Features

Fury launched in October and hoped to capture an audience through fast-action, PvP combat in a free-to-play/subscription hybrid model MMO. It has not gone quite to plan and last week the company was forced to layoff many of its developers. We caught up with Auran CEO Tony Hilliam and Lead Designer Adam Carpenter to find out how they got to this point and how they hope to turn it around.

WarCry: Layoffs cannot be spun as good news and shake player confidence. Why should someone who sees Fury in a store feel confident that the game they purchase will still exist in a few months?

Auran: The primary reason is that the smaller core team staff allocated to Fury means the project is now operating at the break even point in terms of salaries and overheads. The Director's decision to cut back on staff ensures that even without significant increases in player populations, the game can be maintained and improved.

Read more after the jump.

Fury launched in October and hoped to capture an audience through fast-action, PvP combat in a free-to-play/subscription hybrid model MMO. It has not gone quite to plan and last week the company was forced to layoff many of its developers. We caught up with Auran CEO Tony Hilliam and Lead Designer Adam Carpenter to find out how they got to this point and how they hope to turn it around.

WarCry: Layoffs cannot be spun as good news and shake player confidence. Why should someone who sees Fury in a store feel confident that the game they purchase will still exist in a few months?

Auran: The primary reason is that the smaller core team staff allocated to Fury means the project is now operating at the break even point in terms of salaries and overheads. The Director's decision to cut back on staff ensures that even without significant increases in player populations, the game can be maintained and improved.

Read more after the jump.

The Fury Challenge continues as does our examination of their in-game abilities. This week, we bring you Purify, Soul Flux, Bloodfire and Fist of the Cobra. All three are interesting abilites players can earn and use on their enemies in the PvPMMO out of Australia.

Read more after the click.

With the pot up to $2 million, the Fury Challenge is in high gear and today, we give you the insight that might help you capture some of those goods. These are four more abilities as the weekly Wednesday series gets back on track.

This week we bring you Backstab, Elemental Mirror, Stormseal and Cyclone.

Read more after the click.

GameArena got to sit down with Fury's senior Designer, Joseph Hewitt, and ask some questions about the game and PvP aspect.

GameArena: How do you feel being PVP only will affect the longevity of the game?

JH: Counter Strike is about seven years old and is still considered one of the most widely played online games in the world and it is PvP only. People often respond to that by saying, "But Counter Strike is a first person shooter!" I don't see why that matters since the core is the same.

To read the full interview click Here

September 18th, MMORPG.com had a developer chat with the devs working on the MMORPG Fury. Many interesting questions were asked, to check it out click the link below.

What sort of "content" can we expect outside of just the current 3-game-type matches?

Adam Carpenter: with bloodbath respawning, it is supposed to use the least spawn rule. This means that you are supposed to respawn in the most sparsely populated area of the map. Of course, this doesn't always work as well as we'd like.

To read more click Here

The Fury Challenge kicked off today and it seemed a perfect time to recount our conversation with Tony Hilliam, Auran CEO and Fury Executive Producer, from AGDC. We talked about the game, the Fury Challenge, what it needs to succeed and their new low-end client.

"Fury is a game, Fury Challenge is an event," Hilliam noted. While this one stands in for Open Beta, the future ones will happen on dedicated, level playing field servers especially designed for the event. In the future, "Immortals" (subscribers) will get into challenges for free. "Heroes" (box copy non-subscribers) can pay an entry with in-game gold and non-owners will be able to digitally download as part of a free trial or a small flat fee, just for the event.

Read more after the click.

Fury is on the very of its $1,000,000 Fury Challenge Beta Event. This is a chance for players to take in $1,000,000 worth of prizes through pure, unadulterated PvP skill. The event also serves as the "Open Beta" for Fury in advance of its October launch.

In the 15th week, we get a couple basic Healer abilities and two neat tricks. Static Slam is the Overlord stun and Chainfire sends an arc of flames from the Destroyer to his enemies.

Read more after the click.

Fury is on the very of its $1,000,000 Fury Challenge Beta Event. This is a chance for players to take in $1,000,000 worth of prizes through pure, unadulterated PvP skill. The event also serves as the "Open Beta" for Fury in advance of its October launch.

In the 15th week, we get a couple basic Healer abilities and two neat tricks. Static Slam is the Overlord stun and Chainfire sends an arc of flames from the Destroyer to his enemies.

Read more after the click.

I got the chance to sit down and talk with Tony Hilliam CEO of Auran, and Adam Carpenter the Lead Designer of Fury at PAX recently. For those that don't know much about Fury, its genre is a bit hard to nail down. It has elements of an MMO, such as levels, persistent characters, acquiring items and money, with a very fast paced melee and magical battle that is much closer to a first person shooter.

WarCry: Can you explain how levels will work in Fury? Do you have them, and how does that fit in with the combat system?

Auran: We do have levels; however they work a bit differently than in most games. We have these abilities; there are over 300 in total that allow you to do different things. We don't have classes in the game, so everyone can be whatever they want. You basically choose your abilities you want to use right now, and head out. Any time in-between battles you can swap them out for others. So basically you can have different sets depending on what your group needs right now. The levels in the game are really just to introduce you to all these abilities. So you can start out with say 25 abilities to check out, instead of overwhelming you with 300. You can reach the top level within about 25 hours of game play, or 50 if you are really slow. So it's not that a certain level guy is so much higher than a lower level guy, it's just a way for us to introduce you to all the abilities over time without overwhelming you.

Read more after the click.