WarZ - Updates (Hackers, FairFight & Developments)

As many of you know, I'm a huge fan of both WarZ and DayZ, the Online Zombie Apocalypse games. However WarZ has been through some right turmoil so far, from Cheaters to a badly managed Development team. The game itself is a lot of fun, but what is letting it down is the Cheats, the Developers and of cause, we also have Mr DDos on the scene who attacks the servers on numerous occasions.

Regarding the DDOS situation, once again over the last few days the Servers were being attacked, the Forums were up and down, servers were crashing and if you did get a chance to play there was a 90% chance you'd end up crashing back to the desktop or server listing. So in an Interview with MarkeeDragon and the Attacker Negative Infinity, he was being asked to stop.

Many don't believe Mr Negative Infinity is the actual attacker, but I'll leave that down to you to decide. Lets just hope he calms down for a little bit and give the Developers at least some chance to fix things. On that note we've also had an updated post regarding the game and of cause future developments, something a lot of us have been wanting for some time now.

Q and A, plus some insight into our schedule

JonnyTruant (Tyler) here stopping by to chat and answer some questions, and also give you a little snap shot into our development process, and what we're currently working on. So, without further ado!

From Art

• Katanas! Coming this week. All active users will receive a unique Katana in the their global inventory.
• Interiors. In the coming weeks you'll see fleshed out interiors, complete with furniture sets. This month we'll also be opening up a bunch of other buildings for you to explore!
• WEAPONS . One of my personal favorites - some of you will remember when we asked what weapons you'd like to see/use in the zombie apocalypse. Well, we listened, and RussianKaliber and his art team are SUPER excited to get cranking on new melee weapons, as well as some more common firearms.
• Characters. There are currently more characters of many different backgrounds, male and female, in the pipeline, and you'll see them over the coming months. We plan to release them as they're ready, and i'll post more further down the line.

From Design and Code

• Strongholds. One map is nearly done, and 2 others are in the pipeline.
• Reputation system and name plates. This should come very soon, and I'll post more details - there'll now 5 levels of lawman/bandit each to achieve, each of which comes with a title and icon. Name plates will be seen when aiming at players
• Server rental - we're working on this still and testing, ensuring its ready for public release. Making sure we have a healthy balance of options. Processing feedback from a number of threads and polls, balancing, etc. They'll be out as soon as they're ready.
• Skills
• Call for help
• Building blocks. We have a number we're working on (blocks of bricks, wood planks, etc)
• Lockboxes
• Safe settlements - in game store and inventory access, sentries

If you wish to read the rest of this Informative Post, go here 

As for the patch, below is what is coming for us either late today or tomorrow with server maintenance, depending on what Country you are located in

Fixed a bug that caused players to take damage when walking down inclines.
Fixed bug that if logged out in air - you will not be able to get back into game
Increased the server shutdown timer to 5 min
Optimized shadow rendering for better performance
Optimized scene rendering for rendering
Shadow quality on ultra settings was improved
Other very technical rendering optimization for greater FPS
Optimized zombie rendering
If you have recent video card and start game for the first time, it will not default into low quality, and instead will default into appropriate quality settings depending on how powerful your video card is

Another thing I'd like to mention is the Anti-Cheat protection this game is using, as you know lately there has been a huge drop in Cheating on the servers and Many Hackers/Cheaters have been banned. Some of cause claiming to be unfairly banned without reason and after last night I can believe this to be true. I myself have come across a number of dodgy players and have reported them as such, but last night I got the confirmation basically in what Anti-Cheat protection WarZ is using and it's called FairFight.  Now I know people have been talking about this for awhile on the WarZ forums, but I needed it from the WarZ team themselves. This is what I got for my reports.

Thanks for your report, we will look into this ASAP! Please note for future hacker reports you can type "FairFight playername reason for report" in chat to report players for hacking.

So there you have it, they are using FairFight. However I myself may get banned as a Cheater and I'll tell you why. Last night a player in the name of "Sexy Zombie" was using ESP as you could tell by how he killed my friend when I was in the Death Screen. I could go into it, but I won't bore you. Lets just say when I typed " FairFight Sexy Zombie ESP ", his mate happened to call me a noob and typed " FairFight Neil79 ". Does that mean that I'll get banned? Does that mean that other Hackers and Cheaters can get reporters banned by simply doing FairFight back there way? Who knows! But there is a simple fix for this, as one of our clan members dlknight has just mentioned. They need to hide the fact you have reported someone instead of it showing up in Global Chat. This way the hacker won't know you have reported them so then they won't report you in retaliation.

But that's about it for now, lets hope WarZ doesn't die and becomes a game of Greatness, though I don't hold much hope of that for now. Especially with DayZ standalone coming out at some point in 2013.

Oh and before I sign out, I'll be in Hospital tomorrow for an Operation. I should be out for a few days then I'll be back to give you all the latest news. Don't worry the site isn't going anywhere just don't panic if you see a lack of updates for a few days :)