Stop being ignorant and hating on NCSoft. I really did enjoy Dungeon Runners, I tried to spread the word to my buddies to play with me but had a tough time. The game was good mindless fun for short periods.
But if you look at it logically, the game just wasnt picking up steam. The devs tried and tried to get things going, but the player numbers were ridiculously small. The servers at most times of the day didnt even go over 500 players. Not to mention some of those people wont even be paying for the game. Then drop in the fact that companies are having to make cut backs for obvious economical reasons.
Its quite simply just logical to drop the game. It can't have been making much money, and major changes require financial backing which more than likely may not pay off in whats a very crowded market. So hating on NCSoft is a very small minded thing to do. Like I say I really did enjoy DR and hate to see it go but when you look at it logically it just makes complete sense. NCSoft is a business not a charity, we would all do the same if we were in their shoes. Lets hope the devs go on to make more awesome games.
Personally, I thought Dungeon Runners was a great game for what it was, a funny, casual time-waster. I definitely think it suffered from a sorely lacking budget, adequate and effective marketing and perception. Those are all issues I feel belong to NCSoft, not the actual developers, who were fantastic about getting the community involved in making "their game". Of all of those issues, perception seemed to be the biggest one, in my mind. Players would see Dungeon Runners on a site like this, assume it's a full-fledged MMO and then be upset that it wasn't. That's a big problem. Coupled with a fairly complicated, albeit very generous F2P system (one of the most generous, IMO), many players passed it by or gave up on it shortly after trying it. The thing that always killed me was that Dungeon Runners was essentially a spiritual successor to Diablo. It had much of hte same fun mayhem and mad looting, but in a more modern package in persistent non-lobby world, fantastic group mechanics, bright, playful graphics and a wicked sense of humor. Sounds like a winner, except that it wasn't all that well embraced. Why not? After all these years, Diablo is still played widely, is still sold in stores as part of the Battle Chest and now D3 is eagerly anticipated. So why don't those same people like playing Dungeon Runners? Is it because all those folks are still playing for free on outdated machines, are too used to hacks and mods to play it the way it was designed, are so anal about the "atmosphere" of the game, that theyre unable to enjoy the actual game play (talking about the D3 color controversy)? I wish I knew.. Over the last few years, I've become personal friends with some of the people who have worked on Dungeon Runners. All but Steve are now working on different projects for different companies and I wish them well. We'll get together for more dinners and drinks sooner than later. Steve's staying with Dungeon Runners to the end, which I respect. in the last several months, there was an unfortunate chain of events that basically led to this happening. It's not my place to share them. Maybe one day Steve or Mark will write a post mortem. Who knows? It is what it is. I would have loved to see the game launched from within Facebook and playable in a browser-instantiated window a la Fusion Fall and Free Realms (something the devs were working on). That and the convenience-item based cash shop could have make Dungeon Runners extremely successful. Over on the official boards, there's a lot of moaning and gnashing of teeth. I'm glad there are players who are passionate about the game, but it is just a game. It was fun while it lasted and will be fun until the end, when Townston blows up. ~Ripper McGee
Well said Ripper and may I add as a fellow Dungeon Runner that I am both honored and priviledged to have played side by virtual side with you these last couple of years...
I'm not going to say "good bye" but rather "Be seeing you" to all my fellow players as we WILL see each other around the Gaming multiverse....
As far as Dungeon Runners is concerned, it's been a helluva run and like ALL good things do, it must come to an end sometime... Better to go out w/ a bang then a whimper!!
Stephen Nichols deserves a special commendation for his dedication and love for the game to gut it out to the end to watch his baby be taken off life support....
No one involved with the game from a Developer to a player standpoint should be sad or angry or upset that the game is ending, instead everyone should hold their heads up and be PROUD of what we have created together as this is a game that will likely never be able to be duplicated again with it's blend of humor and fanatical fans, games like WoW and Aion will wish they had players like we are....
How many other gamers in how many other games can say they've played side by side with the game's lead designer and game programmer?
I would like to say to the Dungeon Runners team THANK YOU , THANK YOU, THANK YOU for all the hours of enjoyment you brought me and my friends. I havn't played for a while but still have very fond memories of the game and recommend it to everybody, damn, it even got my sister into playing mmo's and she doesn't even like games.
The friends I made in DR are with me to this day, no other mmo has been able to do that with me and even though we all play different games now we all still keep in touch with each other, DR had a great community and I havn't managed to find that type of community in any other game.
Vrdeath, Gutler and Nightforge saying thanks again guys, may you all have the greatest success in whatever you decide to do and don't ever lose that quirky sense of humour, gave me alot of well needed laughs.
Oh yes, sad sad news. DR is a really fun game at lunch break, or when days are boring like every days. Thx to DR team you did a really good job on this game.
Now to speak about NCSoft, why did they offer time for game on the deadline (both GW and CoX are 5 years old), why don't they offer something about AION ?
Yeah, it saddened me to know of its demise. It didn't get me hooked up but it was fun to play at times. I guess it lacked challenge - it was too much point-and-click. But great artwork and humor.
Perhaps if they had gone with an item-shop since the beginning... Those on-screen ads really annoyed me.
I started playing the game not long after it first came out, and it was fun. I left it when I discovered the moderators of both the game and the forums were a pack of complete Nazis, and when they started making things that were stylistically beautiful into muddy crap, and that covers both cosmetic things and the gameplay itself.
It started out as a beautiful game, and a bunch of stylisticly-inept Nazis ruined it, and that was pretty early on. I can only imagine how the game broke down in the years that followed. Will go back and read some of the forum entrys here and see if anybody either knows what I'm talking about, agrees with me, or both. Or something like that. Or whatever.
I was a paying customer, and that game seriously burned me.
This game was fun and hilarious. Problem is, there are SO MANY other gaming options for people these days, and a lot of people have limited time, so they have to choose. I played DR when I was taking a break from other games.
The brilliance of this game was the much needed and well deserved lampooning of almost every aspect of MMORPGS. From the beginning, starting out with cardboard weapons and armor (like when we were kids and were swordfighting with the paper towel roll) a satire of all the lousy rusty bent broken junk other mmos give you when you begin. And the names of those items, ROFLMAO! Flatulent Shotgun of the Hyperactive Beaver, priceless. I loved the NPC commentary, it made me laugh out loud many times. And the plot, medieval corporate espionage against energy drink smuggling rap artist rats, infiltrating their "Sqeakeasies", stealing all their flavor crystals. The people who made this game must have been high.
Beyond the silliness, I thought it had a good combat system with a myriad of skills (farting a poison cloud!), plus you could solo or group. PVP wasn't bad either. I don't remember crashing a single time or encountering any bugged quests or character abilities, which is something mainstream MMOs can't seem to accomplish these days. The game was well balanced too, it was hard to become overwhelmingly powerful, and you always needed more money.
Even though it wasn't very polished or deep, it was tons of laughs and short term fun. And playing this game helps you appreciate all the other MMOs for what they do better.
What ultimately threatened to kill last year and this time did finally kill the game was revenue...or rather a lack of it... The Dev's tried to generate revenue through ad sponsorship from almost the beginning but no one wanted to advertise so that tanked. Then they tried increasing the perks for paying members and reducing them some for the f2p'ers but all that did was piss off the f2p'ers b/c they were getting 95% of what the paid members were getting for free so they HATED the change in drop rate percentages and loss of some in-game abilities....
Perhaps because of it's success as a 'casual' MMO it was also a victim of those same successes....being TOO casual might just have encouraged people to not care and play for free (or not at all) so at the end of the day, that's what NCsoft Korea is saying to this game's fans... "we don't care about this game or you any longer because we're tired of losing money off the lot of ya".
Stephen Nichols has promised great things over the next 100 days or so until the grand finale at 11:59:59 on 12/31/09 when a nuke strategically placed in the Hub "Townston" is set to detonate & no one but him really knows whats gonna happen!
Score for the players, what with getting Guild Wars and City of Heroes free.
Yup, but there are still players bitching about what they're getting (or not, as the case may be), which also includes "easy mode"---even for free players--the next three months. Crazy...
I was in the beta-test of this game. I was impressed by the dedication of the developers but they didn't listen. There were gameplay issues that could have easily been solved (mob balance etc) but they never were addressed.
I didn't bother with the game on release. I didn't care for the payment model and I hated the Bling Gnome - that was getting just too stupid. They needed better writers to pull off the humor they wanted.
No surprise seeing the game vanish. It would have been nice if it could have been something better.
Sounds like a fun game... too bad they didn't do better on the advertising because I've never heard of it.
I think they advertised on this site.
They've never really had any advertising or budget for it, unfortunately. They did have few banner ads at one point, but they were so rare, you'd never see them. About the only advertising done was news/video releases to gaming sites like this for the Bling Gnome Retail Box.
@ AlienOverlord - personally I loved the humor and the bling gnome, but I respect that you didn't. Different strokes for different folks Unfortunatley, Dungeon Runners wasn't hindered so much by talent, but by a lack of funds. They just didn't have a big enough budget to go nuts with what was essentially an experimental title. As an example, the game had to be cobbled together from the engine and assets of Exarch - a previously cancelled ttile from 2002, and work inherited by two previous development teams (the most recent of which is working for THQ on the Warhammer 40k MMO and Darksiders). The engine was custom, incredibly hard to work with and was designed for RTS type play. UI changes that would have been simple in other games were a pretty big hassle in DR. The team did eventually license a new engine that allowed them to do some of the graphical updates (shadows, specular lighting, etc...) and it was, to my understanding, what was enabling them to attempt to port the game to the PS3, but that whole thing fell apart in August 2008 with all the internal strife in NCSoft.
Irrespective of that, there were definitely things I woulud have like to see added or changed about the game (and believe me, I made a ton of suggestions over the last few years), but I personally liked the game for what it was - something silly and fun that didnt' require a lot of time. The things you didn't like--and I'm ok with that--were the things that appealed to me the most.
Comments
ARRRRRGH!!!!!
OK that's out of the way.
It is convient that it ends when my 6 months end.
and finally Who's next like famous people these things come in Threes.
1.....Archlord (Codemasters)
2....Dungeon Masters
3.......?
Stop being ignorant and hating on NCSoft. I really did enjoy Dungeon Runners, I tried to spread the word to my buddies to play with me but had a tough time. The game was good mindless fun for short periods.
But if you look at it logically, the game just wasnt picking up steam. The devs tried and tried to get things going, but the player numbers were ridiculously small. The servers at most times of the day didnt even go over 500 players. Not to mention some of those people wont even be paying for the game. Then drop in the fact that companies are having to make cut backs for obvious economical reasons.
Its quite simply just logical to drop the game. It can't have been making much money, and major changes require financial backing which more than likely may not pay off in whats a very crowded market. So hating on NCSoft is a very small minded thing to do. Like I say I really did enjoy DR and hate to see it go but when you look at it logically it just makes complete sense. NCSoft is a business not a charity, we would all do the same if we were in their shoes. Lets hope the devs go on to make more awesome games.
Well said Ripper and may I add as a fellow Dungeon Runner that I am both honored and priviledged to have played side by virtual side with you these last couple of years...
I'm not going to say "good bye" but rather "Be seeing you" to all my fellow players as we WILL see each other around the Gaming multiverse....
As far as Dungeon Runners is concerned, it's been a helluva run and like ALL good things do, it must come to an end sometime... Better to go out w/ a bang then a whimper!!
Stephen Nichols deserves a special commendation for his dedication and love for the game to gut it out to the end to watch his baby be taken off life support....
No one involved with the game from a Developer to a player standpoint should be sad or angry or upset that the game is ending, instead everyone should hold their heads up and be PROUD of what we have created together as this is a game that will likely never be able to be duplicated again with it's blend of humor and fanatical fans, games like WoW and Aion will wish they had players like we are....
How many other gamers in how many other games can say they've played side by side with the game's lead designer and game programmer?
I can....can you??
See 'yall in game for the last best runs yet!!
Respectfully,
Cthulhu
Dungeon Runners #1 & most loyal fan!
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
Cthulhu fhtagn
47°9?S, 126°43?W
I would like to say to the Dungeon Runners team THANK YOU , THANK YOU, THANK YOU for all the hours of enjoyment you brought me and my friends. I havn't played for a while but still have very fond memories of the game and recommend it to everybody, damn, it even got my sister into playing mmo's and she doesn't even like games.
The friends I made in DR are with me to this day, no other mmo has been able to do that with me and even though we all play different games now we all still keep in touch with each other, DR had a great community and I havn't managed to find that type of community in any other game.
Vrdeath, Gutler and Nightforge saying thanks again guys, may you all have the greatest success in whatever you decide to do and don't ever lose that quirky sense of humour, gave me alot of well needed laughs.
Oh yes, sad sad news. DR is a really fun game at lunch break, or when days are boring like every days. Thx to DR team you did a really good job on this game.
Now to speak about NCSoft, why did they offer time for game on the deadline (both GW and CoX are 5 years old), why don't they offer something about AION ?
Yeah, it saddened me to know of its demise. It didn't get me hooked up but it was fun to play at times. I guess it lacked challenge - it was too much point-and-click. But great artwork and humor.
Perhaps if they had gone with an item-shop since the beginning... Those on-screen ads really annoyed me.
I started playing the game not long after it first came out, and it was fun. I left it when I discovered the moderators of both the game and the forums were a pack of complete Nazis, and when they started making things that were stylistically beautiful into muddy crap, and that covers both cosmetic things and the gameplay itself.
It started out as a beautiful game, and a bunch of stylisticly-inept Nazis ruined it, and that was pretty early on. I can only imagine how the game broke down in the years that followed. Will go back and read some of the forum entrys here and see if anybody either knows what I'm talking about, agrees with me, or both. Or something like that. Or whatever.
I was a paying customer, and that game seriously burned me.
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Bleakmage
This game was fun and hilarious. Problem is, there are SO MANY other gaming options for people these days, and a lot of people have limited time, so they have to choose. I played DR when I was taking a break from other games.
The brilliance of this game was the much needed and well deserved lampooning of almost every aspect of MMORPGS. From the beginning, starting out with cardboard weapons and armor (like when we were kids and were swordfighting with the paper towel roll) a satire of all the lousy rusty bent broken junk other mmos give you when you begin. And the names of those items, ROFLMAO! Flatulent Shotgun of the Hyperactive Beaver, priceless. I loved the NPC commentary, it made me laugh out loud many times. And the plot, medieval corporate espionage against energy drink smuggling rap artist rats, infiltrating their "Sqeakeasies", stealing all their flavor crystals. The people who made this game must have been high.
Beyond the silliness, I thought it had a good combat system with a myriad of skills (farting a poison cloud!), plus you could solo or group. PVP wasn't bad either. I don't remember crashing a single time or encountering any bugged quests or character abilities, which is something mainstream MMOs can't seem to accomplish these days. The game was well balanced too, it was hard to become overwhelmingly powerful, and you always needed more money.
Even though it wasn't very polished or deep, it was tons of laughs and short term fun. And playing this game helps you appreciate all the other MMOs for what they do better.
What ultimately threatened to kill last year and this time did finally kill the game was revenue...or rather a lack of it... The Dev's tried to generate revenue through ad sponsorship from almost the beginning but no one wanted to advertise so that tanked. Then they tried increasing the perks for paying members and reducing them some for the f2p'ers but all that did was piss off the f2p'ers b/c they were getting 95% of what the paid members were getting for free so they HATED the change in drop rate percentages and loss of some in-game abilities....
Perhaps because of it's success as a 'casual' MMO it was also a victim of those same successes....being TOO casual might just have encouraged people to not care and play for free (or not at all) so at the end of the day, that's what NCsoft Korea is saying to this game's fans... "we don't care about this game or you any longer because we're tired of losing money off the lot of ya".
Stephen Nichols has promised great things over the next 100 days or so until the grand finale at 11:59:59 on 12/31/09 when a nuke strategically placed in the Hub "Townston" is set to detonate & no one but him really knows whats gonna happen!
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
Cthulhu fhtagn
47°9?S, 126°43?W
Score for the players, what with getting Guild Wars and City of Heroes free.
Yup, but there are still players bitching about what they're getting (or not, as the case may be), which also includes "easy mode"---even for free players--the next three months. Crazy...
~Ripper
I was in the beta-test of this game. I was impressed by the dedication of the developers but they didn't listen. There were gameplay issues that could have easily been solved (mob balance etc) but they never were addressed.
I didn't bother with the game on release. I didn't care for the payment model and I hated the Bling Gnome - that was getting just too stupid. They needed better writers to pull off the humor they wanted.
No surprise seeing the game vanish. It would have been nice if it could have been something better.
Sounds like a fun game... too bad they didn't do better on the advertising because I've never heard of it.
I think they advertised on this site.
I think they advertised on this site.
They've never really had any advertising or budget for it, unfortunately. They did have few banner ads at one point, but they were so rare, you'd never see them. About the only advertising done was news/video releases to gaming sites like this for the Bling Gnome Retail Box.
@ AlienOverlord - personally I loved the humor and the bling gnome, but I respect that you didn't. Different strokes for different folks
Unfortunatley, Dungeon Runners wasn't hindered so much by talent, but by a lack of funds. They just didn't have a big enough budget to go nuts with what was essentially an experimental title. As an example, the game had to be cobbled together from the engine and assets of Exarch - a previously cancelled ttile from 2002, and work inherited by two previous development teams (the most recent of which is working for THQ on the Warhammer 40k MMO and Darksiders). The engine was custom, incredibly hard to work with and was designed for RTS type play. UI changes that would have been simple in other games were a pretty big hassle in DR. The team did eventually license a new engine that allowed them to do some of the graphical updates (shadows, specular lighting, etc...) and it was, to my understanding, what was enabling them to attempt to port the game to the PS3, but that whole thing fell apart in August 2008 with all the internal strife in NCSoft.
Irrespective of that, there were definitely things I woulud have like to see added or changed about the game (and believe me, I made a ton of suggestions over the last few years), but I personally liked the game for what it was - something silly and fun that didnt' require a lot of time. The things you didn't like--and I'm ok with that--were the things that appealed to me the most.
~Ripper