Free Online Play For Fury
Codemasters Online will be releasing its role playing title, Fury, after signing a deal with Australian developer Auran to provide free online play. After purchasing the game at retail price, gamers will be able to play online with regular updates for free, and are given Immortal status for the first month of play.
As an Immortal, players will be given additional benefits including,
- Quick travel in the Sanctuaries and Schools
- VoIP talk privileges
- One additional Item Roll Slot
- Extended “rested gold bonus”
- Selling privileges on the Auction House
- Priority log-in queuing
- Entry into weekly and seasonal Ladders
- Personal player battle statistics
- In-game Customer Service access
- Elite access to the test server to preview new content
After the first free month of play, gamers will have the option to continue as Immortals with a monthly fee of USD$9.95. Those who chose not to subscribe will be given Hero status. The only disadvantage as a Hero is the lack of included benefits provided by the Immortal status. Heroes will still be able to play the game as usual, and will have access to all items, all abilities a can still reach the highest ranks in the game.
Tony Hilliam, Auran CEO, states, “FURY is a game that blends elements from different genres; the pace and adrenaline rush from FPS games; the depth of character customization from RPGs; and the social and virtual economy aspects from MMOs. Therefore we wanted to make sure that our business model took into account the different expectations of various player types.”
Adam Carpenter, Fury Creative Director, says, “We’ve put a lot of effort into getting the business model right for our game. Some players will play FURY in their lunch time or for an hour after work and they will be less interested in a full subscription model. Other players will devote many hundreds of hours to FURY in order to complete over 800 Trials, unlock 4,000 Tiered abilities and rise to the rank of Eternal. So with FURY you can play casually and play for free, or if you are playing seriously for many hours, it is likely you will want to subscribe to receive the additional benefits.”
Phil White, Auran Online Producer, adds, “We know players love to discuss the pros and cons of free to play versus subscription games. Ultimately, we need to support the cost of running the game and providing new free content updates to players. Fury utilizes the same secure client-server architecture as a traditional MMO and we have to monitor and maintain the servers. Then there is the in-game customer service, online community staff and website and live support teams. The additional ongoing revenues from players help us maintain those high quality service levels.”
Fury is set to release October 2007. Visit unleashthefury.com for more information.
August 9, 2007 at 10:47 am | MMORPG |
