DayZ is a game about advantages and disadvantages
And fighting hard to become advantaged
A lot of people can’t cope with that
Meta is where anything inside the game is brought to the outside and could potentially influence what’s going on inside
External Maps are meta, they provide and advantage
TS is meta, with friends, it provides an advantage
Asking ‘where is everyone?’ in a discord channel is meta, it provides an advantage
DayZ videos are meta, they provide a disadvantage
Calling a server ‘an Interaction Server’ in it’s title is meta
Lot’s of things are meta, but in some cases the advantage or disadvantage is fairly negligable, having a video up of a gun fight from 2 weeks ago, is meta, but it’s generally not going to affect anything (unless one of the parties decides they’re going to bear a grudge and changes ingame behaviour based on the meta)
There’s another form of Meta which is the knowledge of a servers settings without playing the server. Some server don’t perceive this as Meta, they say things like ‘3xLoot’ or ‘Super Hardcore Server’ or streamers may announce that something has changed. We don’t really like that and we try really hard to keep things in the server in the server. Things like ‘how long is night’, go play the server and find out. ‘Are there any guns’, go play the server and find out find out. ‘is the server full’, go play the server and find out find out
Generally if you want to know something about a server beyond the published information, you won’t get an answer, go play the servers and find out
Meta that changes player behaviour ingame is bad
Meta that changes how people interact with each other outside of DayZ is even worse
Be careful with meta, it can blow your arm off