Ziad

On the other hand, it's a nice day. I think I will do something real instead. Z

Since the .50 rollout, they have supported Private servers on private shards. Some folks have always claimed, illegally, "private" status. There is much confusing terminology in the labeling of servers now - it seems that everybody who wants to, private shard or no, is now passwording his server. What is the official word on that now? Because, of course, a passworded server that doesn't have a private shard is just an A-hole server. How do we tell which is legit, and which should be disabled? Z

UK-17 just died. There is one First Person server in Singapore, one Third Person server in Singapore, and one "private" (zero loot, but it's got zombies) server in Singapore. If you don't have the ping to play in Singapore, you go back to Stable or you don't play. Z

Not going to get much data off of us this way. Z

I just pumped up my filters to check. Leaving out Singapore and AUS/NZ, there are SIX servers on line and 20 that they have taken off line. As Hicks said, providing an enjoyable game play experience is not a priority. Right now, it is obvious that they want full servers for load purposes; if you want to have fun, or a challenge other than the challenge of getting into a server at all, better to go back to stable for a while. I don't have time for the download, though, so I just don't get to play. Z

Checked out several servers; balance of loot seems off. Some had nearly none - can't eat a flashlight - others had too much. And I think we can safely conclude that when most of the servers are down, it is done on purpose. They aren't crashed, they aren't stuck, they are just taken out of the lineup. Which is, since they are official Exp servers, fine, if they need to do that to force people onto the high-pop servers - but they really ought to tell us so. Z

Found one in a Yellow House, but that may have been dropped by another player. Z

Found the pump shotgun and the "repeater" - I don't even know what shells that takes, .357? So I decorated a pine tree with it. The welder's mask with the cowboy hat is... amusing in the extreme. Z

Seems to be fixed; only time will tell. Having the non-opening can bug too. It would SUCK to have a can of food and a can opener when you starve to death. Z

Yes, the Official Snack Food of the Zombie Apocalypse is and should be Twinkies . I wonder if they would call them "Golden Cakes" or some such, but we really should have them. Yes, even just south of Russia. :D Z

Any official word on when Exp servers will be back up after the current maintenance? Z

Yes. The new rule is that you can't run, unless you have no weapons and are being chased by zombies. The occasional sprint won't kill you, but you have to walk most of the time. Which means it is a long, boring walk between towns. The temptation to run when you are getting close to starving and you can see buildings ahead of you can be intense! :D I hope the new boring aspect of travel between towns doesn't convince people to server hop. Z

Yeah, that last is a known bug, side effect of the current persistence structure. And yes, as I have said all along, we are what is being experimented on. You don't tell the rats where the cheese is when you want to know how fast the rats will run the maze. Z

Guys, guys! Remember - you don't need to know what is new - it's nice to know if there are new guns, or what particular system twitch is going to kill you, of course - but you are not experimenting. You aren't there to check out the new toys, the new loot. Yeah, they look through the bugtracker occasionally, for form's sake, but they know what is happening. You are the experiment. They are experimenting on us. That's all! :D I do wonder about balance, though. Hicks has said that it is not a priority to provide us with an enjoyable gameplay experience, I'm cool with that. But the current setup seems to be forcing us to walk instead of run, and vehicles are not in game yet. It is a long slow walk from one town to the next; a lot of people are going to find this breaks the immersion. If you think about "getting to the next town", you are in the right place; if you start thinking "this game is boring" at any point, your immersion is gone, and you aren't likely to continue - and some folks will just start server hopping, until the devs put an end to that. Z

Yes, a point I have pondered - if you can't find enough calories to make it to the next village, even if you were going to be lucky enough to find a village on the route that hasn't been looted, you are stuck. I had about 15 Cherno/Elektro spawns, and died in all of them. Either I was unable to find enough food, or taking risks to find that food and dying from zombies. Note: the pitchfork is still useless against zombies. Z