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[Astral]

Too bad there's no cabbage.

Edit: Also, his streams have entirely too many advertisements.

[lavenders2]

So... how did this mod become popular?
This mod has pushed Arma 2 into the top sellers list on steam(at the time of writing it is 11th in that list) and convinced a lot of people to buy Arma 2. Every server, of which the population cap is about 35-50 each, is always full. It is insane.
I don't understand why this mod is so good. I played it for... I don't know... 20 minutes? The mod has potential, but at the moment it doesn't seem all that interesting or fun. Am I missing something here?
I probably haven't played it long enough to see, or I probably haven't found out enough about it yet, but this mod just doesn't seem like a game seller to me, although it clearly is as the top sellers list on steam shows.

So I have 2 questions which I would love answered
1. How did this mod become so popular?
2. Why do people love this mod so much?

[sluissa]

You can't really do much in 20 minutes in the mod. It really is just a zombie sandbox. That's what makes it fun. Some get into it for the rampant PVP. Personally, I find more enjoyment just trying to avoid any contact with zombies or humans. It's nerve wracking when you have to weave your way through zombies walking around in some tall grass at night, nothing but the sounds of their moans to guide you between them. A few people I've seen have taken up shopkeeping. Finding a nice place to setup shop and trading various supplies to people. Some want the best weapons, some just want to survive. Some prefer to go at it alone, others want to join a small army to march through an area, mowing down anything that gets in their way. Small groups, large groups, solo. Good Samaritan, survivalist or bandit. It's pretty much all viable in some way or another. Not only this, but the updates keep getting better and better. Vehicles create a new goal for people to work towards. Fortifications give people a new tool to make some lifestyles more viable.

Yeah, it's buggy, yeah, Arma 2 has some serious flaws on it's own that cause some problems, yeah the lack of rules sometimes bites you in the ass, but in the end, it's just something that nothing else out there gives us at the moment. Every other zombie game bogs things down with superficial goals. Some sort of linear plot to follow. This doesn't. This just throws you into things and lets you choose your own story. We can have fun following someone else's plot, reading someone else's script, following someone else's directions, but obviously there's a desire out there for some people to want to write their own story with their actions.

[Astral]

How did Minecraft become so popular?

Sandbox. Do what you want, when you want, without having to be constrained to directed quests or shitty voice acting.

Also, YouTube videos, and a lot of people putting out hype in advertising.

 I think I saw a thread started by rocket regarding what people would prefer if the game became standalone, and would love to see it in its own engine, rather than being constrained so heavily by ArmA2.

[ebarstad]

I think I saw a thread started by rocket regarding what people would prefer if the game became standalone, and would love to see it in its own engine, rather than being constrained so heavily by ArmA2.

I love Arma 2, but I agree: DayZ would probably be better in a different engine. At the same time, I can't imagine how long it would take to recreate DayZ in a whole new engine.

[Drakale]

Yeah the mod was made with scripts. While the creator is obviously skilled, making a realistic looking game engine is a totally different set of skill and difficulty. They would have to license a professional engine imo. But seeing the interest in this mod, I bet there would be more than enough funding for that kind of venture.

[sluissa]

Not just any engine could handle it either. As many problems as ARMA has, it does a pretty decent job of handling large player populations on a server, with all of them in vastly different areas of a huge landscape.

[Vherid]

The rest of Bteamgaming and I have jumped on the DayZ bandwagon a couple days ago and we've been playing around, mostly on EU/FR servers even though we're all from US servers because loading seems faster and less bogged down. We do a lot of PvP, and we've been currently going to the NW airfield/ Devil's castle. We started with a party of 8 people and over time, I'm the only one left alive at Devil's Castle, with absolutely no ammo, but I have a camo SVD which is very rare I'm sure. I had a glock17 as well but I had to ditch that earlier to keep surviving. I've come across quite a few hackers though, or abusive admins. That greyfox hacker guy hacked the french server and killed all 50 people on it with a wipe command or something. He's getting super banned now though. 3 guys named crisis, crysis, and dark hacked the shit out of us at devils castle, they were in the woods nearby with M24s and auto shottys and took one of our guys out but then we killed all 3 of them. They then somehow spawned there again, fully geared with silenced M4's and Auto shotties again and took a few of us out, we DCed out though because they were clearly hacking or doing something wrong there, and we were all fine thank god. Some guy either then spawned on us or connected and had been there previously on another server at the top of devil's castle and shot 4/5 of us, me being the only one who got away. Apparently my friend emptied 2 clips of M4 into his face while he was killing the other guys and he didn't die, so supposedly he was hacking too, but that's not as comfirmable.


But even with that, this mod is amazing. It feels so much like stalker in a way. You start in a low tier zone where everyone has makarovs, maybe some people with shotguns, low tier rifles, maybe a full auto if you're lucky. As you move more inland you find better stuff, and better geared people, fights get more intense. The wishgranter of the zone, is the NW airfield. It is the chernobyl NPP. Or pripyat. You find the highest tier, and rarest guns there, ammo, and so on, but there's lots of zombies there, and lots of high tier people there as well, very well waiting to contend with you. Along the way our weapons progressed and so on, without there actually being a progression system.

Our quest was epic for sure. We started with 8 people, we all joined up at elektrozavodsk, and from there went to mogilevka, then to zub where we had a fight with a group of 3-5 other people, we lost 2 guys in that fight, but killed all 5 of the other guys. Then to Vyshnoye, Stary Sobor, Then north and west over kabanino to the airfield. Between elektro and mogilevka we encountered random snipers where we had 2 wounded but no deaths, and then another one near Vyshnoye but never found them. One guy had left at Zub so there was 5 of us at the airfield. Upon making it to the airfield we noticed there was no helicopter wrecks there. We also saw a guy in the side chat say who wants to help me take out a group of 5 bandits with auto snipers out. So we immediately all dropped  and ran off to the right and started storming the hangars 1 by 1. One guy who was there DCed without seeing us I think. There was another guy there we killed him, took all of his supplies and kept exploring the area. Things went to shit real fast. There's a pretty large amount of zombies there, doesn't look like it, but a lot aggro on small things. We had a lot of like 30 zombie at a time fights and we all started running low on ammo fast. Apparently there was another guy at the airfield who was watching us and kept making little comments about stalking us and maybe getting us or something so we were running around and eventually he had us cornered in these semi-hangars. We got the fuck out of there and I did manage to see him in the distance but out of the way now as we ran to the outer perimeter of the field, most of us pretty much out of ammo completely. There was 4 of us now because another guy had to leave/afk for a little bit. We looped back to the first set of hangars and shit got even worse. Zombies and apparently one of our guys was getting shot up by another player, so Wes and I took separate ways but both booked it into the woods north of airfield. Maze and August both got left behind, August dying, Maze somehow surviving the ordeal and meeting up with us later. Sean the guy who AFKed at the field was back by this time too. It was just me and sean trying to regroup with reinforcements, the two guys who died at Zud long ago, we had no idea wes or maze was still alive. Eventually we all met up again as 6 and decided to go to Devil's Castle. Thats when we then encountered the group of 3 snipers who shot Sean in the face at the top of the tower, and we then technically hunted them down and killed them. Then the other guy spawning and killing everyone else also happened. So now it's just me. Last man standing.

Every ordeal has been such a movie moment, chaotic, and unpredictable. The mod is amazing, and it can only get better.

Also rumor has it that the guy who is developing this mod, is also an Arma dev.

EDIT: Possibly confirmed here:
http://www.gpforums.co.nz/thread/445808/1/

"developed by our own NZ BiS dev Dean 'Rocket' Hall. Currently in Alpha"

[Drakale]

Also rumor has it that the guy who is developing this mod, is also an Arma dev.

Really? mmmh well if he is not, they should hire him ASAP seeing how the mod is more popular than their actual game and make a fully featured mod for the upcoming arma 3. That would be the greatest thing ever.

[Ghazkull]

Arma 2 Combined Operations has risen to place 10 of best sold games in steam since the mod was released

[postal83]

Yeah, my buddy and I have been playing 4 hours sessions over the past few days.  You can watch his stream of us playing at twitch.tv/machine1981.

Last night we made it to the NW Airfield, and we all got raped while checking out hangars.  I can't quite put my finger on why its so fun because it's a very simple concept and because its all basically scripting on a already clunky engine, you have to deal with little annoyances.

If this became a standalone on a new engine, I could see a huge potential that a lot of people seem to be thirsty for.

[PTTG??]

I'll have to take a look at this. Last time I tried to install a zombie mod I ended up standing in an open field at midnight surrounded by dozens of brain-dead spetznaz.

[Knight of Fools]

This interests me, but I just can't see buying the equivalent of a full priced game when the sequel is (Supposedly) coming out later this year, even if the sequel doesn't have all the mods and stuff.

It's definitely something that there isn't enough of, though.

[PTTG??]

I felt the same way. I heard about the ARMA I mods and ended up waiting a few months for ARMA II to come out.

[Tronak]

Also rumor has it that the guy who is developing this mod, is also an Arma dev.

Really? mmmh well if he is not, they should hire him ASAP seeing how the mod is more popular than their actual game and make a fully featured mod for the upcoming arma 3. That would be the greatest thing ever.

That's not a rumour, that's strictly true and awesome.

For proof see the mod's post at BI forums http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?133560-DayZ-Zombie-RPG-%28Unofficial-Mod%29-Alpha . Author is tagged with the red developer avatar.

If you want some juicy rumours I remember seeing some posts in wich He says that He is willing to redo the mod for Arma III when it comes out (or before  ), so we might see zombies in Limnos.