Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

by Garrett Fuller

This week will mark the official release date of Fury, the fourth retail-based massively multiplayer online game of 2007, and it will be hitting store shelves all around the North American and Australian markets. In honor of the release, the Ten Ton Hammer editorial staff had Garrett Fuller write up a few questions for the developers of the game, and Michael Hampden and Adam Carpenter answered the call. Most of the questions revolved around the final results of the beta and how things have shaped up for the game. Enjoy!

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Ten Ton Hammer: The beta testing phase for Fury just wrapped up, what sort of reactions are you getting from players?

Adam Carpenter: We’re getting all sorts of reactions.  Fury isn’t an “easy” game and it doesn’t follow the standard MMORPG mold that gamers have grown used to. That means we’ve probably had more trouble than many MMOGs who follow the well worn path without offering something new for gamers.

The players who spent time learning the game - its major differences and subtle nuances - they absolutely love it and can’t get enough.

Fury's combat is incredibly fast-paced.

The players who went in, skipped the tutorial, and ignored all the in-game help, tended to get completely owned in their first few fights.  Of course this made them quit long before they’d given the game a real chance. It’s a bit like someone picking up a Chess set after playing Checkers, not reading the rules, and then saying “stupid game”. This is the area we focused a lot of our attention on.  A big improvement went live for the Challenge and implemented a handicapping system for new players that made their initial fights a lot more forgiving and give them additional time to learn.

Michael Hampden: Positive, negative, to downright hilarious. One of our testers actually emailed us and told us all to “Die in a car fire!”

The negative reactions are interesting.  A lot stem from Fury being a more challenging game for new players than other MMOs. Since we’re entirely PvP, there’s no beetles, wolves or snakes to fight when you first log-in. You’re going against other players, so it’s going to be difficult to win those first few games. Once you figure things out you’ll have a blast.

I like to compare online games to sports teams. When things are going well, your fans love you. When things don’t go well, your fans are not at all shy about showing their displeasure. Unfortunately for us, we Game Developers don’t make anywhere near as much as pro sports players!

Ten Ton Hammer: The fighting in the game is so fast paced it's often to determine exactly how you're being killed or what's killing you. How are things progressing in terms of balancing the gameplay?

Adam Carpenter: During the weeks running up to the Challenge we made a number of experimental changes to balance that focus on the biggest issues players have.  It’s been a rather interesting experience as a couple design oversights made for some interesting and overpowered strategies.  

One of the difficult things in beta was that we did not have our external test server up and running, we only had the Open Beta server.  That meant changes went live almost immediately whereas after Fury launches on October 16th, all balance changes will be live on our external test servers for a minimum of 4 to 6 weeks before hitting the live server.  This test server environment is a crucial part of our post release plan as we want to get lots of testing and feedback on all balance changes before they impact the live, retail servers.

Michael Hampden: Balance is a tricky thing. No matter how much thought you put into skills & abilities, players will always find balance issues and use them to their advantage. I expect we’ll always be fine tuning balance or making experimental changes on the test server as Fury continues to grow, the excellent feedback we get from our community on this is very helpful in this effort.

Ten Ton Hammer: Many players at the conventions this season were very happy with the game, what has fan reaction been leading up to launch?

Fury is free to play after you've made your initial retail purchase.

Adam Carpenter: I have to say that it’s been like almost all the other MMOs that have come out in the last few years.  We’re getting lots of board traffic that range from “OMG XXX ability is overpowered”, to “it’s been 2 months and you haven’t fixed this obscure bug”, to “I love this game”, to very detailed and serious critiques of game mechanics and player motivations (which I personally love).

All in all, I think players are really looking forward to release when we’ll be done with the character wipes and we’ll have a significantly large player population for them to battle with and against.

Michael Hampden: Conventions are always excellent. I love introducing players to the game and being able to watch them enjoy something you helped create first-hand. It’s great.