This isn't a game, its a ALPHA beta project. Why they released it to the public like this is stupidity.
All screenshots related to the game on the official WarZ website where they currently sell the game have been photoshopped to deceive the customer. This was also the case on steam, and shortly after valve realized they were false advertising their game on steam, valve pulled it off of steam. You can no longer buy this (I wont say game) Alpha beta project, on steam.
On top of this fiasco with false advertising, all the promoted features they talked about still do not exist. For example:
1. Being able to sell or trade in-game items (an auction house of sorts I am guessing?) was advertised and does not exist.
2. Player strongholds where you can build your own little fortress or safe-zone of sorts, was advertised and does not exist.
3. Almost everything in the screenshots that advertise the games actual gameplay are photoshopped lies, the game plays and looks nothing like the screenshots on warz's website, or on steam. You can actually visit warz's steam page however you can't buy the game there.
4. This bounty board or mission board or whatever that was advertised, does not exit.
5. A friends list was advertised, currently does not exist.
6. They advertised different maps, currently there is only 1 map.
7. They advertised a skill tree where you would be able to customize a character. There is no skill tree, doesn't exist.
I'm sure there is more, but you get the point. The graphics are also nothing like the screenshots that they photoshopped. They are mediocre at best, even call of duty modern warfare 2 has better graphics than this game. The game is also riddled with cheaters. I'm not kidding at all about the cheating, people using wallhack and aimbot are quite common. This game has little to no anti-cheat at all and does not use punkbuster.
Good weapons are extremely rare. I've been playing the game over a week and I've never even found a sniper rifle or a SMG, or any of these attachments you can use like scopes and to be quite frank I don't even think the silencer exists in the game at the moment.
Vehicles do not exist in the game making traveling a pain due to characters moving slow. A characters "Sprint" in this game is more like jogging.
Most of the buildings and houses in this beta are just textured blocks, meaning you can't go inside over 90% of the structures in the betas towns and cities, they're just there for aesthetics and not actual gameplay. Getting from point A to point B in this beta starts getting tedious when the allure of the games concept of survival starts to fade. Currently there is 1 playable map in the game (though they advertised more) and it is a very large map. The problem here isn't so much the vast size of the map, but its sparsity of actual locations; which mostly consist of textured blocks that only offer aesthetics and not actual gameplay. The size of the map does start becoming a tedious hassle simply because getting to a new area can take up to 10 minutes or longer, but especially when trying to meet up with other clan members. If people are in different locations, it takes a while meeting up at a location everyone can get to within a reasonable amount of time.
All this aside, there are some design flaws with the game itself. There are only a limited number of safe-zones when there should be more. There are only 3 safe zones on the entire map and people obviously abuse the limited number by making them ambush spots, which wouldn't be as much of a problem if there were more than just 3 safe zones. Server hopping is a serious gameplay flaw with the beta as well. (you logout in a certain location after you look around for items, then log back in on another server, get dropped back into the same place, then look around for more items) this is quite commonly how the game is played due to hackers and weapons being extremely limited, and how long it takes to travel from point a to point b on the map. This is an obvious design flaw with the gameplay itself. If someone logs out of the game while not in a safe-zone they should be placed randomly on the map the next time they log in, not the same exact spot. This "Server hopping" is messing the game up. However I cannot blame anyone for doing it, even I do it as well, because these towns and cities are just bare-ass of any items at all and literally 8 times out of 10 you run into a cheater using aimbot or esp (esp just means wallhacks), and when you die, you lose all your items on the character, even items purchased in the games real-money microtransaction shop which I'll talk more about later.
Right now with the practically non-existent anti-cheat this game has, even if everything they advertised was actually in the game, and the gameplay itself was flawlessly designed; the amount of hacking scumbags in this game kills the experience regardless. I'm not joking or trying to give this game bad press when I say 8 times out of 10 you will encounter a cheater in this game, it's just the reality of the situation. This alone makes the game unplayable regardless of its long list of other issues. The cheating is out of control.
The alpha beta project supports an in-game real money store you can access where you buy various items in the game for real money, but its basically the same thing as robbing you blind if you're dumb enough to actually buy anything in this game for real money. This might have worked, if the game wasn't infested with cheaters and if you were actually allowed to keep purchased items after death. Instead if you die, you will drop everything that was on your character wherever you died, including any items you purchased in the game with real money. All that does is promote player killing and cheating even more. All of that aside I do disagree with gamespots review of this game when they say this shop is "pay 2 win" or that this is a "Pay 2 win" concept. You cannot buy weapons from this shop, and weapons are the ONLY things that actually matter in this game. Food, water, and healing items and minor protection from weapons such as helmets and vests are commonly found easily. So it really is not pay 2 win at all, more like pay 2 fail if you're dumb enough to buy anything from the shop in the first place because you're going to lose it after an hour or less, due to cheaters anyway. However if they ever added guns to the cash shop then it would obviously change into a pay 2 win system. Without weapons being purchasable from this shop I do disagree with gamespot with the fact that this is not pay 2 win gameplay at all in its current form. Do I agree with their cash shop in the first place? No, because this is first and foremost NOT a mmo and there is no need for microtransactions. Is it pay 2 win? Currently no, unless they add guns.
If this game was done with the same concept and open-world gameplay by developers who had a lot of money like blizzard or bioware or bethesda who actually had competent developers (not Jay Wilson) with actual anti-cheat in place, I can say without a doubt it would be an amazing experience and an amazing game. Sadly, this alpha beta project or mod of war inc, is nowhere near being completed. That is also an important point I want to bring up. This isn't technically a stand-alone game. Most of the textures, models, almost everything, was actually copied directly from war inc and they both use the same engine because guess what? The're the same company, one is just under a different name. Pathetic.
All in all, this game was advertised with crazy FAKE screenshots, and hyped and advertised with false claims and false advertising on a malevolent level and I'm pretty sure what they did was illegal. The cheating is out of control, I thought APB:reloaded was going to be the all time most-cheated game I've ever played, this one beats it by miles. Miles. These developers of war inc and especially sergey titov (executive producer for this alpha beta project) are literally blood sucking leeches who just made this mod of war inc for a quick buck and weren't in it to create an epic game. They weren't in it for the game and the passion of gaming, they were in it for the money. They stole DayZ's idea, and did all of the above that I just mentioned just for some money. That's what this really boils down to and I'm sorry but that is just wrong and there's no place in the gaming industry for people like this.
Sayin' it like it is, as always, Shelledfade ~