Well this is a odd suggestion seeing how nobody thought of it this way, how about implementing some sort of zombie "gamemode" or "event" for players to co-operate in?
H&H has a pretty good setup for barricading and archery, so in that thought for slow moving deadly corpses might be a fun idea.
The only problem I see is that not all players are combat ready so there may be a really harsh apocalyptic scenery going on...
But regardless, it will be a fun idea if it's used in a controlled condition.
Necromancy. What if this gets implemented into the game, as a way of achieving some sort of ritual to "curse" a enemy town?
It may seem exploitable, so it'll need some changes before being implemented.
The way I see it:
You see a town that's well created, and supplies with the best resources in the area. A town with a good active community.
Then you see a ritual occurring nearby, and someone unleashing a curse upon the area.
Then, you see corpses rising from the grave, probably corpses of the ancestors that are filled with regret and hate.
This "gamemode" basically lasts in real time, so you won't have a 10 minute zombie invasion or so, but a sorta real time zombie outbreak.
Day 1:
- A ritual is used, all players in the vicinity gets a message onscreen telling them that ominous clouds are approaching.
- During the day, nothing is changed... But during the night, the grass becomes dark, the trees change to dead trees...
- And at night, the dead rises and seeks the living.
Day 2:
- The zombie number increases.
- Zombies start to pathfind their way into towns and attempt to destroy barricades.
And So on.
- Zombies have a large aggro radius, but doesn't exactly initiates combat with players until they come in contact with them.
- Zombies have a AI to approach a village or community or an area that has a lot of active players in it.
- Zombies are super slow, about the speed of crawling.
- Zombies that can't pathfind their way inside the town will attempt to destroy props, with slow destruction speed of course.
- All zombies will die when the sun rises.
- Zombies CAN'T enter houses, but once you enter a house to hide, and zombies are in large enough numbers to overrun the town, the game won't let you leave till daybreak.
Rewards
So what kind of rewards can come from this kind of survival? Well other than the complete satisfaction of survival, you can also loot the zombies for items.
Since zombies loot consists of ragged clothing and bones, there could be some mystical use to them other than eating a hunted meat lol. Sometimes you may find a weapon or armor on such zombies, usually worn down or broken, but if your lucky, you could find something that may be useful to you. Those who lacks certain resources in their area could find items that seems to be crafted somewhere else. Like metal items when your lacking a mine or so.