In a bit of a continuation from my last post on the paranoia over other players in the ARMA2 mod, DayZ, I'm going to talk some more about those jerks. Specifically, being one. My two buddies, Schwartz and Wamdoodle, and I were moving through the forests of Chernarus, going to investigate some gunshots near a large factory building. While not necessary for survival in DayZ, the factory areas contain things like toolboxes, razor-wire kits, and car parts, which can be used to defend areas and repair vehicles, which in turn, makes life a little bit easier. We take our time to get there, keeping on the other side of a hill, hiding in the shadows of trees, and generally doing our best to be stealthy survivors. Laying out on a hill, we spy down on the factory, with two unmoving bodies of survivors on the uncovered upper level.
"Let's watch for a bit, see if anybody else is there."
It was a good idea too; after a few minutes of looking about the walled off structure and it's out-buildings through the scope of a rifle, we thought it was clear. Then the bodies began to move. Now while DayZ is all about the zombie apocalypse, as of right now, dead survivors do not turn into the living dead and start moving, so these other players were alive. They must have been wounded and knocked unconscious, low on health. Obviously, we could run down there, help them out, bandage their wounds, the whole bit. Make new friends, right?
Not even a little bit. There wasn't even a quick conversation of what to do, whether we should let them live. We had the drop on them, we had the high ground, and we had copious amounts of ammo and rifles. We let loose, dropping one as he crawled away toward the stairwell, the other barely making it to cover. He tried to resuscitate his buddy after he'd fallen unconscious again, but a few more bursts of ammo from the three jerks in the trees and the chat registered him as killed and I added a murder to my scorecard. I kept him cornered in the stairwell while Schwartz and Wamdoodle scurried down the hill, and stormed the building. Moments later, they were all dead and my buddies were looting bodies.
With the only scoped rifle among the three of us, I remained on the hill, watching and waiting. As they were making their way up into the second floor, I saw somebody crawling toward the front of the factory. "Nobody is out front, right?" I don't even know why I asked, letting loose on the guy moments later. DayZ has an interesting wound system that gives visual cues that you're bleeding, with blood gushing out of you, Tarantino-style, and this poor man looked like a fountain. Inside, my team were upstairs and zombies were starting to spawn. Out of ammo, I tossed the rifle in my bag and pulled out my only other weapon, a hatchet.
I scurried around the building, finding the man on the stairwell. When I went to check his gear, I saw new options I'd not seen on a dead body before: "Check Pulse" "Give Morphine" "Give Painkillers". This guy was still alive. Again, I had the chance to help out another player, and seeing him up close, he wasn't even armed, just one of the players we'd killed before trying to return and get back his stuff. I killed him with one swing of the axe.
Shortly after, we got out of the factory, more zombies were appearing, another man ran in unarmed to take back some of his stuff and was killed before he got anywhere near his old body. My heart was racing. The whole event took probably 45 minutes from when we first heard gunshots. The action all happened in about 15 minutes. And I was a jerk. No manners, no being helpful, not even a second thought to helping other players out. This is what DayZ does to people. I'm not complaining, I love the mod, I have a ton of fun with my friends when we play. Most of the time, we're the ones being destroyed by other players and we rant and rave, shaking our fists at our monitors. But every now and then, we're the jerks. We're the destroyers. And it feels good.
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