The Plan for the Return of H1Z1

I have mocked and chided EG7 and Daybreak since the acquisition because they have consistently and repeatedly highlighted H1Z1 as one of their most valuable first party properties, something they own the rights to.  Not as valuable as EverQuest, which Ji Ham declared as their most valuable, but still always on the list.

And the reason I have been rather dismissive of this is because, for all of that talk, they haven’t done thing one with H1Z1.  It was, after all, a big announcement a couple years back that they were working on getting the build system for the app working again.

In fact, I have long harbored a suspicion that the EG7 plan for H1Z1 was to close their eyes tight and wish as hard as they could that H1Z1 would simply miracle itself back to its brief position of market dominance and popularity, which was back in 2015 and 2016, and become the Queen of the Battle Royale genre once more.

I mean, Daybreak tried everything… if you define “everything” as renaming the game every so often and to handing it off to NanWorks for some rando to run, only to have it handed back to them.  I mean, there is a whole hour long Death of a Game video about this amazing series of half hearted moves.

The efforts have been underwhelming to say the least.

This shirt is missing at least two additional names…

So imagine my surprise when Ji Ham was up there talking to investors about plans for a new H1Z1 title.  We’re they going to finally take a shot and try to regain so very much ground lost to Fortnite and PUBG?

First party game plans

No!  They want to bring back the survival part of the game that was split off and renamed Just Survive way back when, then shut down in 2018, making its name especially ironic, it being the only part of the game that did not, in fact, just survive.

But I am totally fine with this.  I am certainly more likely to go play Just Survive than the battle royale version of the game, which is technically still available both on PC and PlayStation 4.

The funny bit is that the people watching that video presentation were pretty jazzed about the H1Z1 announcement, but were clearly not aware of the difference between the battle royale and survival halves of the game.  The battle royale part was the popular bit and that is, once again, NOT what they’re going after.

It even says at the top of the chart “sandbox suvival” and not “battle royale.”

Is that a good thing or a bad thing that EG7 has decided to return to the sandbox survival, the part of the game that Daybreak, under the very same senior management team, shut down?

One must assume, if they are bringing this up at all, that they have spotted some aspect of the survival game that might be adopted, adapted, or improved in order to make this a title worth investing $25 million into.

It is kind of a strange spot, because elsewhere in the video Ji Ham said they wouldn’t be remastering Lord of the Rings Online after all because it could cost as much as $30 million to do it right, and for that they believe they can get a brand new game… like a new EverQuest title.  But I’ll get to that in another post.

That attitude argues that they are not simply going to revive and spiff up Just Survive, that they want a new game with a new angle and new game play out of this.  If you won’t bring a current title up to date for that price, you certainly wouldn’t revive a game you shut down for just a few million less.

So maybe it is a good thing.  The survival sandbox genre has a lot of players in it, but it always feels like it has a lot of room for growth and experimentation. And, personally, I am much happier with this plan.

I am perhaps not as thrilled with the idea of this being a shared public server concept, the way the original Just Survive ran.  That wasn’t bad, but it does get tiresome to have somebody just ganking you on site.  I mean, I played it for a bit.

The hunter… in his underwear… and his prey

But I would be a lot more interested in a co-op, PvE, server rental, larger explorable world model.  I know, everything can’t be like Valheim in that regard, but some things can be like Valheim in format.

Anyway, it is potentially on the horizon, though I suspect that the launch date of 2026 is optimistic.  In fact, given the history of Daybreak, the most likely outcome is that this gets cancelled long before it sees the light of day and we never hear about it again.  We shall see.