When H1Z1 started in Germany, it was almost midnight. You can experience the first hours of the new zombie MMO from Sony Online Entertainment live in the stream.
The Early Access was scheduled for 7:00 PM. It was postponed several times. At around 11:40 PM, the first players could start downloading the game. Initially, only the starter pack was available. It was priced at €19.99, which was quite unfavorable for Europeans. The premium pack arrived on the stream a little later, costing €36.99.
The difference between the two packs is the number of crates, keys, and event tickets. With the event tickets, you can access the Battle Royale servers. With the keys you open the crates. And in the crates are “skins”, other models for equipment in the game. However, you have to find this equipment on your own.
SOE relies heavily on streamers, to promote the game during Early Access and hopefully make it popular. They have even named some servers after them. This is noticeable during the initial hours. Numerous channels are going live, and viewer numbers are skyrocketing. Some German streamers are also present on Twitch with H1Z1 (the largest German streams had between 1,400 and 1,700 viewers shortly after midnight, the largest international over 70,000).
However, the nearly 200,000 Twitch viewers are only looking at the loading screen in the first minutes. There are, as expected, problems with the login. Also, the official stream scheduled for midnight is still inactive at 0:20. The login servers are reportedly being “reconfigured” according to a tweet from Adam Clegg, suffering from heavy traffic.
Meanwhile, the H1Z1 team published a letter to the fans, making it clear that the game is still in an early stage and no one should be discouraged by the initial experiences.
Especially with the textures, they are at the beginning, and they want to significantly improve the “military gear” and the balance. The player model is at about 30%, and SOE aims to deliver female characters soon. And of course, there are bugs, bugs, and more bugs.
We are linking to one of the larger streams here, so you can experience the full “We’re waiting for H1Z1” feeling live. On Friday, January 16, we will embed the stream from our friends at ProNDC; by then, the servers should hopefully be running.
