Sunday, April 23, 2006

Unleash the Fury!

Auran had a booth at the convention where we were actually showing off FURY which is the game I’ve been working on. I am told the teaser web site should be up real soon with the official site up once the game is announced at E3.

Australian Gamer had a little review of Supernova where they visit our both and talk about Fury. Its on page 2 but here is the relevant section:

Fury Logo
Next stop was the Auran booth, where another good friend of ous, Andrew, was excited to show us the first video footage of their new MMORPG game, Fury. It’s not what we expected. Although it was only a video showing the in-game graphics and gameplay, it looked like it would definitely be the kind of game to push your graphics cards to the max if you wanted. A lot of people were using the words World of Warcraft, and given that we’d heard it was a MMORPG the comparison was pretty much unavoidable. But really,it was actually nothing like WoW at all. There are no quests or gathering or vast expansive worlds to explore. All character development is done through battle, win or lose. It was much more of a Battlegrounds PvP style game, with some interesting twists. There were no classes. You choose your skills, abilities and magic before the game starts, so that any game you play you are never locked into the same character class. We are slightly concerned that there might be a fairly limited scope for fun compared to something like WoW, but we’ll find out.

Hopefully we will get into the Beta testing for the game and let you know more, although they will be revealing the game in full at E3.
I should point out that various sites have posted leaked news about the game saying it was a full MMORPG set to take on World of Warcraft. It isn’t, it is a MMO style, team-based, Arena, Player versus Player, Combat Game. A big long description that just dares you to make an acronym out of it (MMOSTBAPVPCG) that really just describes that single focused vision of the game. Want to do PvP combat MMO style without having to waste ANY time this is the game for you. No leveling up your character by doing quests, crafting pie tins, or grinding out experience for hours on boring NPC mobs. Just go in and get right to the PvP. It is even designed so that you can get all the fun of having multiple characters without having to level up multiple characters.

But more on that after E3.

3 comments:

BugHunter said...

You mean we get to start at the "end game"? We don't have to spend 6 months of crinding garbage and still not hit max level to be able to compete in RvR...ahem...sorry I mean PvP.

I'm continually drawn back to FPS games. My reflexes really aren't fast enough for me to be the best, maybe it's because I can get right to the action (win or lose).

Why not give us an instant action RPG?

Joseph B. Hewitt IV said...

How would an instant action RPG in your mind be any different than “ANY” RPG out on the market today? I am assuming by “Instant action RPG” you mean “Player versus Environment” element not “Role-Playing.” In EVERY game out there you get instantly into fighting mobs and doing quests that are absolutely appropriate to your progression in the game.

What we were designing around is how in most MMO type games, PvP is never an even match. People who have had time to gather a large guild together and farm high end raid content have a distinctive advantage over the casual player who cannot make that type of commitment. In WoW player’s who are decked out in end game gear from BWL and AQ40 just completely dominate players who aren’t. They don’t just have a little bit of an edge; they have an insurmountable order of magnitude edge over them.

We have created a game that puts player skill and player game knowledge ahead of the player character’s gear and the player’s time spent grinding. Gear still plays a factor, and there is still a progression curve, but the player’s skill at playing the game and his knowledge about how the game works is what will lead him to victory.

Just to quickly touch on how player knowledge thing works, the way you build your character is kind of like a collectable card game. You purchase abilities and then choose which abilities and gear you want to make your character with just like building a deck. You go into a War Zone and come out thinking you have too many healing abilities and not enough DPS, you can switch out a few abilities and try again. You can keep fine-tuning your character until you’re happy. You can save those ‘incarnations’ and reload them when ever you want. While you are fooling around with your Fire/Air spec’ed Nuker/Healer you’re friends might be putting together a team and need some more Nature melee damage. You can load your ‘Nature Melee’ build that you saved off yesterday and off you go.

Fury also designed so that you can come in, play in a few War Zones, and log out. You don’t have to commit yourself to spending 4 hours in a raid banging your head against some NPC boss encounter; you don’t have to wait in a 3 hour queue to get into a battle ground. I know every other character in the game is there for the same experience, I don’t have to put up with some of them being off on a raid, some of them questing, some of them picking flowers.

The point is there are plenty of RPGs out there that offer that other experience. I still play WoW and will continue to play WoW. But sometimes I sit down at the computer and feel like a little FPS action, or maybe RTS, or puzzle game. What Fury offers is team based PvP with MMO style combat. There is no other place I can get that without having to first spend months getting a high level character with end gear. It even when I have that, I have to wait in a queue.

BugHunter said...

That last question of mine was more in response to "We are slightly concerned that there might be a fairly limited scope for fun compared to something like WoW, but we’ll find out."

By "instant action RPG" I think I mean what it is you're describing. The PvE stuff is fun, but I feel like the foozles are carefully crafted so that I can win and I get bored with the grind. WoW has managed to not bore me.

I was thinking about this a little bit more and trying to figure out why I like some games and never finish others. I claim to like RPGs, but in reality I don't think I care much for the RP part.

One game I loved, and a whole lot of people play it, is counter-strike. Every time I die I get to choose what my weapon setup will be for the next round. If I just got worked over by a sniper, then I can choose to be a sniper right then to get some vengence, not plan for it 6 months in advance. Fury sounds to me like counter-strike with swords and spells, less head-shot crap (that's good), instant gratification and feedback on your chosen character build. Team based would be perfect.