Update:
So I played for about two hours today. Died three times. Twice on hardcore, once on regular. On my first go I got onto a hardcore server, and immediately ran into someone, and to my surprise, despite them having an axe, they did not brutally murder me. So we teamed up and went on a rolling, looting stuff. We looted a police station and my partner got a .22. We ran into another guy (hereinafter referred to as Blackie) and teamed with him as well, and moved onto another town after looting the first one dry. We found another a police station, this one had two guns in it. Some sort of repeater and a shotgun. I got the .22, my first partner got the repeater and Blackie got the shotgun. It wasn't long after this until things went down hill. I didn't have a magazine for the .22 so I had to manually chamber rounds (pain in the ass), and we continued looting. We went into a multiple story building, and that is when Blackie turned. He fired at me, and I ran downstairs yelling for my partner, and I got shot at the bottom of the stairs, breaking a bone. I proceeded to crawl as far as I could, warning my partner, and then fired a single shot at Blackie. I don't know if I hit or not, because he fired too, and it killed me. I don't know how things turned out for my dear friend, but I hope Blackie rots in the deepest pits of Hell.
I tried to return, but bled to death before I got there.
So I changed servers, and went on casual, and got rolling pretty well. I'm ended up looting an over/under hunting rifle and 12 rounds for it. I spray painted it green to make it a bit more camouflaged, and am also rocking a grey hoodie, a black motorcycle helmet, blue cargo pants, a pair of wellies, some work gloves and a spray painted black fire axe. I got into a desperate sniper battle with a group of dudes who were in an apartment building across from the one I was looting. I managed to kill a guy, but couldn't get down to see if he had anything worthwhile because his buddy was running up with a shotgun, so I fled upstairs and we shot back and forth for a bit, until they gave up and left. It was pretty intense.
