Extreme server / version fragmentation

[Lukio (DayZ) 24]

So when will this end? In the server browser list almost every second server is of a different flavour, has either a different beta version or mod version, different settings and naming schemes, its a complete chaos to me.

Personally I think its really time that this mod gets official patches and downloads that sets everything on one beta/alpha version during development cycles. At the moment this has become the most frustrating factor in trying to get things running for me and my buddies, we spend about 2 hours before each session just to figure out which files we need, some have SixLauncher, some have Armarize, others do it manually, anyway somehow half of us end up not being able to play and the other half has a different version of the game or lost their config files, few are able to actually find a server and play (once we've found a server that matches everyone's version and actually is visible in Gamespy / Sixlauncher etc.).

Sadly it usually ends with most of us just having to quit and attend to RL issues. Unfortunately most of us have only around 4-5 hours per weekend were we can play this really really great mod :-/

I would dearly wish that there would be one official version and settings for all servers and clients, so that everyone is on one level for testing the alpha or beta, Currently there seem to be something like 30 different levels/settings people are playing on. This has happened to so many other ARMA 2 mods before and its just a really messy solution. For DayZ I'd really wish (even during alpha stage) that we don't just jump from one snapshot to the other like a dog chasing cars.

I am not complaining about the hard work and time Rocket and the rest of the dev team have put in and how fast they react and add things into the game, but to the way that their hard work isn't accessible in a unified non-anarchic manner; it makes the state of the mod look extremely whimsy when its in fact quite good.

Just as an example a snapshot today as attachment.