H1Z1, the promising looking zombie themed free to play MMORPG that Sony Online Entertainment announced for PC a couple of days ago, will feature staggeringly massive worlds- the intent is to create a virtual USA for players to play within, said the developers on Reddit.
“I’ve seen a bunch of people asking questions about the Map size,” they said. “Forgelight is built to handle arbitrarily sized worlds. Our plan is simple – we’re building the core of “anywhere USA”. When we first open it up to users the map will be huge, but nowhere near as big as it’s going to be in short order. Our Map Editing system allows us to quickly add massive areas. We want to make sure we clearly understand how the players are playing the game before we do that. On Planetside 2 we made a mistake by making multiple continents before we had a strong enough idea of what worked and what didn’t. This game is different. We’re doing it smarter.
“When we open up the Early Access there will be a massive map for players to enjoy. Over time (very quickly) they’ll magically just be able to keep going further than they’ve gone before. It’s a very unique way of doing it, but we actually think this is a better way to go.
“So not to worry. Zombie Apocalypse isn’t going to be any fun if it’s like Disneyland on Spring Break and super crowded. We want remote.. haunting… being scared when you see someone. Your first instinct needs to be to hide. If there are 20 players in your view it’s not a very convincing Apocalypse : )”
They also declined to comment on server capacity, saying that they will fix that on the fly based on the game’s playable area’s growth over time. So it sounds like this game will be staggeringly ambitious- and awesome. Stay tuned, because we’ll bring you more on it in the coming days.
