UPDATE
We are releasing these changes on Wednesday (3/11/2015) 3:00am Pacific Our servers will be down for 4 hours during this publish.
We are expecting to be up and running by 7:00 am Pacific

Howdy everyone!

Just wanted to give you all a heads up on a couple of things on the horizon – our next publish and a special Battle Royale Weekend to test out our new queueing system and updates. Keep reading for details!

UPCOMING PUBLISH:
We’ll be releasing the next publish in the coming days and wanted to give you all a peek at the incoming changes.

We've made some significant improvements to the way Battle Royale matches are handled, fixing some of the issues you have been experiencing with queues, disconnects, end match placement and other anomalies. Battle Royale Updates include:

   On-demand zones are now launched when enough players request a Battle Royale match. This means that the queues are now working, and players should not leave the queue once they have been placed in it.
    Players that wait too long on the reward screen are automatically logged out (gracefully).
    The winner is also automatically logged out after their celebration period.
    Player population tracking has been improved, reducing the players who thought they were in the match, but were instead Battle Royale: registered in an invalid state. This had caused people to wait out the match and receive no rewards.
    Should no longer drop crafting ingredients as part of the loot that spawns
    Map visual Adjustments

Additionally, we’re doing a ton of fixes and updates to the main game, including new recipes and increased base building functionality.

   All damaged base building pieces will now show health bars.
    Damaged vehicles will show a health bar if you are near it and have a wrench to repair it.
    The dew collector will now look like its basin is full of water when it is ready to be collected. The old splashing effect has been removed.
    Crafting saline will no longer produce an empty bottle.
    Crafting a first aid kit will return an empty bottle from the used up saline.
    The recipe for the yeast starter has been modified to directly create yeast.
    The recipe for yeast will now return an empty bottle from the used up purified water.
    Barbed wire and punji sticks now have resistance to being shot with arrows.
    Furnaces and barbecues now have less health.
    Troll furnaces and barbecues can be removed the easiest with a crowbar. The crowbar’s description now reflects that.
    Storage containers can now be destroyed. The new demolition hammer is the best way if you are the one that placed it. Otherwise explosives or crowbars will work. Please note that at  
     this time if a container is destroyed with items in it, the items will be destroyed as well.
    Added a new recipe for a Demolition Hammer. It can be discovered with a metal pipe. It is used to remove misplaced or unwanted base building structures that you have placed.
    The demolition hammer can be used to do massive damage to base structures that you have placed. It will not work on other’s bases.
    The demolition hammer will destroy base pieces in 2-8 hits depending on the size of the object. Please note the condition bar is not appearing over certain base items like the stairs or
    the large structures so you will not be able to see that damage to the condition is being applied.
    Ethanol and Normal Torches can now be placed. When placed they will automatically be lit.
    Zombies will now target the vehicle first instead of the player inside.
    OffRoader has some minor geometry upgrades
    A crosshair reticle has replaced the dot
    The player will no longer see “you have been disconnected” message and the chat will be wiped on logging into another server
    When sitting, pressing a movement key will automatically make you stand.
    Lowered velocity of .308 round
    Increased gravity and drag of the .308 round
    Increased ‘held breath’ time when steadying scope.
    Decreased scope sway penalty when out of breath.
    Increased .308 rifle scope zoom to 5x
    Increased gravity and drag of the .223 round
    Slightly reduced initial horizontal recoil while hip firing the AR15
    Majorly reduced initial horizontal recoil while firing the AR15 in iron sights
    Increased gravity and drag of the .45 round
    Added static crosshair to 3rd person and 1st Note: It never disappears, this is expected and will change in the future.
    Removed flinch/screen punch in 1st and 3rd person upon getting hit.
    Reduced ‘snare’ from getting hit by projectiles from 35% to 20%

BATTLE ROYALE WEEKEND:
Battle Royale is getting a lot of improvements with this next publish and we want you to help us test them. To show our appreciation, all first place winners of BR matches this weekend will receive a special item at the end of the round. Everyone who participates will earn a unique item which will be granted at a later date. The event will take place from Friday at 3 p.m. PDT through Sunday at 6 p.m. PDT and we encourage everyone to jump in and send us your feedback.

H1Z1 servers will come offline tonight at 3AM Pacific for 2 hours.
 
Vehicles
 
    Vehicles now can start/stop the motor by pressing K.
    Characters now animate with look orientation and emote support while in vehicles. Visible from outside, 3rd person and 1st person views.
    Removing required parts from a vehicle load-out will stop the motor if it was running.
    Your camera state (third or first person) should now be preserved across entering and exiting a vehicle.
 
Crafting and Building
 
    Placement will now check the material underneath it to ensure it's a valid location. Example: foundation's can’t be placed on cement.
   You can now move while placing items. Not during jumping, crouching, or prone though.
    Objects being placed have no collision while being placed. Once placed, they will then have collision again.
    Objects now turn a transparent red when they can’t be placed and a transparent green when they can be placed. To aid the color blind and color deficient, the object will also scale up and down to indicate it cannot be placed.
    Objects will require all four corners of its bounding box to be touching something in order to be placed. This is true for free placed items and for foundations. Socketted objects, however, will not check against this restriction.
    The placement object will follow the center of your screen – not your mouse.
 
Other Additions
 
    Added a Recurve Bow with better range, fire rate, and arrow speed. It replaces the current bow in Battle Royale. This new bow can be found in the core game around the world and cannot be crafted.
    Weapons will now appear on the player model
    Adjustments made to zombies versus wildlife population ratios in favor of more zombie spawns.
    Leaf FX and sound when you harvest blackberries
    Dot reticle has returned to 3P and does not change per weapon yet
    1P reticle will change per weapon
    Dot will be used for melee weapons and gun Iron sights
    Basic crosshair will be used for AR15 hip fire and 1911 hip fire
    Shotgun will use a circle for hipfire and iron sights
    1911 delay bug fixed, it will now be ready to fire or reload immediately after switching.