Five years.
Five very long years.
That's how long it took this game to come out from the buggy, broken mess that it was in 2013 as Early Access, when Greenlight was still a thing.
Question is, was it worth it?
No.
Not in a million years was the wait worth it.
In the time it took for DayZ to come out of early access, the entire games industry changed focus to live service multiplayer games that will last for literal decades.
DayZ's popularity came and went, replaced by Minecraft, then by PUBG, and now by Fortnite.
Hell, DayZ's brand of gameplay isn't even popular anymore, as evident by the fact that there is a Battle Royale mode coming.
I was a semi-early adopter for Standalone (January 2014 I believe), and was very deep into the mod despite not owning Arma 2 at the time for a myriad of reasons (my computer sucking chief among them), sucking up every (read: Frankie's) video I could find.
While I would certainly consider Standalone feature complete, and it definitely plays a lot smoother than Arma 2 and even Arma 3, the five year wait for something like this is just ridiculous. DayZ's heyday has come and gone. The game is certainly entertaining, but it should not have taken this long, and it lost all of its steam (pardon the pun) in doing so. If you want a hell of a lot more content to play with, find a community that plays DayZ Overpoch for the Mod.

Five years. Five very long years. That's how long it took this game to come out from the buggy, broken mess that it was in 2013 as Early Access, when Greenlight was still a thing. Question is, was it worth it? No. Not in a million years was the wait worth it. In the time it took for DayZ to come out of early access, the entire games industry changed focus to live service multiplayer games that will last for literal decades. DayZ's popularity came and went, replaced by Minecraft, then by PUBG, and now by Fortnite. Hell, DayZ's brand of gameplay isn't even popular anymore, as evident by the fact that there is a Battle Royale mode coming. I was a semi-early adopter for Standalone (January 2014 I believe), and was very deep into the mod despite not owning Arma 2 at the time for a myriad of reasons (my computer sucking chief among them), sucking up every (read: Frankie's) video I could find. While I would certainly consider Standalone feature complete, and it definitely plays a lot smoother than Arma 2 and even Arma 3, the five year wait for something like this is just ridiculous. DayZ's heyday has come and gone. The game is certainly entertaining, but it should not have taken this long, and it lost all of its steam (pardon the pun) in doing so. If you want a hell of a lot more content to play with, find a community that plays DayZ Overpoch for the Mod.