Zombies, middle America, and crafting, oh my!
Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley revealed today that the company has been developing a free-to-play MMO called H1Z1.
"It’s a massively multiplayer game in which players fight for survival
in a world where death is the only sure thing," Smedley said. "The H1Z1
virus devastated mankind and left nothing but death and destruction in
its wake and a world nearly empty of human life where the remnants of
humanity are in a fight against extinction against those infected with
the virus."
Smedley addressed the similarities between H1Z1 and other
survival/zombie titles by pointing to many of the features that SOE
hopes will make H1Z1 rise above the rest. Some of the features Smedley
spoke of include multiple servers with different rule sets that can hold
"thousands of players," crafting, an in-game economy built around a
trading system, and many more.
"It uses our proprietary next-gen Forgelight engine and that means we’ve
had a lot of really cool technology to work with to make the game we
wanted to make," he added. The game will also use the roadmap system
from Planetside 2 to "clearly communicate what features we’re working
on."
Smedley also stated that the game is designed to allow players to become part of the design process.
"We’ll be opening it up for Player Studio creations too so expect
player-created items to make their way into the game," he said. The
design team is putting emphasis on "player ownership and building."
The game's newly formed subreddit
is "very open to answering questions," and the team will be doing a
livestream of a playtest session next week. Be sure to keep checking
back to Consoleinfo.be for more news as it develops
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