One of the most surprising experiences I had at PAX was my funfun happy time with Fury. I mentioned it in the PAX Massive, but it’d be understandable if you didn’t fully understand what it’s about. Here’s an attempt at a brief description of the game:

Fury is a Massively Multiplayer Online Game that attempts to bridge the gap between the RPG and FPS genres, leaning more towards the FPS side of the equation. Players take on a character-less avatar who participates in purely PvP confrontations. There are several different spheres of powers, each tied to a particular color. Each color roughly corresponds to an RPG trope (Red = Fire, Green = Nature). Within these colors, you can specialize into any of the standard MMOG roles (Blaster, Melee, Healer). Characters are not tied to a particular color or role at any point in the game; simply by loading a saved template of combined abilities and equipment, an entirely new role can be adopted with the same character. It will be purchasable in stores, but once you bring the box home it will be free to play. A fee service is available for additional conveniences and access to more ‘ranking’ elements.

There it is, in as tight a nutshell as I can manage. So, what’s it like to play?

The first character I grabbed control at PAX was a melee character focusing on purple powers. These are ‘Dark’ powers, and many of the higher-end ones seem to focus on DoTs. You spam your lower-level powers to build up charges to reach your higher level ones, and with my focus on melee this should have been a tantalizing combination. (Sword, Sword, Sword, Poison, Sword, Die) I had kind of a rough time of it, though, and found myself a bit dissapointed.

The game we were playing was a modified form of CTF. Each team had a sort of ‘crystal grove’ area in their base. It started empty. In the middle of the map was a wide open space, where (at regular intervals) weird little flying creatures would appear and hover in a tantalizing fashion. Once killed, they’d drop a crystal spore. A player picking up the spore was essentially grafted to it, as it prevented using combat abilities and turned the avatar’s appearance bright white. At that point it’s pretty standard CTF; the crystal-bearer legs it for the base and if she makes it in the team scores.

As a melee guy, I kept heading up to the crystal bearers only to find my furious hacking wasn’t as effective as I might have wanted. The speed buffs high end characters (which we were playing) had on meant that my hacks were mostly whiffing on air as the crystal bearer juked and turned. Even dissapointed like that, I was having a pretty good time. I decided my weakness was strength, and became a crystal runner. We ended up squeaking out a win.

After that I hopped to another avatar who focused more on green ranged attacks, with a very few purple strikes for close range. That was much more to my liking. Not only did I have some great sustained DPS, but I had a nice heal I could drop on a fleeing crystal carrier. I played a few matches with her, and they were tense experiences. Most of us playing had come to understand the game better, and as a result the action tended to be tight up to the end.

Most of those games, for me, was spent acting as a roving crystal-killer. Any time I saw an opposing team member with a glow I’d swoop in and try to burn them down as quickly as I could. A really nice root helped with the issue, and I had a lot of success with “Snare/Dart/Dart/DoT/Dart/Dart/DoT”. It’s not advanced strategy, but it is strategy. And it was a lot of fun. There were many opportunities where players would think they were outdistancing me, just outside my range, when I’d drop that root and burn them out. Hilarious.

Overall it was a brainlessly fun experience. Since everyone playing was very much a newb, there were fits and starts to the action as people figured out powers and controls and such. There were some thinking elements to it: I felt like there would be a lot of ‘aha’ like that in proper play, but on a broader scale. Players comfortable with their powers and controls wouldn’t have to figure out the basics, but every match would be different; working out the kinks in an opposing teams strategy and that sort of thing.

Since PAX I’ve been playing in the Open Beta, and that’s been a very different experience. The tutorial is quite good, and explains the concept in really basic terms for someone who may not be sure what it is they’re doing. There’s even a bit of backstory to the game that I had missed at PAX; you’re an incarnated soul of a dead warrior. All your abilities are actually memory-imprints of battles and foes that you faced down in your previous life. It’s not much, but it is kinda interesting.

Low level play is considerably different than the high level variety, of course. Which is to say: I died a lot. They’d just added a new gameplay type when I started the Beta, called BloodBath. A free-for-all, it requires you to collect tokens from your slain foes. You can hold up to three at a time, and holding tokens gives you some boosts and perks. I did quite poorly on that one, as I was still futzing around with my build.

After BB, I settled on a red melee/ranged combo that served me a good deal better in my next set of encounters. Those were in more traditional team vs. team matchups. Players couldn’t rez unless a member of the team had the right ability, and those went by very quickly. Being able to respond in kind to either a ranged or melee attacker was really nice, and I feel like my skillz are improving. In many ways, it was a lot like Guild Wars.

… now where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, Brent had a thing or two to say about my observations on Fury from PAX.

If  [the topic of Fury had come up at AGDC] I’d have been kind enough to inform him that Fury isn’t a Massive title anymore than Starcraft, Supreme Commander or Diablo. In a Ten Ton Hammer interview Lead Designer Adam Carpenter said, “What we really tried to do with Fury was create a new genre by blending the best of the FPS with the best of the RPG elements together and make something new and fresh.” What he probably meant to say was, “We stripped the adventuring instances, storyline, NPCS, and quests out of Guild Wars, and created Fury.”  … Based on what we have seen to this point, Fury has all the RPG qualities of Unreal Tournament, meaning, none at all.Â

Le sigh. Brent uses the term ‘Massive title’, and in every way shape and form, Fury is a MMOG. It’s a MMOG much like Guild Wars is a MMOG, but I consider both to be within that category of games. Why are people so stingy with the appellation? Why do Massive games have to be this elite club? Just because we have a couple of million-subscriber behemoths walking around in our backyard doesn’t mean we can’t make room for the angry terrier on the front lawn.

Now, as he says further down, there is no PVE/exploratory aspect to Fury. Guild Wars has one, and does it really really really well. That said, I don’t understand why he’s hating on Fury’s (admittedly thin) RPG elements. Equipment? Customizable hotbars? Metaclasses? It’s not Oblivion, sure, but it’s also not UT2003. They’re ‘taking the best of the FPS with the best of the RPG’ … okay, I think the best parts of RPGs are the story parts. So maybe that line is a crock of shite. BUT, there are definitely RPG parts strapped onto this primarily FPS title.

As I said in my PAX post, I really do think this thing has the potential to get an audience. Not a big one, maybe, but an audience. It looks really good, it plays really fast, you can play whatever role your team needs on a given day, and you don’t have to worry about a long level-grind before you can participate.

My big concern (and I think you’re going to hear a lot about this from me in the near future) is one of price. Given the tissue-thin RPG elements, I can see there being a really low boredom factor. Free is good; free is great. But if you want more Runescapers to hit your servers, my recommendation is to look for a pricepoint lower than the standard $60 PC title. I dunno about you, but when you’re talking about a Massive game I always think the price vs. volume discussion should lean towards volume.