Dayz will release on PC after five year of early access alpha on Steam. Few games can claim to have been in development for so long, especially by smaller studios. Mass Effect Andromeda had a similar development time, and after it was released, it was discovered that it was because the team was confused and disorganized, constantly restarting and scrapping ideas which led to the mess that was produced. So the real question is if Dayz can bounce back from a development hell that has left their fan base furious.

Dayz currently has over 175,000 reviews up on Steam – far more than most games, tens of thousands more than most games. But Dayz real problem is the legacy it has left behind. In 2014, when it was first released to the public, the open-world MMO-esque zombie-apocalypse game was exactly what the public wanted. It was exciting to explore and run into other players, unsure whether they were friend or foe, if they would kill you or work together with you. It was much like the early days of MMOs like WoW. But in five years, much has changed.

Battle Royales are the new crème of the crop, and they offer much of what people found appealing about Dayz. The giant open-world, the quest for gear, and the fear and excitement of running into others and creating possible alliances are all in battle royales. Granted, these things are sped up in games like H1Z1, happening far faster and more furious than they ever did in Dayz, but that might be a good thing, especially when looking at the thousands of hours some players have sunk into a game they describe as woefully broken.

Dayz now struggles to be relevant in a world where it has largely become a joke. Players say the mechanics are still poor, mobs can still hit you from impossible distances, thirty minutes can be played with nothing happening and then simply dying from environmental effects. Dayz legacy has become a running joke of mediocrity.

Jokes aside, one of the reviews from user Liscion, an actual developer, outlines what the real problem with the game is. Bohemia Interactive, in an effort either to appease fans or increase sales, ahs focused nearly all their attention on content instead of function, which has made a broken game even worse off. This was all done without bothering to fix the engine, something they have only very recently tried to do but which has resulted in breaking the game worse than before. They made lag much worse, created huge graphical errors – such as floating buildings, visible grids, etc. – and ruined the loot table/economy of their game.

What Bohemia Interactive has done correctly is sell a lot of games – somewhere to the tune of 3 million – but they haven’t made a very good game, and they’ve handled the process of making it very poorly indeed. If Dayz manages to actually be successful in 2018 following their launch, it will be because of a miracle of hype, not because of an abundance of quality.