Talking in general terms, the competitive brand of PvP player appreciates professionalism and straight forwardness more than any other. One of the traps that ‘some games’ fall into is that they believe that can appeal to this demographic with gimmicky campaigns.

In Fury’s case the very open approach initially used in newsletters was by far the most succesfull within the community at the time. They appreciated the honesty and were willing to tolerate issues that they knew the developers were aware of.

Sadly as time went on the key issues just weren’t resolved, and more were tacked on. The open and honest approach became convoluted under the strain of justifying the many questionable design decisions, to the point where it was no longer effective.

The thing you have to keep in mind in the context of Fury is the uniqueness of it’s audience. The supposedly competitive PvP in Fury didn’t really attract your typical MMO player. The promise of tournaments and prizes brought in fairly well known groups such as the World of Warcraft BG9. These are highly competitive players who view gaming as more of a sport. It is to be taken seriously, and that is where the amusing marketing gimmicks fail.

Isn’t this catering to their target audience? PvPers tend to be young-adult/juvenile (or at least socially and mentally immature) males. Calling each other “loser” and “bitch” and dropping f-bombs is just part of their lingo and they believe this to be acceptable in any environment. Every experience I’ve ever had with a PvPer, in game or out, has been negative and reinforced the above assumption. Even people I worked with, grown men in their 30s, who played WoW and other games for the PvP aspect exhibit this low-brow, foul-mouthed, “killing other people is fun” attitude.

For years I’ve always heard players preach the difference between PKs and PvPers (PvPers not wanting to be put in the same class as PKs). “PvPers fight other people for the challenge because the AI is too simple.” From what I’ve seen online and in real life, PvPers kill for the joy of killing, and somehow accepting and practicing that mindset devalues others in their eyes, in the game and out.

Sure if I’d have received an e-mail like that, it would be in the junk mail folder after reading the subject. Of course, I’d never go near a purely PvP game so I wouldn’t be getting anything of the sort. “If you sleep with dogs, you’re bound to get fleas.”

As for elves and armor, I don’t care for the night elves in WoW at all. They’re too animalisitc and too far from Tolkien’s elves which I consider to be the paradigm. Cartoon characters revealing pixels of virtual flesh does not excite me.

Bastard CM From Hell?”

Both the Community Manager (Alex Weekes) and the Assistant Community Manager (Dan Gray) had resigned prior to this email going out.

Says something, doesn’t it.

Have we all lost our sense of humor these days?

Well, yeah. Because I don’t look at a dragon or fireball and get that feeling that the Art Design Team is leaning over my shoulder, breathing heavily and going “Dude, isn’t she HOT? Man, I would SO hit that. Don’t you think she’s HOT?”

(For comic fans who read Top Ten, you may remember the scene where a particular team member dies horribly, and her science-hero designers show up at her funeral to ask the station chief if they thought her boobs were big enough.)

Maybe they were hoping that their e-mail would be SO outrageous that people would admire them for having the stones to do something so ridiculous? The alternative is that they are dumber than bread mold.

Oh, other than the MMOness I guess?