This weekend (September 28-30), we reach the pinnacle of our testingfor Fury – the first competition weekend of our Open Beta event, FuryChallenge. After years in development, we are ready for our full dressrehearsal prior to release and want to make sure we invite as manyplayers as possible to enjoy the experience. Whether you are a veteranFury tester, a one-timer or a Fury virgin, Fury Challenge will be yourfirst real chance to experience Fury the way we designed it to beplayed (and to win some cool loot as well).

Since we began beta testing Fury early this year, roughly 100,000players have recorded more deaths than kills whilst playing Fury. Weknow how much this hurts a player’s pride. We understand howfrustrating it is trying to learn a new game with new combat andadvancement systems and how unfair it is when you come up against amuch higher ranked opponent or someone who has been playing the gamefor months. Put simply, losing your first 3 matches isn’t much fun.Since Fury is meant to be all about FUN, we have been working hard onaddressing these issues. Fury Challenge is your chance for revenge –and we know how sweet that feeling is.

Throughout beta, the biggest difficulty we faced has been managingplayer throughput; the bigger the pool of players, the more opportunityto find an even match. Quite simply, if there are 8 people in a queue,and the Matchmaker has to find a group of 8, there is no option fordifferentiating players of different skill levels. With 100 people inthe queue, the Matchmaker can create distinct groups based on playerSkill Ratings. This in turn means more evenly contested battles andtherefore more fun. More fun brings more players, more players improvesthe whole process even further and we start a snowball which helps usreach critical mass. Of course working against us through beta has beenthe fact that the game wasn’t finished (and at times it didn’t evenwork at all). That is the nature of beta and we’ve now solved the vastmajority of those problems.

Apart from queue sizes, we’ve been working on a number of otherenhancements to make Fury more enjoyable, especially for new players.Here’s a list of some recent improvements that will smooth the learningcurve and help you to experience Fury as it’s meant to be played (andextract revenge if you’ve been pwned during beta):

• Archetype trainers in the tutorial let you test out multipleIncarnations prior to battling against human opponents. Players canroll a new character and test drive all the Incarnations by picking upa Fury Challenge Authentication Code.


• Equip Points for Reborns, Initiates and Disciples have beenincreased so you can immediately buy additional starter abilities andcustomize your incarnation. Maybe an extra buff or stun? Perhapspurchase some new gear from the artificer?


• It is easier and faster to go through the Ranks so that even afterjust a few hours, you have reached a competitive level (and for FuryChallenge we have capped Ranks to make things a little fairer).


• Bloodbath and Vortex matches are smaller (16 man FFA BB and 8 v 8VTX teams). This ensures a tighter grouping of player Skill Ratings forthe match and thus more even matches.


• Player Skill Rating calculations (used by the Matchmaker) have beenamended to ensure a wider spread from newbie to expert. This makes iteasier for the matchmaker to find similar skilled players.


• Numerous balance changes have been made in response to playerfeedback which should enable a variety of effective tactics to beemployed to counter “flavour of the week” builds.


• A “Newbie Offense and Defense” bonus has been added to help playerswho die frequently build up their offensive and defensive ratings tohelp make them more competitive. This works off Avatar Rank notIncarnation Rank so will only affect new avatars. It means new playerswill hit more often and are harder to be hit, so they should performbetter against higher ranked players.
  

Of course the other big motivation for getting into Fury Challenge isour prize pool which has reached $2 Million. A big thanks goes out toGameRail who have put up 100,000 monthly GameRail subscriptions for USbased players and of course Auran who have put up tens of thousands ofFury Game Cards and Fury Subscriptions. The Fury Game Cards will giveyou a real leg up in the retail version of Fury as the top 50,000players on each individual ladder will earn Fury Game Cards worth $5each. By playing 10 matches of Vortex, Elimination and Bloodbath, youwill almost certainly win 180 in-game gold which will let you go crazyat the auction house, artificer or other vendors. This really makesFury Challenge a “must-play” event if you want to pick up some easyprizes and get a head start in retail. Check out the whole Ladder structure and prize pool.

In closing, I want to thank our many Beta players for their effortsover the past 6 months. We know many of you discovered “that winningfeeling” very early on, and you simply can’t get enough Fury action.You have endured some balance and stability issues and of course we’vereset avatars a great many times. You’ve also helped us identifytechnical issues that only occur when we ramp up the player numbers.Over this time, we have listened to your feedback and reacted toproblems. Of course with every change we make, we also risk upsettingothers who were happy with the way things were. The guy who said “youcan never please all of the people all of the time” must have been anMMO developer :).

Fury Challenge is only the beginning. There are already hundreds of bugfixes made for retail, plus of course additional maps and polish. Fromthere on, Fury becomes your game – it is our job to listen to thedirection you, the players, want us to take the game and work out waysto get there. It’s been a long journey for us and we haven’t had theluxury of 12 month extensions or multi-million dollar marketingbudgets. What we have done is create the foundation for the Number OnePvP game in the market, and we hope you will enjoy the journey with usover the coming years as we continue to deliver on that promise.