Divergence: Year Zero sets the stage for what would become the "Divergence" universe in a modern-survival adaptation and prequel to Divergence: Online.

As the emergence of the first non-sapien humans to inhabit the Earth in over 200,000 years (Homo-Solitus) coincides with the catastrophic rupture of the Californian San Andreas fault, a lethal virus designed in the clean-rooms of Silicon-Valley biotech firms specifically to wipe-out the Solitus humans is released to the environment dealing a one-two punch to western American civilization.

As the burning wreckage of California sinks into the Pacific Ocean and the Cascadia Subduction Zone devours large portions of the states of Oregon and Washington, The U.S Government, working with both Canada and Mexico frantically struggle to contain the spread of disease. A disease born of a virus designed to wipeout Solitus humans, but released before it could be perfected and constrained purely to the Solitus genetic code, now running rampant and infecting all humans who come in contact with it with incurable psychosis, hyper-aggression and even cannibalism.

You play as a survivor to the initial catastrophe now cutoff from the rest of America behind "The Western Wall" erected to prevent the spread of the virus. No word comes in, no one gets out. A total communications blackout prevents cell-phones, internet or even television and radio from reaching survivors beyond the wall. Only a handful of cities avoided total collapse after the great earthquakes and the subsequent rise in sealevel consumed most of what was once the North-American states of California, Oregon and Washington.

Without the advent of civilization to protect him from his fate, man now once again lives at odds with the wild, although packs of hungry roaming animals are no longer the most deadly thing you may encounter. If you survive the wolves, the bears, the elements, starvation or thirst, you just may live long enough to find yourself robbed or murdered by bandits or bandit-groups, or even worse, accosted by hordes of infected humans seeking to devour your flesh.

It's at least 30% worse than waiting in line for an iPhone is the picture we're painting here.
Welcome to hell.

Divergence: Year Zero is built on the same advanced technology that won it's predecessor Divergence: Online the rank of #1 out of Over 1,700 Games on Steam Greenlight during its cycle and benefits from six-months of additional improvements since then. Its key features being;
1.A True-MMORPG where all players coexist on the same server - No sharding or otherwise [/i]instancing[/b] of the playerbase. Any two people in the world who player Divergence: Year Zero play on the same server, guaranteed.
2. Simply Unbeatable Crafting. Divergence means "you determine every single stat of every single item that you craft by scouring the world for the absolute best raw materials and resources". Unless intentionally done so, it's impossible that any two items crafted in Divergence can be the same. Be the servers best weaponsmith who makes the best guns, the architect who builds the largest buildings for yourself or your group, or any of our other professions.
2. Skill-Based advancement. Chose as few or as many professions as you like and split your available skill points between them.
3. Combative and non-combative progression. Divergence rewards both weapons-related careers such as marksman as well as non-combat-derived professions such as scout, ranger, or doctor. Make your living healing other survivors, creating medicines, chopping down trees to create wooden fortifications or even training wild horses for use as trusty and reliable mounts.
4. Massive Housing and Construction. In Divergence, any player can work to create not just one, but multiple homesteads and in virtually any location in the entire game world for themselves or their group(s). Craft stronger walls based on the materials you used and create a huge fort, or even (with subscription) construct anything you wish out of Ferrocrete Voxels, Divergence's epic voxel-building and streaming proprietary system.
5. Advanced personal and civic power-management. Create power grids to bring light to the darkness around your home and keep the shitheads out while you're away.
6. Automated Resource Harvesting. Craft and deploy automated harvesting rigs to pull crude oil out of the ground for you, store it in barrels in your compound and defend it from Lord Humongous and his army of Road Warriors seeking to turn it into gasoline to power vehicles.
7. Design your characters appearance down to the smallest feature. This is how character customization should be in 2016 guys; We aren't going to make you wait two years just to be able to make a female character then act like it's some-kind of fecking accomplishment. Seriously.
8. Both world-loot and crafted versions of the same weapons and items. Love that AK you found inside the burned-out building but loathe the accuracy? Become an expert weaponsmith and build your own version of the same weapon from schematics with potentially even better features!
9. Craft your own respawn and fast-travel facilities for yourself or your group, helping you get around the world quicker, helping friends get to you quicker, and helping you get back on your feet quicker when some jagoff blows your face off.
10. A policy of total interaction with us, your developers. We have a facebook group page. You describe your bug or bugs on there. We read it and fix the bugs. That's how it's always worked with Divergence: Online, that's how it works with Divergence: Year Zero.
11. Finally live out your fantasies of a career in "Road-Warrior"ing! Not only does control over fossil fuels dominate the economy and the landscape, but almost any item you can craft can be bolted directly onto your chosen vehicle for armor or just to look badass! Be careful though, welding objects to a vehicle will increase it's top-heaviness!
12. Tons of wild creatures roaming the wild, some aggressive, some fearful. Hunt them, harvest them, or run for your god damn life!
13. Vehicle customization! Salvage a tractor from an abandoned barn and strap barbed-wire to it's frame, or nail wooden spikes to the roof to keep the baddies off. Virtually any items crafted or looted can be bolted onto any and all of your property, house, camp, base, or vehicle!

All these features and many more, but oh did I mention:
"Virtually Unhackable"
Built on the same technology that makes Divergence: Online virtually unhackable, Divergence: Year Zero benefits from the same extensive engineering developed through years of R&D to create a scumbag-free experience for our players. Want to play another hastily-thrown-together Zombie Survival game and get head-shot from two-miles away with a shotgun? There are a lot of those out there for you, but if you want to play a game that instead says, "You can't do that. That's absolutely ridiculous, GTFO!", you play Divergence.