H1Z1 won’t be better than DayZ, it’ll be different

There's no denying H1Z1 and Bohemia Interactive's DayZ have similarities. Both are set in a post-apocalyptic world in which most of the population has been infected with disease or virus. More importantly, both strongly encourage player interaction, whether that be teaming up to take on the world or simply hunting other survivors. But they aren't the same game, and yesterday Sony Online Entertainment — after announcing H1Z1's early access date — attempted to answer the question "How are you different than DayZ?"

It's a fair question — one that has been asked multiple times, SOE president John Smedley admitted. So how do the two differ?

"One of the main reasons we wanted to make a zombie survival game is because we are all fans of the survival genre. DayZ did a great job and we hope fans of the genre will enjoy our take on the zombie apocalypse as well. Our goal is to make H1Z1 fun, accessible, hard core, and super deep, and we can’t wait for players to get their hands on it," SOE says in the H1Z1 FAQs.

Not exactly the most descriptive answer, so let's go back to when I talked to SOE senior designer Jimmy Whisenhunt at E3. Here's what he said:

"One of the biggest things is depth of crafting, and character in general. It's personal crafting with the world so you're affecting the world and constantly crafting things with yourself in an MMO space. It's not a smaller server, you're dealing with lots and lots of layers in a growing world."

Comparatively, DayZ is server-based on a smaller scale, so the aspect of H1Z1 being an MMO with thousands of other players is one of the key differences. On top of that, SOE is leveraging PlanetSide (another SOE game) and the Forgelight Engine.

"We have so many systems that we can flip on and off, and per server we can do a lot of things. One of the coolest things is we can leverage anything from a squad, to a platoon, to an outfit if we need the social features later on. We feel very modular about it. We love the genre, look, it's a playground for us."

Differences aside, John Smedley was quick to address the comparisons in his letter to fans, admitting that H1Z1 won't be better than DayZ — at least, not at first.

"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," Smedley said. "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."

At launch, H1Z1 will offer players roughly 64k square Kilometers to explore, but SOE plans to grow it "right away.. and over time create our virtual version of the US post apocalypse." Smedley even said that they will begin adding land "right away" post launch.

So hopefully that clears up a few questions or concerns you had about the two. H1Z1 will be available as an early access title through Steam (on PC) starting January 15, 2015. Although it will be a free-to-play game at official launch, early access will cost $19.99. There's also a second, more expensive option that will be offered, but SOE hasn't detailed that yet.