Is this game playable?

[Dissapointed 0]

Using DayZ Commander, I see 5600+ DayZ only servers. 99% of these show my ping too high to connect (I live in Australia with an ADSL2+ connection). Of the 30-40 servers I have sufficient speed to connect to located in Aust. NZ, or Japan, 50% freeze indefinitly on a blank screen showing a loading message.

Any server I successfully connect to is night-time, even if the time shown on DayZ Commander or the GMT offset in the server name indicates a time in the morning or afternoon.

As soon as I try to get some equipment, using the torch or not, I am attacked by Zombies and start bleeding. After bandaging myself, repeat, then die due to no bandage to stop blood loss.

Only other alternative seems to lie in a dark forest until hunger or thirst kills me.

Any suggestions, as I'm not really interested in private servers with a group of known playes who won't kill each other?

[Inception. 9443]

To answer your title question..yes.

[SmashT 10907]

Anything up to 250 ping isn't really a problem in DayZ, most people I know play on US servers.

Zombies are only a problem until you learn their mechanics, everyone dies from them at the beginning but soon they will become nothing more then a backdrop. Use buildings, trees, hills etc to lose them. They won't catch you if you simply run away.

There are private hives with 5k+ members so worrying about playing against a small group of friends isn't really an issue unless you join one with only a handful of players.

Edited January 22, 2013 by smasht_AU

[Mos1ey 6301]

What smasht said.

Recently I've been playing the DayZ+ mod where zombies do 1,000-2,000 damage per hit instead of 100-200, lol. They're kind of easy to deal with once you've been playing a while.

Generally the best COA when you aggro zombies is to RUN. They can't catch or hit you while you're running full speed and if you draw them in to a building they'll start walking and you can leave through the back door. You can also try dodging around bushes and trees to break their line of sight on you or running diagonally up hills as hills slow them down a lot too.

[herrjon 478]

You must be a new online gamer, because Australians have the hardest time connecting to anything outside their country, that's not just DayZ. I'd say find the servers that work and stick to them. As far as private hives, I'd still give them a try. I know Balota Buddies has a few Australian hosted servers and lots of different players, there's no one clan just hording and controlling the server, and hacker free.

As far as zombies and nighttime goes and just general gameplay tips, there's plenty of tutorials and what not here http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/10051-index-of-helpful-threads/