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Dungeon Runners was a medieval fantasy, often satirical MMORPG developed and published by NCSOFT. It featured gameplay similar to the Diablo series of games.
Dungeon Runners entered the closed Beta phase in May 2006, and a game trailer was exhibited at the 2006 E3 convention. Open Beta began in December 2006, and Beta accounts could be acquired via an invitation from an existing player or through the NCsoft website. On May 24, 2007, the game officially went live.
Much of the original art was conceived by comic-book artist Joe Madureira.
On August 13, 2008, the parent company, NCSoft in Korea, decided to cut 21 members of its staff in Austin, TX due to the company's overall decreasing profits. Out of the 18 member team which developed Dungeon Runners, only three of the original developers remained.
Dungeon Runners implemented a classless system (see Classes, below) and offered regular updates through patches. One of the most acclaimed patches was the update coined "The Heave" that introduced the first player summon "Chill Bill", and a new high level dungeon. This update patch was very well received by the gaming community and was considered by many to be one of the game's best updates.
With the public release of the game, a classless system had been implemented. Like before, the player chose a class (fighter, mage, ranger) when generating the character, determining which package of beginning skills, which weapon and what type of clothing or armor the character began the game with.
After the first dungeon (Dew Valley Forest), the character arrived in the main town where there were three skill trainers, one each devoted to fighter skills, ranger skills, and mage skills. Any character could learn any skills desired from any of the three trainers. In place of a class, each character had a four word descriptive title that changed depending on how the character's attributes were improved (relative to one another) and which skills the player chose. When the player bought new skills from a trainer, each skill had an icon that was placed in the Skill Bar, an interface element at the bottom center of the screen. The Skill Bar had eight slots mapped to number row keys plus two additional slots mapped to each of the mouse buttons. The character could learn all the skills available in the game if the player wished; however, only ten could be accessed at any given time, being limited by the number of slots in the Bar.
If the player wished a radical change in the character's abilities, a "Re-Spec" button was available on the Character Sheet. This allowed the player to completely redistribute the character's attribute points at any time by spending some of the character's gold. The charge for a Re-Spec was based on the character's level and was inexpensive up to level 20, after which the price increased much more quickly per level. The final level cap was 100.
GameSpot and Eurogamer, Dungeon Runners Review // PC /// Eurogamer stated that the graphical quality, third-person point of view and screen layout more closely resembled that of World of Warcraft, another MMORPG.
As of the latest 147 patch, a substantial graphics update was also added.
Players could engage in single or group pvp combat and each side could have up to 5 players. The difficulty of the match was also scaled according to the ratio of the group sizes. For instance, a single player facing off against a team of two players would be at 100% power while the other team's two players would be toned down in damage and armor. Depending on your performance you might receive King's coins which could be spent on items.
" Dungeon Runners just isn't cutting the mustard", Nichols said on an announcement on the Dungeon Runners forum. "If she were a ship, she'd be taking on water. Yeah, she's been taking on water for a long time now. Are my cryptic references too hard to decipher? The game just isn't profitable. And, the first rule of business is to be profitable!"
Nichols went on to note that, while the team had a number of ideas to generate revenue, they would be expensive and risky to implement. He also noted that said plans would be greatly hampered given that two of the five developers on the game had recently departed from the team.
Nichols noted that those with paid memberships to Dungeon Runners would receive digital copies of ''City of Heroes Architect Edition and '. The producer also stated that anyone who needed refunds for multiple-month membership purchases would be "taken care of".
The online service for Dungeon Runners ended on January 1, 2010. The website was shut down shortly thereafter on January 3, 2010.
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