DayZ paved the way for an entire genre, but then quickly lost popularity in recent years. Nowadays, we noticed more people are playing it in 2022 than when it was released.
What began as a mod for the military simulation ARMA 2 became the forerunner of an entire genre with the standalone version of 2013 at the latest: hardcore multiplayer survival. But despite fantastic sales, DayZ bled players incessantly and staggered rapidly towards the low four-digit range by 2018.
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The development of the DayZ Standalone
Before talking about the DayZ 2, we need to know what is going on with the development progress of actual DayZ.
DayZ has had a real rollercoaster ride since its standalone debut. After the initial hype and three million early access copies sold, the number of players dropped massively between 2014 and 2018 due to slow and sparse updates.
Various imitators took advantage of the pioneer’s stumble. The most successful of them is called Rust, which has meanwhile strayed far from the original role model and expanded the genre with entirely new accents. But it also took Rust many years to become the game it is today.
While others rolled by, DayZ only occasionally introduced new weapons, tools, and cosmetic items. The most exciting new feature was the introduction of the vehicles, which, however, had already taken place in 2014. DayZ was dying a slow and inglorious death until developer Bohemia decided to revitalize the project.
How did DayZ get rescued? A new engine and a drastic rethink from developer Bohemia Interactive.
The development process of Enfusion Engine has been going well with the new release of Arma Reforger.
Although DayZ partly runs on Enfusion Engine, it still massively benefited from the latest feedbacks and fixes from Arma Reforger’s development.
DayZ 2 Release Date
You probably have caught the news by now that bohemia has released an official new Arma game: Arma Reforger.
Arma Reforger looks very promising on first side and to keep in mind that this is actually the build up to Arma 4. The game will most likely serve as a test bench for the new engine and will hopefully make Arma 4 even a greater success.
This is the first release of an arma game on console it is nice to see that military sims are making their way to a larger audience thanks to the infusion engine which can support larger maps and handle more intense effects. We can probably expect something similar to happen to DayZ 2 as well.
if we take a closer look at the road map for DayZ 2022 we can see what the intentions are from the devs update 1.19 is on the way. The developers stated that:
“We thought this would be a good time to outline some of our plans for 2022. You’ll be happy to know that we are committed to supporting dayz through 2022 and will continue to release frequent updates that include a healthy balance of fixes stability and balancing and new content the scope of DayZ”.
This seems pretty clear for this year more items will be coming back and we will see a variety of new weapons added as well what stood out for me the most was one thing the mentioning of the infusion engine.
Back to the main question, Will we see a DayZ 2?
DayZ 2 will most likely happen in the next two years however we probably won’t see a complete new game like Overwatch 2. There is no point in abandoning a previous game with a community that is growing rapidly.
The DayZ community, however, believes that there will not be a DayZ 2 in coming years. So this means the community is pretty satisfied with the latest improvements of actual DayZ.
We can probably expect a huge DLC release for DayZ that introduces the Enfusion Engine along with the DLCs. We can expect to see a new map coming to the game as well as mods. The mod support on console in the other hand, seems pretty impossible due to Sony’s quite tight licenses.
DayZ 2 Leaks and Rumors
We will list the latest leaks and news under this title by date. You can find the latest leaks and rumors at top listed below.
Biosphere insider Leak in 2021
Our known leaker “Biosphere” who already suggested the Arma reforger release date last year, also tweeted some information on DayZ as well. He or she suggested that DayZ would be a PVE focused larger environment survival game. He also mentioned what happened in the development progress.
In 2019, Bohemia Interactive published in an annual report that a few new projects are under development, all of which should run on the new Enfusion Engine. That was around 5 months before the closure in Bratislava.
The Czech developer Bohemia Interactive is said to have instructed the Bratislava branch with this project. Bratislava branch which was responsible for development of DayZ 2, seems to be closed.
Conclusion
The Arma games and the mods are the father of so many games currently dominating the markets. The idea of battleroyale gamessuch as Fortnite, comes from a mod in Arma 3. DayZ was also a game mod of Arma 2. The Arma games helped inspire many evolutionary games. In my opinion, DayZ doesn’t need a sequel. Less bugs, more advanced character creation, more complex weather simulations and possibly a bit more destructible surfaces would all be very cool ways to make DayZ even better. Games like DayZ are not easy to develop.
