I'm not too great at explaining things at times, but this guy has got it right:
http://www.reddit.com/r/dayz/comments/1g99dn/complainers_do_you_actually_know_what_a_game/
They have changed so much, and written some bits from scratch, that it certainly is very different from the other engines they are taking assets from. To say it hasn't changed much is a disservice to the dev team.
I'm not saying Dean is the one who knows it all either (as his attitude isn't that good at times), but he is the guy working on it and I do have faith that the changes they've made will be worth it. I'll take a basic, glitchy game (for now) with no hacking any day over the current one, despite how much I enjoy it.
Agree with you on the hype fully though, when it releases there is going to be an insane amount of complaints. It will be buggy, lack features (no vehicles, no tents etc) and need a TON of work still, but I'm looking forward to that. Because it will only get better from then. I'm impressed with what they've got already, and a mostly hack free DayZ will be awesome.
Well you wouldn't think so looking at that video, the only things I noticed were the inventory and the movement. The animations are still shockingly bad and everything else looked pretty much the same.