War Z

[Jarvan]

Don't rush out and buy it yet, but it is a fun game and has a lot of potential. Just wanted to get that out of the way.

Now.. if this game is any indication of what our world will be like after a zombie or infectious disease outbreak, we are doomed. People kill each other over a bag of chips. I've been killed when I had absolutely nothing.

It really is a survival game more then a zombie killing game. Best way to survive, do not interact with people. lol.

[TheEschaton]

I heard this game was awful. Like really bad. And that its Steam page was super misleading.

[Jarvan]

I heard this game was awful. Like really bad. And that its Steam page was super misleading.

It's.. well.. I would call it beta. Half the features aren't in yet. I have no idea why steam has it up. I had pre-ordered it awhile ago. Just cause I liked the concept.

[Makkah]

...and it has now been pulled from Steam. Valve is offering refunds.

[Tgo01]

...and it has now been pulled from Steam. Valve is offering refunds.

Damn, how bad can the game be? I thought Valve was against refunds at all costs?

[TheEschaton]

It was a game that 1) cost money up front, 2) had tons of microtransactions for things like items which you lost on death (which happens a lot, it's a zombie horror survival game), and 3) was horribly broken and buggy and...well, not good. It was just a cash grab to try and pick up the popularity of DayZ before Christmas, the company already had a game called War Inc and basically just reskinned it and added buggy zombies.

And it worked, it was #2 on the bestseller list on Steam before they pulled it.

[Ashliana]

I bought in to the War-Z Alpha like two months ago. It's basically like Gemstone: Shattered. No rules, lots of PK'ing. Attracts the worst trolls and assholes. The game is still incomplete (again, it's in alpha) and not very fun, even when you're not being trolled.

[Jarvan]

I kinda liked the survival aspect of the game, searching for loot and such. It just sucks that every single person in the game kills everyone else every time really.

I let 2 people live, both of whom later found me and killed me when they found a gun.

Time to ask for a refund I think.

[Tenlaar]

Part of an interview with the EP.


GameSpy: I understand that. It is now a common practice for a game to add more features in the future. However, that is not what happened here. What happened here is that Hammerpoint claimed, through Steam, that these features exist today.

Sergey Titov: I'm sure there'll be people who will look into small details and will say "no I was mislead," where in fact they imagined something to themselves without checking details first. I'm sure that Steam have it's refund policies that should handle those situations.

GameSpy: Steam is actually very stingy about refunds. However, in an unusual case like this, I imagine they'll be forced to make an exception. Does Hammerpoint have a system in place to refund customers who feel they've been misled by unfulfilled promises?

Sergey Titov: Hammerpoint, since its early stages of Alpha, provided refunds to players who can't play game for some reasons. We've granted refund to even those players who come top us and said -- your game is shit. And if we went and see that he played like 20 minutes, we've refunded him. Yet if somebody have played like 5-10 hours and decided he doesn't like game - we clearly didn't provided refunds to them. In [the] case of Steam -- it's up to Steam to decide if they provide or not refunds. I mean -- we do not have access to that part of the Steam ecosystem.

Let's be frank: when you read "up to 100 players" -- what does it mean to you personally? I mean, for me it doesn't mean that I will play with 99 other players. Really :) And yes game supports 100 players -- heck, it supports actually over 400 players per server as of today. Do we have servers launched with this number of slots? No we don't, because this is not what our players WANT.

GameSpy: Yes, frankly, it absolutely does mean that the game will support 100 players. Anything less is a false claim. You could just as easily claim your game will support up to a million players, and then say "Well, 50 is between one and a million." It would be absolutely fine for you to tune your game to what your players have told you that they want. What is not fine is for you to tell potential buyers that they will be able to do things in your game that they simply cannot do as it exists today. What you've done is the same as telling someone that the car you're selling can go 100mph, when in fact it can only go 50mph.

Sergey Titov: And we've corrected text on Steam. As I've said -- it was done less than 18 hours after we've started selling game. After that -- after text was changed -- over 7 hours passed.

GameSpy: Steam still says -- I'm looking at it right now -- "Up to 100 players per game server." That is a false claim.

Sergey Titov: Let me ask you -- what YOU think we should put there, since we do not know what number of slots will be on official servers tomorrow -- 20,30, 50, 70 or 100?

GameSpy: I think you should put the minimum you can deliver. If you deliver more, that's a bonus that no one can claim they were misled about. If you deliver less, you have failed to deliver on a promise.

Sergey Titov: Okay good point -- so you think that if we'll have server with 100 players up and running it means we've delivered even if everybody will hate it ?

GameSpy: If you believe everyone will hate it with 100 players, it is totally reasonable for you to turn down the maximum number of players. It is not reasonable for you to tell me I can play with 100 players and then only allow me to play with 50 players. Who is responsible for updating the Steam page text? Hammerpoint or Valve?

PR Rep: They do the actual updates based on info we send.

GameSpy: So, will you be sending them an updated version of the text that specifies that A) the current player cap is 50, and B) that this is a "foundational release," and not what people have come to expect of a finished product?

Sergey Titov: We have several private servers with over 100 slots on them. I think we [will] just tune it down to 100 slots and make it available to public. This is right thing to do as I think. We have demo servers with 130 and 150 players on them. But it's internal at the moment. I've asked if we can add them quickly to public pool.

Update: 100-player servers are now confirmed online.

GameSpy: That would be good. Will you be issuing an apology to people who purchased The War Z under the impression that features that are planned for the future exist today?

Sergey Titov: I think we'll do that by sending them personalized emails and explaining what to expect from the game now and in upcoming weeks/months. Bottom line - this is issue that affected at most few percent of active War Z audience and thus it should be dealt with on [a] case-by-case basis.

GameSpy: So, no public apology for misleading people on the Steam store page?

Sergey Titov: Actually we've already posted explanation on our forums that is available to public.

GameSpy: This post doesn't address the fact that there were false claims made.

Sergey Titov: I think there's difference between false claims and perception of the text.

GameSpy: There does not appear to be a reasonable way that this could be read any other way, when the sections are titled "About the game" and "Key features," and both contain things that do not yet exist.

Sergey Titov: Ah ok. Yes we're going to post about fact that information on the Store page was presented in incorrect format/layout. That was our mistake obviously. Which we've corrected early morning today.

Update: Titov has posted a new apology on The War Z's forums. However, it claims that we "misread information about game features," not that Hammerpoint incorrectly stated that features would be included.

GameSpy: Mostly corrected. Again, the Steam page still makes no mention of the fact that this is a "Foundation release." It is simply labeled as "The War Z."

Sergey Titov: What's difference ? I mean -- I'd love to adjust that BTW -- I just personally don't see what difference does it make? Ie -- THIS IS "THE WAR Z" game. It's not like there'll be "final release" or anything like this.

GameSpy: Then why was the press release sent out calling it a Foundation Release instead of simply a release?

Sergey Titov: This is what we call it. There's no such thing as "Release" for an online game. More important - you can't just add "foundation release" or any other words to the title of the game on Steam. It's like -- The War Z is a title of the game. We can of course add VERSION in ABOUT GAME section....

GameSpy: So as far as you're concerned, The War Z is officially out of beta and fully released, correct?

Sergey Titov: Nope - there's no such thing as "fully released" for online game. As far as I'm concerned The War Z is in stage when we're ready to stop call it Beta. This is basic version - bones that we're going to add more and more "meat" - features and content in a coming months and hopefully years.

GameSpy: By "fully released," of course, I mean as released as any online game is at its official launch. For example, when PlanetSide 2 removed its beta label and opened its doors to the public, it was considered fully released even though it will obviously continue to evolve.

Can you tell us where we should direct players who are upset about inaccurate promises should go to request a refund? Should that be done through you, or through Steam support?

Sergey Titov: They should contact Steam support - we can't refund Steam payments since we do not have access to Steam for that. The way Steam works -- they're acting like any other retail outlet -- they sell the game, get payments from customers, they process refunds, fraud, etc and once in awhile they send us money with reporting on how many units were sold, fraud/refunds, etc... If [a] player bought [the] game from us directly -- they should use e-mail, phone numbers, or support website that's included on their receipts -- this is due [the] fact we're using numerous of payment providers.

GameSpy: Alright, thank you Sergey. We will pass that along. We appreciate your time.

Sergey Titov: As for information about Steam webpage -- we'll post [an] official explanation to our forums, and yes we'll apologize for presenting information in a way that allowed different interpretation. Such as "up to 100 player' issue :) -- clearly you think about it one way, myself and other people I just asked think it's totally acceptable to say this. But once again -- I personally think that bottom line is -- do we have happy players or not. At the end this is what we're aiming for.

http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/pc/the-war-z/1226980p1.html

Who's a massive twat and is getting zero of my dollars?

That guy.

[Gelston]

Damn, I'm surprised Gamespy went at him that hard. Pretty awesome.

[subzero]

Seems like a pretty cool concept, but it's kinda hard to find out much in the way of details about the gameplay. One thing I did see was that if you die, you're on a four hour respawn timer. That sucks, especially if they're having issues with hackers or people can simply spawn behind you and blow your brains out.

[Taernath]

The producer for War Z (Sergey Titov) also made Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing.

I'll just let that sink in.

[caelric]

Typical defensive Russian attitude. I'll definitely not be buying this one.

[Some Rogue]

Did anyone else get the image of the Russian guy from the credit card commercials who answers the phone as Peggy?


http://youtu.be/GRLwKw9up3s

[Methais]

Here's why Valve pulled it:

http://i.imgur.com/j9Q3f.jpg?1

I never heard of the game til yesterday, but it seems like everybody is saying it's a ripoff of DayZ (which I also hadn't heard of before yesterday) and that it's full of hackers and bullshit.

It's also said that their anti-cheat system consists of shit like putting powerful guns in glitchy areas that supposedly only hackers would be able to access...except non-hackers are still able to reach them and are getting banned, as well as others who are somehow being banned too within like an hour or two of logging in for no apparent reason. Just random stuff I've read anyway.

Hearing lots of good things about DayZ though, which is supposed to be a standalone too.

[TheEschaton]

DayZ standalone is supposed to come out at the end of this month, it was originally a mod to ARMA 2, and single-handedly revived the zombie survival genre. The common sentiment is that this company released this POS to get it out ahead of DayZ.

[Methais]

Part of an interview with the EP.



Who's a massive twat and is getting zero of my dollars?

That guy.

Reading that makes me wanna kick that guy in the dick with a Swiss Army Shoe. If his company is smart they'll never allow him to speak to the press again. Dude acts like a politician with his bullshit and non-answers.

[Jarvan]

Seems like a pretty cool concept, but it's kinda hard to find out much in the way of details about the gameplay. One thing I did see was that if you die, you're on a four hour respawn timer. That sucks, especially if they're having issues with hackers or people can simply spawn behind you and blow your brains out.

Spawn is 4 hours cause they want you to spend 50 gold coins to respawn right away, you do get 5 char slots, so you can always switch if you want. Generally, there is specific spawn sites for new chars, but you respawn where ever you log out otherwise, so if you logout with your sights set on a popular loot spot, you can log in and potentially snipe someone right away. There are a number of issues with the game, it has potential, but it needs alot more of it's features implemented. Skills, friends, clans, strongholds, rentable servers. Worst issue.. killing civilians makes you a bandit, but if you defend yourself from a civilian, you still get neg points. And there is no way to tell who is a bandit in the game, just from the list. Kinda hard to only kill I KILL NOOBS if you can't tell who that is in game. -nametags are disabled right now-

As for up to 100 people.. this is true actually, there is maybe 20 servers with a cap of 100. Some have even been filled.. why I have no idea. who wants to play a game where everything drops on death with 99 other people all out to kill you.

One of my steam friends bought this too, so we decided to play a bit together in game. It was surprisingly fun wiping out a city of zombies. I submitted for a refund, but I signed up in alpha anyway, so we will see.

[Klinor]

http://kotaku.com/5969784/the-war-z-mess-every-crazy-detail-we-know-so-far

There's several other articles linked from the main one that are interesting.

[Tgo01]

http://kotaku.com/5969784/the-war-z-mess-every-crazy-detail-we-know-so-far


And here's an article from PCGamesN, who measured The War Z's first map, Colorado. On the Steam description for The War Z, the developers say that Colorado is 100 square kilometers. PCGamesN's Steve Hogarty determined that the map is actually... 9.7417 square kilometers.

That's hilarious.

[subzero]

The producer for War Z (Sergey Titov) also made Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing.

I'll just let that sink in.

Never heard of it, but reading the kotaku link about War Z provided a link to a Big Rigs video review. It's pretty funny:

http://www.gamespot.com/big-rigs-over-the-road-racing/videos/big-rigs-over-the-road-racing-video-review-6086530/




http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/the-war-z/

19 ppl think game is shit, 3 think that game is good.

Plese go and vote - tell us what do YOU think !

Sergey Titov
Executive Producer
The War Z



Man, the entertainment surrounding this mess at this point seems like it's better than the game itself.

[TheEschaton]

The metacritic score went from a 1.5 to a 1.2 after he posted that, lol.

[Tenlaar]

1.1 now!