NEWS

H1Z1 Shambles Towards Early Access


It's been a long time since there's been really anything to say about H1Z1. Announced earlier this year, it was set to hit early access in May. That never happened, and after missing that original window information went from scarce to barely more than a trickle. Finally though, yesterday awaiting gamers received a new release date for the early access version of H1Z1. In a post on Reddit preceding a live Q&A last night on Twitch, Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley said the following;

Hey folks,
After a lot of hard work, we've decided to make the release date January 15th, 2015. This gives us just enough time to polish what we have and put out something we'll be proud of and hopefully you'll be excited to play.
Why did it take longer than we originally thought? It's a fair question. The simple answer is once we saw what we could have had earlier it wasn't good enough and we wanted to put something out that we would be proud of. What you'll be playing January 15th is a really fun game, but it's early. It's everything Early Access should be - a fun and compelling game that isn't finished. Our goal is to have you help us finish it and have it be a game we can build a large community in over time.
Is it going to be a finished game? Absolutely not. If that's what you're expecting, DO NOT BUY EARLY ACCESS. The goal here is to let you in early and help us mold it into a game you want to be a part of for quite a long time.
We'll have 2 SKUS when we launch. The basic early access sku for $19.99 - which will let you into the game and have a great time, and a more expensive one which we'll announce here shortly. The difference between the two will be things like access to some of our different game mode servers (which you can get access to by purchasing tickets or earning them as well) and other specifics we'll be outlining soon.
Is H1Z1 going to be better than Day Z day 1? No it won't. We'll get asked that question a lot and I wanted to be up front about it. We're not as feature rich and they have a lot of really cool stuff we just don't have yet. That being said, we're also a different game. We're an MMO and our goals are to create a large scale world that gives you the incredible feeling of being a survivor in a zombie apocalypse.
We'll be starting out with roughly 64k square Kilometers, but we plan to grow it right away.. and over time create our virtual version of the US post apocalypse. Look for us to start adding land right away post launch.
Please join us at 3:30pm PST on our H1Z1 twitch channel to answer any questions you may have!
Smed

So there you have it, January 15, 2015 is when players can get into the early access for a price. Hearing that it won't be better than DayZ on day one may be disheartening for some, but at the same time it's better than claiming that it's going to be anywhere near a finished product at launch. It will be interesting to see how things play out in the coming months for the new coming title. Are you excited for H1Z1? Hooked on DayZ? Burnt out on zombie titles in general?