They’ll be approaching it ”just like Minecraft,” where players can pay to gain access. The plan is to slowly increase server capacity overtime to avoid ‘MMO-style launch woes’ for DayZ.
Forum moderators and active Reddit users are enjoying the closed alpha environment right now as the team sent out a bunch of keys. June will let the great unwashed in.
”So what we’re doing at the moment is, we gave free keys as a gift to the forum moderators, the Reddit moderators, people who helped out with DayZ development, and stuff like that. I guess there’s about 30-100 people involved with that,” Dean Hall told Gamasutra in a lengthy interview.
”From here, once we’ve finished our server/client architecture – because we’re moving it an MMO model – we’re reviewing the situation of that in June, and then we do an alpha, just like Minecraft.”
The current plan is to have the alpha at a low entry price, and then when the beta comes around they add on $10 followed by another $10 when it achieves retail. Much like it was for Minecraft, it pays to get in early. The closed alpha is operating in a single server right now.
”We are doing content updates all the time. The Steam model is really working well for us. Valve approached us and they said, “What do you guys want, to make things easier?” and we said, “Well, we want delta patching.” Luckily they were just about to bring that out.” Delta patching is where only parts of files that have changed are downloaded.
Check out the full interview between Dean Hall and Gamasutra.
