WarZ is an upcoming buy-to-play zombie survival MMO that has faced much controversy after revealing there game not long after DayZ went hugely popular. Following a similar concept, The WarZ will put players in the role of a survivor trying to live and thrive in a zombie infected world. Set in locations across different maps of up to 400km2 each, PAX attendees recently got to look at the first location.

 Set in Colorado, survivors will find three major cities and roughly 160-180 km2 of terrain to explore. The game’s graphics and effects look great, although the game so far gives off a vibe that it is more based around action than survival mechanics. I think that even with a solid looking game, the developers are going to have a little trouble pushing this on a crowd who seems to be comfortable with the idea of realistic survival mechanics over fast-paced run-and-gun gameplay. There isn’t much that gives off any solid proof the game will be an action-based shooter, but from what I have seen it’s enough to make me wary of it.

I think DayZ has set a new standard for this style of game, and while Rocket may be happy that WarZ is being made – I think the developers may be taking the wrong approach. All the interviews so far with Hammerpoint Interactive have generally been summarised with “DayZ did this, we think it’s cool, we’re trying to do it like that but different and better”. That’s a very dumbed down version, but that’s essentially what the devs have tried to ram down everyone’s throats.

It’s okay to play the humble developer approach, but they seem to be very aggressively trying to attract DayZ players and offering backhanded comments about how they can do it better. This is wrong, I can already tell that WarZ will attract a slightly different audience and hopefully they realize this and persue it. With all the drama around stealing ideas, the oddly similar Z on the end of the short three letter word – let’s just hope they focus on making a badass game rather than trying to simply cash in on a cool idea.