The War Z

[Gets]

Some interesting bit of information from an ex-WarZ forum mod.  If true, and judging from recent events it probably is, just confirms what a bunch of douches the devs are.

The ex-mod made a video 2 weeks ago retracting everything he said and admitting he was lying. Why? Who can guess in this Game of Clownshoes, A Saga of Lolz.

Meanwhile,

"Controversial zombie shooter The War Z has been removed from Steam. A Valve representative told Kotaku that the game was mistakenly published in the digital store and will not return until the company speaks with developer Hammerpoint Interactive. A listing for The War Z remains available, but the game cannot be purchased at this time." [...] "Valve says it mistakenly published Hammerpoint Interactive's open-world zombie game; refunds available."

[schpain]

What Falconeer said re: game mechanics is pretty well correct.  My opinions further to his:  The visibility mechanics aren't really implemented, although the zombies will aggro to sound (if you're walking on a metal or tile floor you make more sound than bitumen or in the woods) etc.  Totalhalibut was really just letting himself get irritated by behaving like a clown, besides the backpack death which he couldn't help, he really wasn't making great decisions...

If you sprint near a zombie they see you from some 2-3x distance, stealth is perfectly viable; but the new increase in zombie spawns (when TotalHalibut started playing) makes this much harder.  One thing I preferred in DayZ is that zombies aggro on guns from a LONG WAY AWAY.  In Warz unless you are using a high powered sniper or shotgun, they won't aggro on you from say more than 50 metres. 

At least pre 12th December (increased zombie spawn patch date), firing a gun in a city wasn't a big deal, you'd attract 3-5 zombies tops.  Post 12th December, you're likely to get 10+ zombies, because the spawns have been made enormous; but their aggro mechanics are unchanged.

Where this game has the edge over DayZ is that you can join a server at any time and it works.  The servers don't crash, there are no constant friggin around with arma versions, dayz versions, unstable servers and people queuing 100 deep on a 50 player server with the Six Launcher; which causes massive server lag.  Also there are less ridiculous bugs (losing your gear in water, inventory lag, disappearing items, many other 'known' bugs).  Where War Z is lacking is the atmosphere, it isn't nearly as immersive as DayZ, and there's a fuckton of hackers.

Hats off to Steam for stopping sales of the game; A big fuck you to Titov for just generally being a lying douche (I mean, could he for ONCE admit his game doesn't do what he claims and stop deflecting blame elsewhere and sounding like a retard?).  I wish this game was relatively hack-free and Titov wasn't outdoing himself for ideas to money grab from customers...  It could actually be a good game.

[jakonovski]

So the map is nowhere near 100 sq km:

http://www.pcgamesn.com/article/how-big-war-zs-map

The article also gets it wrong though, the best info seems to be in the comments, for a total of about 30 sq km.

[Falconeer]

Yeah, I think his calculations are off.

This line being the culprit:

With the speed and time recorded, it's possible to measure the distance between grid lines as 289.8m

No way it's 300m between two grid lines. Much more like the 500m someone else points out in the comments. So yeah, no way near the advertised map size, but not as small as the article claims. Honestly, it feels pretty damn huge when you are in it. Walking from point of interest to point of interest takes a long time, there's a lot to explore and drawing distance is not the best ever but feels rewarding (you can see zombies a million miles away).

[Kageru]

The invulnerable save versus head hit is not that logical, you'd still expect to disable a zombie with enough body hits. And even then it should have visual feedback to that effect. It does explain why he easily dropped the first and failed to kill any of the later ones.

His previous experience was Day-Z too, which is why he trusts to stealth first and running second. Though he's really just a talking head rather than an expert gamer. Which taken another way I'm sure his first try matches a lot of new players.

Where this game has the edge over DayZ is that you can join a server at any time and it works.

I wonder what the ping is like from Australia... least Day-Z had local servers (albeit full).

But really Day-Z is a bad game as well. And much the same of being a thin layer over an existing shooter. The advantage being he was first, maybe a teeny bit more honest and in theory wasn't taking your money. I hope the Survivarium guys can impress because the concept is interesting even if the implementations are terrible.

[HaemishM]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUrKdAjN4DM

 

While I completely agree with him that WarZ is a ham-fisted money grab scam, I want the man narrating this video to die of wasting crotch rot and throat cancer.

[Falconeer]

This review is almost as good as the Minecraft one...

[jakonovski]

I hope this is not a shop:

[Fabnusen]

jakonovski,
Please tell me that's a joke? If not, I am having a hard time wrapping my head around that form of "customer service". *Has* to be a joke....right?!

[UnSub]

FFA PvP, no safe zones.

[Falconeer]

Gamespy reviews awards it.. 0.5 out of 5 stars.

We don't hand out half-star ratings lightly. This is independent of our disgust with Executive Producer Sergey Titov's insulting attitude -- Craig's speaking strictly as a gamer who felt ripped off after playing. And yes, if DayZ were being sold in its current, unfinished state, we'd have similar problems with it. But it ain't!

[Ginaz]

Gamespy reviews awards it.. 0.5 out of 5 stars.

We don't hand out half-star ratings lightly. This is independent of our disgust with Executive Producer Sergey Titov's insulting attitude -- Craig's speaking strictly as a gamer who felt ripped off after playing. And yes, if DayZ were being sold in its current, unfinished state, we'd have similar problems with it. But it ain't!

Also:

Pros:
Atmospheric; long view distance; full refunds available. 

[HaemishM]

Somebody hasn't been paying for ads. 

[schpain]

The invulnerable save versus head hit is not that logical, you'd still expect to disable a zombie with enough body hits. And even then it should have visual feedback to that effect. It does explain why he easily dropped the first and failed to kill any of the later ones.

His previous experience was Day-Z too, which is why he trusts to stealth first and running second. Though he's really just a talking head rather than an expert gamer. Which taken another way I'm sure his first try matches a lot of new players.

Where this game has the edge over DayZ is that you can join a server at any time and it works.

I wonder what the ping is like from Australia... least Day-Z had local servers (albeit full).

But really Day-Z is a bad game as well. And much the same of being a thin layer over an existing shooter. The advantage being he was first, maybe a teeny bit more honest and in theory wasn't taking your money. I hope the Survivarium guys can impress because the concept is interesting even if the implementations are terrible.

From Aus the ping in War Z seems ok.  i'd say 70ms (but it doesn't actually tell you).  thats sydney telstra adsl2.

Agreed however that both games have hit on something interesting but require massive work.  I can't stand the movement in dayz (trying to strafe while aiming, going through doors sideways etc)  all relics of arma engine...

[koro]

So it seems like the War Z's trademark has been suspended by the USPTO, likely due to the World War Z movie.

Naturally, Herr Titov doesn't seem to care.

[Ginaz]

So it seems like the War Z's trademark has been suspended by the USPTO, likely due to the World War Z movie.

Naturally, Herr Titov doesn't seem to care.

New name:  Big RigZ.

[Fabnusen]

This was in my inbox this afternoon:

Dear fellow Survivors,
It has now been more than two months since we launched public access to The War Z. We’ve definitely had our ups and downs, and I thought that this Holiday break was the right time for me to try to step back a little and think about our journey since it started. This may be a little long, but I would appreciate if you could stay with me for a few minutes as I try to go over the highlights of the game as well as some of the hurdles and controversies, how we have addressed that and what our plans are.

First of all a very big and sincere “Thank You!” to all of you. We are really proud of the community we have formed with you guys. Every day we have hundreds of thousands of players on our servers, and this is a life-changing event for the team and me. We are blessed to have you as members of the community and we are well aware that without you the game would be nothing.  Along with that thanks, though, I need to admit that we failed to effectively communicate some of our plans and actions to both our existing players and to our new prospective players. This failure to communicate resulted in some very negative feedback from some members of our community, but while it might be easy to label them as “haters” or some other dismissive term, in all honesty this is my fault.  I became arrogant and blinded by the early success and quick growth of The War Z, our increasing number of players, numbers we were getting from surveys, etc., and I chose not to notice the concerns and questions raised by these members of the game community as well as others.  This failure is entirely on my shoulders and if anything I owe thanks to that vocal minority and admit that I should have paid attention sooner. I chose instead to concentrate on the bigger picture – my dream of turning The War Z from being a game developed by a small indie team into a large online venture, instead of addressing small things first and staying focused on the game issues. At the end my arrogance led us to the moment, when all those small things finally caught up and created a “perfect storm” that affected all of our community members.  For that I’m truly sorry and apologize to all of our community as well as the larger PC gaming community that is not yet playing The War Z.

I do not take this situation lightly, and last week events were especially humbling for me. I’ve experienced a range of emotions, most of which centered on regret for not having addressed some of the issues differently than we did, but we can’t change the past. The only thing we can do is to be sure that we won’t repeat the same mistakes in the future. I have realized that as the leader of this ship, I missed all early warnings that were saying, “Your community is not as happy as you think they are, you need to alter course.” I was too focused on how great we are and how a small independent team got their first game to over 700,000 users in a two-month period.  Though that is something to be very proud of, allowing that to overshadow the existing community and their satisfaction was poor judgment.  

I want to give you some insight into what our plans are for the future, but before we get to that, I’d like to clear the air with you on several important topics.

Community management and moderation – the problem
Even since the early Alpha launch, this game has always cultivated a large and loyal player base that is very active in the game. Again, thank you for this. Unfortunately, we weren’t prepared for this large success and the way we managed the community was not the way it should’ve been. We relied too much on forum moderators, whose primary role was to punish those who break rules, not to engage the community and guide conversations into productive discussions about problems. There wasn’t enough presence of the development team on forums, there wasn’t enough updates on development of UPCOMING features. We failed to communicate our position and messaging on the outside platforms such as Facebook, twitter and various online websites, and when we did this we chose to rely more on arrogance rather than being humble and trying to understand why people were saying negative things. We chose to tune out negative reactions to the game, not paying enough attention to them – and this, again, is my fault. We chose to rely too much on numbers – percentage of refund requests, number and dynamic of our daily and monthly active users, etc. Well, in hindsight – those things probably work well for more casual games, but the hardcore PC gaming community is much different and can be very vocal about what they feel. Even when the percentage of players with negative comments is small, as the community grows, even a small percentage can add up to be a very significant absolute number. And it’s not just a number – those are real people with real issues they are having with the game. OP Productions (publisher for War Z) and me personally have failed to address those issues effectively.

Community management and moderation – the solution!
We’re changing our community management procedures and rules right now. We’re going to reevaluate publishing and marketing team performance, and I will make sure that Hammerpoint Interactive developers will have a much stronger voice when it comes to community management and we won’t rely 100% on OP Productions to single handedly handle this. Lots of changes will be happening very fast in the weeks to come. One of the ideas that I proposed was to select 10 players from around the world who can represent the player community and invite them to our offices in Los Angeles, to meet the team, check out what we’re doing, and share with actual developers their concerns, wishes and thoughts on the game. We also will involve community, to a much higher degree, in the process of making our next map for the War Z (called “California”). We’ll be discussing many of the aspects of the map with you and asking for feedback.

We’re revisiting our forum policies; we’re going to bring on an additional community management team, additional moderators and we’ll train them how to respond to things properly. There will still be restrictions on harassment, trash talk, etc. But we’ll make sure that every opinion is heard. At the same time, I must also be cautious: we cannot address all issues and there cannot be only one voice. Please accept that. With hundreds of thousands of players playing, talking, chatting, voicing their strong opinions, there will always be diverging opinions. And some issues that are minor ones are sometimes brought to light by very vocal channels. I would even say there is sometimes a beginning of controversy because the game is now so popular. So there is sometimes a distortion between the severity of the issue and the attention it gets. But we will clearly implement steps to better listen to the community.  

What is Foundation Release?
The most asked question of the last week was “is this the final release?”  My answer has always been that for an online game a “final” release means that the game is dead – so there’s really no such thing, you never stop developing, making changes to and adding new features to the game. This is how we came to call the current version of The War Z “Foundation Release.”  We launched the Foundation Release on December 17, 2012 as our first-stage release that we use as a foundation to build upon. It does include the core features and a fully playable environment. This is our version 1.0, and of course  we will continue to improve that version as time goes on.  Did we rush to get it done? That is a tough question, but to answer honestly I think that we all pushed very hard to be first to market and in time for the holidays. Our entire team was working late, long hours to iron out issues and include as many features as possible.  This is part of the reality of being a smaller, independent game developer. If we had a larger team and more funding we may have done things differently, but I’m not sure. I don’t think it was a mistake because our numbers have been strong since day one and, even with the recent negativity, our metrics are really solid and we’ve been continuing to grow.  The negative opinions are always the most vocal, but most players are really enjoying the game and we’ve been attracting more and more daily active players every week.  A lot of the gaming journalists that have been playing the game have also given us some great feedback. I realize that we will take a few hits from some of the traditional gaming press in terms of review scores, but I’m hoping that even they will consider that this game is a living project that will continue to evolve as time goes on. We are very proud of our Foundation Release, and we do stand behind it like we have stood behind any previous version.

What’s on the Horizon?
As for what will happen next with The War Z? We’re currently evaluating the relationship between Hammerpoint and OP Productions.  I firmly believe that Hammerpoint should be playing a more prominent role in publishing/game operating process. We’re in a process of adding new key members to our team, bringing on guys who have much more experience operating and growing successful online games and I know this is going to make a huge difference in terms of development.  We’ll be making some big decisions in terms of leadership for both companies and I will personally change how I handle many things.  Above all we will continue to develop and make this game the best that it can be.  

I know that to some people my words won’t matter much. I understand that. I hope that will change as we move forward and deliver the features that our players have been waiting for. I can promise you that from now on things will be much more transparent, and we’ll provide better communication and engage our community to discuss upcoming features way before they appear in the game.

I do believe that we aren’t even close to uncovering the true potential for The War Z, and I hope that in the coming year, we’ll be able to regain trust from people who were alienated by our actions and we’ll be able to move forward and grow the game together.

Thank you for reading all this, thank you for supporting the game and thank you for helping us to change and realize what’s important as well as what is not.

I hope you are all having a happy holiday and I wish you the best for the New Year!

Sincerely,
Sergey Titov
Executive Producer, The War Z

[schpain]

Ya I got it too.  Its nice to hear that he's taking some blame.  Doesn't say what for, though.  Also doesn't address any of the game breaking issues at the moment.  I've got the game installed but won't play unless I hear that its largely hack-free.

[Ginaz]

The high comedy continues.  Allegedly, the WarZ servers have been hit with a DDOS attack and were down for awhile and now they've been hit again this morning.  Allegedly.  I wouldn't put it past this crew of clowns that its something on their end they fucked up and are blaming it on hackers or...they will claim they can't get the servers going again because of these "attacks" and will shut the game down because of it, taking everyone's money with them.

http://forums.thewarz.com/showthread.php?89366-Server-status-1-3-13-and-the-past-few-days

[schpain]

More likely they banned someone with entry level hacking skills and are getting their comeuppance.  However, I can't put shutting down the game due to hackers past Titov and Co.

[5150]

Apparently we're all getting Katana's http://forums.thewarz.com/showthread.php?89659-We-ve-got-something-special-for-you

(until some one/hacker kills you and takes it)

[Falconeer]

Posted by the admins of the most popular hack out there on their own forums:

[Ginaz]

This is allegedly an interview with the guy that initiated the DDOS attack.  I don't care for companies or devs like the ones at WarZ who seem like a bunch assholes and who also might be scamming their players, but I hate people like this hacker much more, esp. when they claim they're doing it for the "good of the community".  I hope they find out who this arrogant, self righteous douche bag is and throw his ass in jail.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2WHtvK6rso

[Falconeer]

Nice to hear about all the dupes.

[Riggswolfe]

I can't help feeling a bit of petty pleasure that this is going so bad. It's so utterly predictable that an open-world pvp game is going to be shit but I still enjoy watching them die a horrible death. It's probably just unresolved anger from UO.

[Slayerik]

I can't help feeling a bit of petty pleasure that this is going so bad. It's so utterly predictable that an open-world pvp game is going to be shit but I still enjoy watching them die a horrible death. It's probably just unresolved anger from UO.

This isn't even a game, to be fair.

DayZ was fun, hackers killed it for me and everyone I knew playing it. Yes, it was that bad.

[Kageru]

This is the sort of game the PK market can afford. Salem, Darkfall, Day-Z, War-Z because big budget development budgets and full-looting PK game-play just don't intersect.

One of my friends (who loved UO) is enjoying it. Apparently he likes to find a group trying to co-operate, shoots one, and then watches as most of the time they turn on each other. Which is fine, and intended, but probably not the sort of thing that is going to attract and retain large numbers.

[Falconeer]

Skills are coming.




Also, new incoming patch is bringing this:

- Name plates have been added to players. These name plates will display when you target another player.
- New reputation titles have been added to the game. Reputation icons will display under nameplates for easy identification of friendly or foe! (everyone's titles will be reset to civilian) Please see our dev diaries for a detailed explanation tomorrow morning (1/18/13).

Reputation

There are 6 levels on each side of the spectrum, ranging from Constable to Paragon, and Thug to Villain. The early levels in these trees will be relatively easy to get...but getting higher ranks will be quite difficult.

Killing lawmen and civilians earns you negative points, pushing you further down the bandit tree. If you aren't careful, and continue killing, you'll end up with the label of Outlaw or higher. Once you've crossed this boundary the only way to redeem yourself will be to create a new character. Conversely, a Lawman who changes his colors will be severely penalized for killing other lawmen and civilians, and will quickly lose his ranks if he's not careful, sliding quickly into the bandit tree.

Definitely differentiating itself from Day Z. Personally, and for what it matters, I don't like this.


EDIT: more on Reputation.

[Falconeer]

Day Z creator is quite hurt.

DayZ creator angry about The War Z
January 18, 2013 7:48AM PST
 
By Eddie Makuch, News Editor

Dean Hall says he is "quite hurt personally" over confusion regarding Hammerpoint Interactive's controversial zombie game.
DayZ creator Dean Hall has spoken out against controversial zombie game The War Z, which features numerous similarities to Hall's game. Writing on Reddit, he explained that the consumer confusion surrounding both games has left him "quite personally hurt."

 
"I am angry about The War Z. I'm very angry," Hall said. "I'm quite hurt personally because anyone can see how similar the words are, and while the average gamer knows the difference individual people don't. I've had family members/close friends mistake the difference and confront me about what they believed was unethical behavior they thought I was making."

Hall further explained that he has bet his livelihood and reputation on DayZ, which is now at stake given the events surrounding The War Z.

"I really don't think anyone can understand just quite how exasperated that can make you feel when you've gambled everything on something, put your whole self and reputation on the line," he said. "So it hasn't made my life very pleasant and I disagree entirely with the conduct and how consumers have been treated."

This is not the first time Hall has spoken his mind about The War Z. In December, Hall said the controversy surrounding The War Z has left him "depressed," noting he contemplated quitting game development altogether because of it.

[Slayerik]

cry moar noob

[HaemishM]

They PKed his brand.

[UnSub]

Entire WarZ MMO is forced offline after a hack.

What was taken? Well...

Data accessed includes email addresses used to log-in to the forum, forum passwords, which OP Productions says were encrypted, email addresses used to log in to the game, game passwords (again, which OP says were encrypted), in-game character names and the IP addresses from which players log-in to the forum and to the game.

[Falconeer]

In other news, they introduced the skill system, revitalized the loot, implemented private servers and a skeleton player-missions system (bounties, requests for help, requests for loot). It can still get very scary at times and keep you on your toes. Problem with it is that there's hardly a point. Day Z burned a certain hitch for randomly hunting people before this game was even released, and now unless they find a way to make people care about staying alive, this (and possibly Day Z too) is going to be boring and feel empty. It's a sandbox without.... not much to do.

I think all this game needs at this point is to be more Minecraft-y. You want to build something and defend it, from both players (or not if it's your private server) and zombies. It also needs achievements, or anything that helps setting up personal goals.

[Shannow]

I think all this game needs at this point is to be more Minecraft-y. You want to build something and defend it, from both players (or not if it's your private server) and zombies. It also needs achievements, or anything that helps setting up personal goals.

This.  Your goal should be to find stuff to build a big fort basically. Of course that should also come with the drawback of attracting a lot of Z.

[5150]

Backend got hacked

OP Productions LLC issues Security Alert for The War Z game players,

We are sorry to report that we have discovered that hackers gained access to our forum and game databases and the player data in those databases.  We have launched a thorough investigation covering our entire system to determine the scope of the intrusion.  This investigation is ongoing and is our top priority.  As part of the remediation and security enhancement process we will be taking the game and forums down temporarily.
 
We are issuing this Security Alert to all Survivors as a precaution so you can take some precautionary measures on your own. We have already taken a number of steps to increase security and are continuing to work with external advisors and investigators to identify and implement measures to minimize the chance of this happening in the future.

The data accessed included email addresses used to log-in to the forum and game, forum passwords which we encrypt, encrypted game passwords as well as in-game character names and the IP addresses from which players log-in to the forum and to the game. If you posted other information to the forum it is likely that such data was accessed as well.  We do not collect the names or addresses of our gamers so that information was not impacted unless you posted it on the forum. We are investigating whether additional information may have been obtained.

No Payment information Exposed.

All payments are made through a third party and not through our system.  Therefore there was absolutely no exposure of your payment or billing information of any kind.

Email Addresses.

If you registered on our forum your registration email address was taken. Those Survivors who use the same email address to access their game accounts should be aware that the hackers have the email address.

Passwords.

We encrypt all passwords. However, there is a possibility that simple passwords can be obtained using brute force even if they are encrypted.   Our research shows that many users are not using strong passwords.

 
Therefore, we are asking all of our players to please change your passwords immediately. You may do this by visiting our website or by clicking "Forgot Password" on The War Z launcher screen. If you use the same password for accounts on other services, you should change those passwords as well. Please make sure to use a strong password that is unique and uses a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers and special characters.  Longer passwords are stronger. We suggest not to use password shorter than 8 symbols, with 12 to 15 symbols long password being preferred.

What we are doing.

We have engaged outside experts and investigators to assist in our investigation of this incident and committed substantial resources to that effort.  We have identified how access was obtained and have enhanced our security to improve game and forum safety. We are undertaking a full review and update of our servers and the services we use and adding additional security mechanisms.

The security of your data is important to us and we want our players to be assured that we take this situation very seriously.  We have taken steps to improve security to minimize the chance of this happening in the future and will continue to invest in improving security going forward.

This has been a humbling experience for us.  While we all know that there is no guaranty of security on the internet, our goal is to try our very best to protect your data.  We sincerely apologize.   

We will update you on status as we make progress.

Thank you,

The War Z Team