Status Report - Week of 01 Dec 14

Now that 0.51 has reached stable branch we've had the pleasure of watching how the survivors of Chernarus interact and experiment with its content and mechanics. Be it player to player interaction through the extension of the meat harvesting systems, or traveling together across the map in search of a V3S. For now the team is focused on critical bugfixes and server side performance optimization for 0.52 midway through December (due to the upcoming holiday season). For me, the first two quarters of 2015 hold a great deal of excitement. The last year has had a large amount of work ongoing behind the scenes that effect gameplay, and playability for a significant part of the active Early Access userbase. As someone that has spent over three thousand hours in Chernarus this year I am genuinely excited for the possibilities. Speaking of my time in Chernarus, as you all know the military tent (packable) was recently added into stable branch. This as I envision it is one among many possible "persistent objects" that survivors can find, and use to create their own base camp in Chernarus. Ranging from tents, to barriers, horticulture, containers, varied levels of fireplaces, and so much more - I see this feature expanding upon the initial pup tents of the mod into something that resembles a true improvised and -scalable- survivor camps. Speaking of survivor communities, our Private Shard contest has concluded and while I am happy to announce the winners - I have to say there were far more entries than I had expected, and the decisions were not at all easy. There are a lot of fantastic DayZ communities out there, and at the very least I now have a whole list of servers I need to take time to visit. The winners, in no specific order are:

• FriendlyFlashMob
• The Midnight Crew

TAW.net Congratulations to the winners, make sure to reach out to support@dayzgame.com to start the process of claiming your private shard server. For those who entered and did not win, don't be sad - Of all the tons of submissions, there was not one that was not outstanding. We'll be rolling out new support and options for private shards in January, so keep your eyes open for those. Still not a bandit. - Brian Hicks / Lead Producer -For the rest of the Status Report, please head to devhub.dayz.com-