Adam Carpenter is an instantaneously likable character whose passion for his latest project is infectious.  We met amongst the hubbub of the recent eGames Expo in Melbourne to go over the simply titled Fury.

Adam is lead designer and visionary for the Fury project which he describes as a MMOTPS or Massive Multiplayer Online Third Person Slasher.  On the surface with the – albeit all Human – high fantasy feel, Fury looks like any other MMO.  At its heart however, Fury is a 100 percent Player versus Player (PvP) focused game.

There will be little to no story content here; the focus is on developing an Avatar for combat.  “I live for competitive play online” Adam states, and this is reflected in the Fury design.  One of the interesting ways this is implemented is purely in the online server architecture.

The Fury world is formed of two basic zones, each server is a Realm where players form teams to battle equally matched (by a master server) teams from other realms in a unique, very fast based combat system using the attributes of the Avatar immediately to decide the result of an attack.

These attributes are built by the player taking trials in a traditional Player versus Environment setting.  Here the player decides which path the Avatar will develop by defining the rules of the trial.  Thus the Avatar might grow in magic, or melee combat and so forth.

 
But it does not end there. A single player Avatar may have as many as 200 incarnations, each developing in a unique way.  The player may pick and choose an incarnation between fights depending on their perceived need in the on going battle.

Still a year away from the shelves, Fury is already shaping up as one to watch in the MMO genre.  It has a inimitable philosophy driving the design that has it standing out from the more hyped and better known peers.  This may well be enough to attract the eye of online fans willing to take a punt on something new. {moscomment}