Fury: So Long and Thanks For All the...Nothing? (Kinda')

Oh noes!! Flagship you're next!! (Hope not.) :(

The Future of FURY is here

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This is a good news/bad news post. We have made some tough but necessary decisions. These actions give FURY a much stronger future and we look forward to working VERY closely with the community to make sure we build a game that people can enjoy for years to come.

Official Announcement:
The Directors of Auran Developments, the company that employs all the Auran staff, have today called in a Voluntary Administrator (like Chapter 11 in the US). All the staff were dismissed today. Despite earlier reports, staff will be paid for all their work to date, their annual leave entitlements, redundancy payments and long service leave.

Whilst this is the end of Auran Developments, it is far from the end of FURY and Trainz.

Trainz is the world’s leading rail simulator and has a community of more than 250,000 registered users around the world. It is published in dozens of countries and there are many products in the market today. The bulk of the Trainz team will continue to work on current projects and these projects will be released next year.

With Fury, we built up a team to make a world beating game and sadly we have not reached our goals – yet. Our performance to date has meant we could no longer fund the 70 strong dev team. However, FURY: Age of the Chosen will be launched as planned Friday 8pm GMT. We have put together a small but committed team to continue developing FURY on an ongoing basis. This core team, as we announced last week, are a passionate group of people committed to making FURY a success. We will be releasing bug fixes, content and feature updates on a regular basis and in fact they will be more frequent with our new agile team.

I believe that once people hear about F:AotC and the new Free to Play business model, we’ll start building up the player numbers and revenues that will make the game successful.

I expect the naysayers will have different thoughts, but they haven’t played the new build…yet.

Fury: Free Trials Available

I got a note in my mail box today from the folks at Fury Central offering up a free trial for their PVP-centric (as in, PVP onry) MMO.

With all the games I'm checking out now (and my previous experience with Fury), I won't be giving it another go, but if you want to, here's the 411:

10 Day FREE Fury Trial Arrives!

Due to the volume of requests we have received, we are offering a 10
day FREE trial for Fury!

Trial keys for account creation can now be obtained from
http://www.unleashthefury.com/freetrial/. We have also re-enabled all
accounts that were created during the Fury Challenge for the next 10
days - no need to get a trial key, simply use your existing account.

This is a fantastic opportunity for everyone who played Fury during
beta and/or Fury Challenge to come back and see what has changed and
improved. Alternatively, if you're already playing grab a key or few
to share with your friends.

Those who want to take up the trial offer should download and install
the client from one of the locations listed here.

And for the full mailer, visit:

http://www.unleashthefury.com/pub/newsletter/

Fury: Get Paid For PVP Pwnage

Brisbane, Australia – September 14, 2007 - Auran Games today announced that the prize pool for “Fury Challenge” has now officially topped $2 million dollars. The Open Beta event has been extended to run over 4 weekends from September 14 to October 7, and will provide players from all over the world the chance to test their skills playing “FURY”, the 100% Player versus Player MMO which will be released in October.

“We want to put players on notice that FURY is serious fun and we have set our goal at nothing less than being the Number one PvP game in the world,” said Tony Hilliam, Auran CEO and Executive Producer on FURY. “By putting together over $2M in prizes for our Open Beta event, I think we’ve started to show that we’re already a contender for the title.”

“In a market where the big names and big publishers get most of the attention, we figured we had to do something a bit different to be noticed,” said Brian Cooke, Auran Director of Marketing. “Fury is a competitive game, and so putting together this amazing prize pool for our players should start to turn a few heads in our direction. From there, we’re confident our game will keep them excited.”

“During Fury Challenge we’re capping player Ranks at an easily obtainable level,” said Adam Carpenter, Fury Creative Director. “Since this is an Open Beta event, it is critical that new players become competitive quickly while avoiding the complexities that a max level, fully unlocked character would bring. This ensures the Challenge is all about player skill and teamwork, not time played, and this is what Fury’s gameplay and design is all about.”

Fury Challenge is a ladder based competition where players compete in 3 different game types either solo or as part of a Clan. There will be 2 practice weekends (Sept 14-16 and Sept 21-23) and the Ladders will be reset in preparation for the two competition weekends (Sept 28-30 and Oct 5-7). Players can either download the client from one of our sponsors or pick up a pre-order disk from participating retailers.

Prize sponsors include Dell, Nvidia, Logitech, Ideazon, IGN/Fileplanet, GameStop, Gamerail, Harvey Norman, Bigpond, FHM, and CybershotsZ. Prizes include PC’s, graphics cards, keyboards, subscriptions, vouchers, FURY Gamecards and even a years’ supply of energy drinks. Some prizes are available for regional winners only.

"GameStop is proud to sponsor the Fury Challenge with great prizes," said John Brittell, GameStop's Vice President of E-commerce and Direct Marketing. "We encourage everyone to take the challenge and also pre-order at GameStop to receive extra play time in the beta and an exclusive armor set for the final game."

The full list of prizes, details on signing-up, and download information is available at www.FuryChallenge.com as well as the Rules for the event.

The Website

All I remember about this game when I checked it out during the preview periods were ugly ass characters and really choppy animations. It certainly looks a lot better now but they're still pretty ugly. MUST BE GORGEOUS! (To compensate. Heheh. Not.)