture into DayZ with kill-everything-on-sight as their paradigm for post-apocalyptic zombie survival will do just that and there's no amount of features or functions that will change their mind.

However, for people who killed out of fear or without thinking much about their actions, the inclusion of more realistic detriments could enforce people to further seek out companionship as opposed to running for the hills or shooting on sight.

Now, some gamers were saying that there might be too many intricacies involved with survival in the standalone version of DayZ and it could bog the game down in the meta-game of just trying to stay alive. To this, I say good!

DayZ is a zombie survival simulator. If people want something more arcade-oriented and light on the simulation aspects, there's still games like Rust or State of Decay. I think for the hardcore of hardcore, DayZ is like the ultimate zombie survival experience. I like what they're aiming for since there are no other games out there quite like it and I sure hope they don't dumb it down for the Call of Duty types.

We'll keep you posted when the alpha goes live for DayZ. In the meantime you can keep up to date on the game's progress over on the official DayZ Tumblr page.