DayZ Entering Beta Soon After [Almost] Four Long Alpha Years

It's actually happening. DayZ will soon make the transition to Beta after being in development as an Alpha title since December 2013. It is one of the original Early Access titles. DayZ will make the shift when the 0.63 update goes live; a portion of the Bohemia team is still polishing up 0.62 for release.

In a blog post on the official site the team laid out what their plans are for Beta:

Let me give you guys a look at some of the areas we will be looking at improving into and throughout BETA.

• Terrain handling / acceleration

• SFX (Engines / Transmission)

• UI (Specifically in the toggle-able HUD that we have shown before - so that 3PP players can see the same critical info 1PP can)
• Feedback on vehicle damage state (Aside from damage materials, and doors falling off - think smoke from a damaged engine, engine stumble/diesel when running out of fuel)
• Proper destruction of vehicle when it has been destroyed (rather than the current state of the vehicle just not turning on)

I got to say it's kind of exciting, and a bit reassuring, to see DayZ finally grow out of Alpha. While it's not a release, it is a big step—hopefully—to get rid of that all caps warning on the game's Steam page. But the team made sure to add that Beta does not mean development is anywhere near finished.

Don't think for a moment anyone on the dev team looks at vehicles the way they are now and says "Y'know what - that's perfect, ship it" - far from it. All of us are just as antsy and eager to see DayZ's systems start to flesh out and polish as we all want them to be - we just have to knuckle down and understand that the technology to support our vision needs to be ready for us to start implementing this.