Right now, the king of the zombie-survival MMO crop is Dean “Rocket” Hall and crew's DayZ. The game is built on the Arma engine and relishes deeply in the “realism” of a post zombie-apocalypse environment. There have been tons of imitators to come along since the original surge of popularity spawned by the first DayZ mod a few years back.
One of those “imitators” that isn't afraid to be called as such, is Sony Online Entertainment's upcoming, free-to-play, zombie-survival MMO, H1Z1. It's built on the Planetside 2 engine so it's already primed and ready for multiplayer madness, and vehicles are there from the outset. One of the bigger concerns about the game is the price of entry: how much will gamers have to pay or how much of their soul will they need to sell in order to enjoy H1Z1 on PC or PS4? Well, SOE's president, John Smedley, has been very forthcoming about the monetization of the game, and rolled out some interesting structures for the game's eventual cash shop opening.
Smedley posted some of the following details on the game's monetization, and you can check out the details on the Reddit thread, but the gist is that H1Z1 will not be pay-to-win. Smedley firmly wrote that...
“We will NOT be selling Guns, Ammo, Food, Water... i.e. That's kind of the whole game and it would suck in our opinion if we did that.”
Too true. He also mentions that they won't be selling booster packs that affect guns, ammo, food or water.
So we've covered what sort of monetary means the game won't cover, but what about what the game will use in order to sustain itself?
Well, Smedley noted that accoutrements to make your character look like a fashionista, a moving cloth-pole or a progressive linen-bearer, will be cash shop oriented...
“We will be selling wearables. We felt like this will be a good, fair revenue generator. However - we recognize how important finding wearables in the world is so you'll be able to find and craft a lot of stuff. We agree that's something important.”We've also come up with a pretty awesome idea to let players who kill other players loot stuff. So if a player has a black ski mask and gets killed by another player, that player can wear the ski mask for a few deaths (we have durability in the game. Station Cash wearables won't degrade at all but when you loot something.. it will degrade. Please note the original player always keeps their SC purchased wearables. This gives the great feeling of whacking some unsuspecting fool who decided to bring a knife to a gun fight.”
Beautiful... oh that's just beautiful.
If you remember correctly, this was supposed to be how things worked in The WarZ, however, that all kind of fell apart for reasons I don't need to get into. But I will get into just a little bit and say that a bunch of people called it a scam and it ruined the life of Sergei Titov and it spread like wildfire across the interwebs, and now when someone says “The WarZ” there's an instant muscle-reaction in the face of gamers that resembles something of a mixture of a grimace, a cringe and the face that most people make when they're constipated. Well, Smedley doesn't want that kind of reaction with H1Z1, so that's why they're trying to steer clear of controversial cash shop methods.
Additionally, character slots and some emotes will be available in the cash shop. The team is still debating whether they should have random supply crate drops as cash shop items – I think that could an interesting dynamic if they chose to explore it.
You can learn more about H1Z1, which is scheduled to hear into early alpha access very soon, by either visiting the official website or paying a kind visit the sub-reddit.
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