The playerbase of DayZ continues to expand, despite having an advertising budget of exactly zero dollars. Now, while this pays tribute to the fantastic work that Rocket has put into the mod and the intense fun that is possible to have, unfortunately with more people comes the fact that the rate of banditry is rising.

Allow me to explain: Bandits are players who murder other players (survivors) for equipment or for fun. PKers, essentially.

Now, I have nothing against bandits at all. They’re a vital part of the game experience, ratcheting up the tension of every encounter with an unfamiliar player. What I DO take issue with, however, is the increasing rate of complete and utter assholes playing the game.

The sort of players who will drop a team member when he isn’t looking, and continue to hunt the rest of your team down (fine so far), then loot your corpses, insult you, and disconnect before you can retort or retaliate. This is so far beyond acceptable player behaviour, and yet is met with approval by other bandits, and even other survivors. Why should this be tolerated? And more importantly, what can be done about it? Rocket has said that change must come from within the community, not from the developers, but with people becoming more and more disillusioned with the deathmatch the game is slowly descending into, how soon will it be before there are no survivors left, only bandits? How can we enforce punishment by hunting down those who have wronged us, when all they will do is disconnect when they sense that they are about to be defeated?

Those sons of bitches have my rifle. And I want Old Faithful back…

Anyway, on a lighter note, I just took delivery of my first print work today! Stay tuned for more news on that front soon πŸ˜€

M.