If it wasn’t already plainly obvious, survival games are all the rage these day(z), and zombies – thanks to DayZ’s ever-looming influence – come part and parcel with that. The War Z/Infestation: Survivor Stories hit a little too close to home on that front, and Nether, with its possibly dubious ties to the former, also deals in apocalyptic baddie bashing, but with a slant toward the occult. Rust, meanwhile, frolicked through the gray-green fields with the shambling undead only for as long as it had to. And now it seems EverQuest and PlanetSide developer SOE has come down with a case of the Z diseaze as well, with its “soon” to be available H1Z1 promising DayZ-style antics on a much larger scale.

When Smedley promised a game “dedicated” to longtime Star Wars Galaxies fans, I’m not sure if this is what they had in mind.

SOE head John Smedley revealed the game in a lengthy post on Reddit:

“I will also go right to the heart of the question a lot of players will have – ‘There are a lot of survival/Zombie games… how is this one going to be any different?’ First off, it’s a persistent MMO that can hold thousands of players on servers we host (yes there will be multiple servers with very different rule sets). Why is that a good thing? It means a thriving economy (oh yes, there’s trading). It also means you have potential allies in the all-out war on the Infected… and many an enemy as well.” “The main thing that differentiates H1Z1 from the other great games in the genre is the emphasis we are putting on player ownership and building. We want you to be able to form roving gangs that are headquartered out of an abandoned warehouse that you’ve taken over. We want our players to make Woodbury from The Walking Dead if they want to. Or take over a prison. Or fix an old car so you and your friends (yeah we have multiplayer vehicles) can run zombies and players over mercilessly, and revel in the sheer delight of hearing a zombie scream as you light it on fire.”

Major focuses will apparently include light/darkness and a fully functional fire system (think Far Cry), all of which will apparently come together to create a “scary” experience.

Smedley also tweeted that H1Z1 will be “fully” playable very soon. So probably expect some kind of alpha to open up before too long.

Presumably, this is the game Smedley was referring to when he promised Star Wars Galaxies fans that SOE’s next project would be a treat worthy of a slavering gaze from Jar-Jar Binks himself, but I’ve mailed SOE to be absolutely certain.

So yeah, more zombies, more survival, more people banding together and tearing each other apart, but bigger and fiery-er. What do you think?