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

Ten Ton Hammer: Tell us about the choice to make Fury free-to-play after purchase. It seems like a great perk for players.

Adam Carpenter: When we think about Fury, we really see it appealing to two major camps of players.  The first group is made up of gamers who want to play Fury as a casual, fun game.  For them, Fury might be ‘their other game’, they might be FPS players who are opposed to subscriptions as a matter of principle, or they might not have the time to commit to Fury if it were subscription only.  The second group is made up of competitive players, those who consider Fury their ‘main game’ and those who enjoy the additional perks that Fury’s option subscription provides.

If Fury were subscription only, we’d miss out on most players in the first category.  If Fury were free to play, we couldn’t support the second group the way we want to or we’d be forced to sell full priced expansions every 6 months.  By making Fury free to play and with a lot of incentives to pickup the optional subscription, we feel we’re giving players the ability to determine exactly how they want to play and through that increasing the appeal of Fury to all kinds of gamers.

Michael Hampden: I think it’s great for players. Subscription-based games have only two types of players: subscribing players, and those who’ve cancelled their subs. Those who cancelled might come back some day. Unfortunately, until they do, your game is just sitting on a shelf collecting dust. Free to play games let players step in and out as much as they want – without the financial implications.  

Ten Ton Hammer: At Leipzig, Auran broke new ground by having a fan talk to press about the game. From our perspective it was great, what made you take a leap like that as far as coverage goes?

Playing Fury may feel different at first, but Hampden and Carpenter encourage gamers to "just play it!"

Adam Carpenter: The main reason is that ‘developers lie’, ‘we exaggerate’, and any of the many other comments you get from jaded gamers :P

By hearing it directly from a player, credibility rises since they don’t have any financial or personal investment in the game.  The worst thing another gamer could say is ‘fanboi’, but in the case of Likort and Sheep (the two guys who were at Leipzig), they’re about the furthest thing from fanboi you can get.

Michael Hampden: That’s one of the great things about a company like Auran. We aren’t beholden to an ultra-corporate publisher who would nix fun things like that. I hope Likort and Sheep were only the first of many fans who’ll be invited to talk about our game.

Ten Ton Hammer: Many MMOG players have heard of Fury, but would like to know more about the game. What are some things you would like to say to players that may not have seen the game yet?

Michael Hampden: Just play it! We can tell you how different Fury is from the competition till we’re blue in the face. You won’t really get just how different and fun Fury is until you’ve played it. We’re fast, we’re fun, we’re free!

Look, personally I’ve been waiting for a high-speed, fun, challenging pvp-centric MMO game since Pre-UO:R Ultima Online. For visceral thrill I’ve had to rely on games outside the MMO genre. Fury changes all that.

Ten Ton Hammer: What was your biggest challenge in creating Fury?

Adam Carpenter: Reconciling all the different ideas that the team had and narrowing them down to create the first purely competitive PVP MMO. With Fury, we’ve really pushed into a unique space as no one has made a game like this before. That and trying to balance time to market versus cramming every feature we could ever possibly want into the release schedule.

Michael Hampden: I think the biggest challenge is getting through to gamers as a development team without major name recognition in the MMO world. There’s a lot of very jaded gamers out there right now, a lot them write us off as “just another wow-clone” without even checking us out.

Personally I find it a real shame that so many games have followed the approach in creating what is essentially a graphical mud. From EQ onwards, we’ve seen many improvements, but when you get down to it it’s really the same game. For a while maybe that was okay, when there were fewer than 10 of them. Now everyone is trying to get in on the action and it seems you cannot go a week without hearing about another new fantasy-based MMO with levels, grinding, and muscular green-skinned dullards to kill.

The developers of Auran aren't trying to make another "WoW-clone."

We are not another WoW-clone.

We are actually trying to do something different. For those of you who truly want something different, buy Fury. For folks in the press who are always howling about how MMO devs are totally un-creative and never innovate – get behind us! We’re building a great game that does a lot of innovative things.

Ten Ton Hammer: What are the plans for Fury after launch?

Adam Carpenter: More maps, more game types, crafting, Guild Incarnations, performance enhancements, and the list goes on.

I’m really looking forward to getting the game out the door and then keep extending and improving it through our free content updates.

Michael Hampden: Free Content Updates. As a gamer, I love those 3 words. I think our fans will too.

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