The lead designer of DayZ is going off to climb mountains.
In a post today on the blog for the zombie survival game, which was originally built as a mod for the first-person shooter Arma 2, DayZ designer Dean "Rocket" Hall writes that he's taking a two-month sabbatical to go climb Mount Everest in Nepal.
Some might call this bad timing, as fans are waiting eagerly for Hall and his team to release the stand-alone version of DayZ that was supposed to be out last year. But Hall assures his audience that even while he's hiking, work shall be done.
I realize some people are upset at my departure from the project for two months to climb Mt Everest, but hopefully from this you can see the large team Bohemia have assembled behind the development that are continuing to innovate and develop DayZ Standalone in the direction of the game we all want. This is going to take as long as it needs to, we want to release our initial alpha under the architecture it needs to avoid hacking and security issues - this is the only remaining task stopping us from releasing the alpha. But while this task is being completed, we can continue with other activities.
Still no word on any release date for the stand-alone version of DayZ. You can read some more minor gameplay updates on Hall's blog.