World War Z update adds cross-platform play, new mission objective, more

Saber Interactive has pushed a new update live for co-op survival game World War Z that turns on cross-platform play.

Following the update, players on Xbox One and PC will be placed in the same matchmaking pool for PvE content. Support for cross-platform play on PlayStation 4 is coming “at some point in the future,” according to a forum post. Players who do not wish to take part in cross-platform play can turn it off in the settings.

Also included in this update is a new mission objective that tasks players with delivering a Virus Sample canister. These canisters can be found randomly on the map or looted from Bombers taken down correctly and must be carried to the end of the mission to obtain increased rewards. Be careful though, as these canisters are fragile and will deal negative status effects over time to the player carrying them.

Finally, a number of changes have been made to Horde Mode, including a reduction in the difficulty of Hard and normal mode, an increase for the Auto Turret’s maximum ammo count, a reduction in the cost of ammo crates, and a significant increase in XP and currency rewards.

Take a look at the full patch notes below:

New Features

• Added Virus Sample functionality in Campaign
  • AI Director will randomly spawn containers with Virus Sample that players can pick up
  • Virus samples can spawn from Bombers that are taken down without them exploding.
  • The containers are fragile and they will begin to apply negative effects to players as they break.
  • If players will manage to finish the mission with containers intact, they will get increased rewards
  • AI Director can spawn several Virus Samples, Bomber will also drop them
• Added 4 new weapon variants with unique perks
  • Pistol – Increased penetration and damage vs special zombies.
  • Machine Pistol – Full auto variant, reloads primary weapon after a special zombie kill.
  • Classic Battle Rifle – Semi auto variant, no penetration but deals a lot of damage.
  • Battle Rifle – Full auto variant.
  • Thumper Grenade Launcher – Incendiary grenades.
• War Heroes character skin pack (included for Season Pass owners)

Horde Mode

• Slightly reduced difficulty in Hard mode
• Significantly reduced difficulty in Normal mode
  • Less Special Zombies will spawn in Normal mode
  • Increased preparation timer between waves by 20% in Normal mode
  • Supply points rewards will begin to scale down later in Normal mode
  • Added significantly more random pickups in Normal mode
• Increased Auto Turret maximum ammo
• Capped by 10 the amount of Auto Turrets that could be placed simultaneously
• Fixed one of the shops not spawning items
• Reduced the amount of ammo secondary weapons drain from ammo boxes by 50%
• Reduced ammo crate cost from 100 to 70
• Significantly increased both XP and currency rewards

Difficulty

• Tweaked Extreme difficulty settings to restore pre-patch balance (it was changed to support crossplay)
• AI Director will spawn less secondary weapon pickups

AI

• Reworked Bomber drop, he will spawn better Primary and Heavy weapons when killed

Perks

• Fixed several issues with perks stacking

UI

• Minor UI and localization fixes

Stability

• Fixed several gameplay crashes

Levels

• Fixed some gameplay bugs that were causing inability to progress in levels
• Fixed issue that allowed players to clip through geometry in some places

PC Specific Fixes

• Added crossplay between Xbox in PvE

World War Z is available now on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.