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Latest Dungeon Runners News Updates and Reviews Updated daily
Dungeon Runners : One Shots: Goodnight, sweet princeJan 01, 2010 02:00:00 PM News Item: 13251
Filed under: Fantasy, Screenshots, Dungeon Runners, Free-to-play, One Shots
With the change in the new year, we bid a fond farewell to Dungeon Runners, which shuffled off the Internets last night. It's always sad to see an MMORPG go, especially a wacky, fun, free-to-play title. Thankfully, reader Ripper McGee was on-hand last night to capture this screenshot from the final moments. We'll turn it over to Ripper to explain:
Dungeon Runners was shut down for good at midnight last night/this morning. Here [is a shot] from yesterday. [This] is me on my main toonnext to the bomb Steve Nichols planted in the middle of Townston. All of the gamers assumed the bomb would go off at midnight, but it was actually just decoration. At midnight, we were all simply disconnected from the server.... Prior to that, though, the worldpopulation was completely full (first time in a long time)!
If you have any screenshots from the end of Dungeon Runners -- or indeed any sunsetted MMORPG -- we'd be glad to feature them here. All you have to do is to email them to us here at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name, the name of the game, and a quick description. We'll post it out here and give you the credit!
 One Shots: Goodnight, sweet prince Fri, 01 Jan 2010 14:00:00 EST.
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Dungeon Runners : Unraveling the mystery of John Deere OnlineOct 30, 2009 09:00:00 AM News Item: 12396
Filed under: MMORPG industry, belief, Academic, MMORPGRTS, Rumors
Scott "Lum the Mad" Jennings, well-known blogosphere participant and game designer, has in recent times been working on a game that is now sadly canceled. This is bad both for the natural sadness of a game having been canceled and the voyeuristic MMORPG fan impulse to ask, "Well, what was it going to be?" We don't know. The only reference made was to the cryptic in-joke name of John Deere Online. In his own words: "As a condition of my severance I can't discuss a great deal, and anything I say here will most likely be picked up by the MMORPG news sites (wave, wave!)."
Well, he's right about that last part. But neither waiting for him to change his mind nor camping outside his front door has yielded any new information, so perhaps we can take a look at more pieces of information and speculate? After all, we know of at least two of his co-workers. From them and from the little which Scott Jennings himself has said, we can derive the following bits of information: that they were working for 2K Games, developing an MMORPG based on an existing franchise, that the game would have been strategy-based, and that it might potentialy have had something to do with tractors.
Considering that Jon Jones point outs on his LinkedIn page that he "created a series of low polygon highly optimized building models with ashortset of textures that can be reused across that nation's entire series of buildings appropriate to that age," it's difficult to argue with the conclusion that the team was working on a Civilization MMORPG. But 2K Games also could mean Elder Scrolls projects... which might be pertinent, as both Jon Jones and Matthew Weigel have been working on Dungeon Runners. It's all idle speculation, sadly, and for all we know the game actually would have been a massively multigamer tractor simulator. (In which case it might even be for the best - lawnmowers would most likely have been totally overpowered against seeders in Player vs Player.)Unraveling the mystery of John Deere Online Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:00:00 EST.
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Dungeon Runners : Dungeon Runners shutting down in JanuarySep 17, 2009 12:00:00 PM News Item: 12200
Filed under: Fantasy, Dungeon Runners, MMORPG industry, News items, Free-to-play
In the No-Surpise-to-Anyone category, we have news that NCsoft's Dungeon Runners will be closing its doors on January 1, 2010. We only say no surprise because of the fact that the game has been running on a handful of devs for quite a long time now, which is a shame, because Dungeon Runners is actually a fun little game.
Staying true to their wonderful sense of humor, Stephen Nichols, DR's Producer and Lead Programmer, released a statement yesterday detailing the closure. He certainly doesn't butter it up at all as he explains that the game just isn't turning a profit, regardless of their efforts over the last year. They're now down to a 3-man team, which is near impotentialfor any studio to use in maintaining a game.
Luckily, for those currently subscribed to the game, some treats are coming your way, including free City of Heroes Architect Edition and Guild Wars Chapter 1: Prophecies. So if you've never played Dungeon Runners before, you have a little over three months to jump in for free and check it out before the game shuts down for good.Dungeon Runners shutting down in January Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:00:00 EST.
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Dungeon Runners : Dungeon Runners updates to Build 162, plans ahead for TURDsJul 24, 2009 11:00:00 AM News Item: 11552
Filed under: Fantasy, Dungeon Runners, Patches, Free-to-play
It's certainly been quite a while since we last checked in on Dungeon Runners, but it has grabbed our attention once again after updating to Build 162 earlier this week. The humorous free-to-play dungeon-crawler went many months without updates to the live worlds, so fans should be happy with this latest addition. Here are some of the patch headlines:
- No more ads
- Lots of graphical updates and optimizations
- Shadows were added
- A bunch of new items went in
- Player vs Player is now allowed on all worlds
- Placeholder artwork was added for the TURD vendors that will go live in (or after) October. Yep, TURD vendors... we could leave it there without any further explanation, but the truth is just as funny. TURD stands for Townston Universally Recognized Dollars and they will be used as Dungeon Runners' version of NCcoins for an item mall.
Hit up the full patch notes to see what else has changed in DR.
[Thanks, Ripper!]Dungeon Runners updates to Build 162, plans ahead for TURDs Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:00:00 EST.
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Dungeon Runners : Dungeon Runners releases Build 153Dec 18, 2008 06:00:00 PM News Item: 7299
Filed under: Fantasy, Dungeon Runners, Game mechanics, MMORPG industry, Patches, Free-to-play
Wow, it turns out Dungeon Runners is still alive and kicking. We haven't heard anything from them since the news that the game's team was cut dramatically, yet it's good to hear something new out of the team over there. Apparently the game is still going strong, as the patch notes for Build 153 have just been released.
With Build 153, gamers get quite a few new changes. Aside from bug fixes and graphical improvements, Player vs Player rated match have been changed and six new skills have been added to the game: Shadow Words, Fire Shot, Dungeon Inferno, Gosh's Glorious Shower of Gold, Cold Snap and Oh Snap! Check out the complete patch notes for more information.Dungeon Runners releases Build 153 Thu, 18 Dec 2008 18:00:00 EST. Comments
Dungeon Runners : Tabula Rasa's Community Coordinator leaves NCsoftOct 10, 2008 10:00:00 AM News Item: 5729
Filed under: Sci-fi, MMORPG industry, Tabula Rasa  Here we are once again, saying goodbye to yet another talented NCsoft employee as they pursue a greater opportunity outside the company. And once again, we're saddened by the news, yet excited for their broadened horizons. This time it's Amy "Critters" Crider,previous Community Coordinator for Tabula Rasa.
Crider took over the community role earlier this year from April "CuppaJo" Burba, when she left for the Dungeon Runners team. Since that time, Crider has won the admirationof the TR community through her work with in-game events, fansite conversations and more. Taking her place will be Dane Caruthers, who you may remember from our PAX08 conversation earlier last month. We wish Dane all the best in his new role, and Amy continued success with her new venture. Comments
Dungeon Runners : David Reid sets the record straight on NC West: Part 2Sep 24, 2008 03:30:00 PM News Item: 5418
Filed under: Interviews, MMORPG industry : Great. So it's actually more towards NC West as sort of a general umbrella under which these specific studios can have their own names, and actually carve out their own places within the company?
David Reid: Absolutely. Think about it this way: the reorganization and the establishment of NC West is more of an acknowledgement that we as a company can be doing better on the publishing side, in terms of taking these great products that these veteran headership studios have been able to crank out, and turn them into much bigger phenomena. Right?
I mean, we've had great success with City of Heroes, we've had great success with Guild Wars, but we think it can be bigger. What we're not doing is changing the studio organization, other than the studios all now report in to Jeff Strain, who has moved on from the day to day management of ArenaNet - Michael O'Brien is now the studio head there, and is heading the Guild Wars 2 team and other projects there - but Jeff serves as a manager across the studio organization.
"... we've had great success with City of Heroes, we've had great success with Guild Wars, but we think it can be bigger."
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And in parallel, what I get to do for Jeff and those studios is make sure that we do the best we can to deliver triple-A world class commencees across our Western territories, and make sure that the marketing, the sales, the customer support - all the elements that great creators look to great publishers to do - are being done here. There's going to be some common platforms and things on the technology side, and a common team that helps serve the business, but nothing actually changes on the product development side.
: Okay. So you're saying nothing much is going to change on the product development side, but to that end it seems like as part of the NC West conglomeration, there are some folks moving around. There's a little more... we guess you could say refinement in what citizens are doing in a couple of these different studios. Could you talk generally about what we're seeing, as far as citizens moving on to new positions, citizens moving on from Austin to Seattle, those sorts of things?
David Reid: I should say one thing: that the decision about moving out NC West in the way we're doing it is, while there's no real change happening at the studio level, there is this ratification of 'NCsoft is going to be in the triple-A MMORPG space day in and day out', right?
We've done some fascinating things and had some success with smaller titles, things like Dungeon Runners and Exteel are doing well for us, but the company by and large is the company that Lineage built, and this reorganization is a ratification of getting back to that business and going all-in on the Lineages, Guild Wars, Aions, City of Heroes, Tabula Rasas, Blade and Souls, those sorts of games are what NCsoft is going to be doing day in, day out here in the West.
Now, there's a specific question you asked there about how does this impact certain citizens. We are planning to - we're in the process of now porting the internal citizens that we would like to relocate to Seattle, and have offered a healthy number of folks a rescene up to Seattle to be part of what is principally a publishing headquarters. And so that's where the bulk of the North American and global headership for marketing, for sales, for PR, aspects like that, we're thinking will be headquartered in Seattle.
Seattle for us was the rational place to go because of the relationship with Seoul, and Seattle just happens to be the place where you get the best number of non-stop flights to Seoul and to our West Coast studios, and to our UK office, out of Seattle versus any other city on the West Coast. And so we are also relocating what is now our Eastern games studio, the folks that are our North American and European producer team, for bringing games like Aion and Lineage and Blade and Soul into the Western market. Those folks are moving to Seattle, as well as the publishing headquarters.
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Dungeon Runners : David Reid sets the record straight on NC West: Part 3Sep 24, 2008 03:30:00 PM News Item: 5417
Filed under: Fantasy, Dungeon Runners, Interviews, MMORPG industry, Free-to-play, Consoles Dungeon Runners
: Now when you're talking about stepping more in the direction of the triple-A titles, that sort of implies that you're getting away from some of the smaller games that you guys have been working on in the past. We know that the Dungeon Runners team is experiencing some changes - can you talk specifically about that game, and what's going to be happening with those folks?
David Reid: Even before the NC West pronouncement, the Dungeon Runners team went through some changes. You're most likely referring to the pronouncement of the reduction we had of about 21 citizens, several weeks before the pronouncement of NC West, and Dungeon Runners was part of that. And that was about the fact that - yes, we like Dungeon Runners as a service, but there was a decision not to port that product on to other platforms but to keep the game intact as it is right now on the PC platform.
There were a number of other projects that had not been announced that were part of that, and they too were what we'll call lighter and smaller MMORPG fare, rather than triple-A types of products. Beyond that, Dungeon Runners is as healthy as it's ever been, and is still a vibrant part of the NCsoft portfolio. It's just that it's a different sort of business, and one that is a very successful kind of business overall, it's just not where NCsoft is going to continue investing its product development publishing resources, going forward.
: So it would be fair to say that citizens who enjoy Dungeon Runners shouldn't anticipateit to go anywhere, but as far as a ton of new substence in the future... that would most likely not be the direction that the company would be going in for that product?
David Reid: I'd clarify that answer just a bit. We were thinking seriously about 'should we bring Dungeon Runners to other, alternative platforms?' And that's what a large amount of that team was working on, and other parts of NCsoft. That decision has been: no, we're not going to. I wouldn't read into that anything about the amount of substence that the Dungeon Runners team is going to be making on a regular basis. That will continue to go forward.
Console Ports
: You point outed porting to other platforms a couple of times now. We think it's a little more than a year ago at this point that you announced you had that agreement with Sony to think about doing some stuff for the PS3. We haven't actually seen that thus far. Is that part of this pronouncement, sort of respotlighting NC West on getting some of Ncsoft's more stable games over to the Playstation 3?
David Reid: Yeah... I can tell you that we do think console development is an incredibly important part of our future. We do think that, you know, you look at companies like... NCsoft today is a PC only company, and we've seen what's happened with some of thesepreviously PC only (or predominantly PC) companies who have successfully brought their properties to the console.
As a gamer myself, I take a lot of inspiration from what the Tom Clancy series did for UbiSoft, or what Morrowind as a shifted Xbox and PC title did for Bethesda. And we believe that there is a transition like that that NCsoft can have, by taking some of its triple-A properties, and making a great triple-A MMORPG that works on the console.
"As a gamer myself, I take a lot of inspiration from what the Tom Clancy series did for UbiSoft, or what Morrowind as a shifted Xbox and PC title did for Bethesda."
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So yeah, it is true. You can't do everything all the time, and at some level we recognise that the best prize for NCsoft to be spotlighted on is the triple-A space, and that's on the PC platform and on the console platform. But beyond that, I don't have an pronouncement that I can make for you at this time!
: Not a problem. We just wanted to clarify, because it seems like a natural progression from where you guys are talking about with triple-A titles being your spotlight.
David Reid: We passionately agree. Absolutely.
: We actually appreciate you guys' time. We know that the readers have been... we guess the best word is confused, because as we said, it sort of came out of nowhere. And we're glad we had the chance to talk!
David Reid: You bet! Well, at the end of the day, I hope that for folks who are fans of these giant triple-A games, these big investments in the MMORPG space with high construction quality, there should be no confusion: this is good news for that game. We are going to get back to doing this all day, every day, in a world class way. The lighter side of the business, the free-to-plays and things like that, those are great businesses, but there will be other companies who will be delivering that form. It won't be NCsoft so much, going forward.
Read what David Reid had to say on Tabula Rasa and Guild Wars. Comments
Dungeon Runners : Dungeon Runners announces guilds and gamer blogsSep 24, 2008 10:00:00 AM News Item: 5423
Filed under: Fantasy, Dungeon Runners, Game mechanics, Patches  Dungeon Runners has just released its newest patch which introduces gamers to some exciting new features to this free-to-play NCsoft title. Build 147 (Chunk 4) has added posses to the game, which act much like a guild in other games. It's basically described as a persistent group of friends in-game who have their own entry on the social window and their own chat channels. Although this build will officially add this feature to the game, it won't be active for another week or so.
This build also adds a brand new gamer blog system that tracks events via RSS. These events include login, logout, level up, quest completion, deaths, pvp match effects and more. This certainly isn't the end of the new additions though as we get treated to a new dungeon, a wishing well feature, bug fixes, upgrades and even a free trial period for the Bling Gnome. Check out the complete patch notes for more facts on this mega-patch. Comments
More Dungeon Runners News
(Click to read)
Sep 18, 2008 06:30:00 PMDungeon Runners : Dungeon Runners is safe, says NCsoft
Sep 11, 2008 11:35:57 PMDungeon Runners : Top Ten Free-to-Play Games
Sep 10, 2008 04:45:22 PMDungeon Runners : NC West: NCsoft to spotlight on more hardcore, triple-A online games
Sep 09, 2008 05:00:00 PMDungeon Runners : Turbine opens dynamic forum sigs for LotRO gamers
Aug 13, 2008 07:30:00 PMDungeon Runners : Official word from NCsoft on the Austin studio layoffs
Aug 13, 2008 03:30:00 PMDungeon Runners : NCsoft Austin sheds team
Aug 12, 2008 05:15:00 PMDungeon Runners : Rumor: NCsoft Austin, Dungeon Runners to be shut down
Jul 18, 2008 07:00:00 PMDungeon Runners : Dungeon Runners now accepts Paypal
Jul 15, 2008 08:00:00 PMDungeon Runners : Dungeon Runners gets some G4TV love
Jul 15, 2008 01:56:00 PMDungeon Runners : NCsoft Europe Community Day at the Games Convention 2008
Jul 13, 2008 09:00:00 PMDungeon Runners : NCsoft's upcoming summer tour around the Globe
Jul 05, 2008 04:00:00 PMDungeon Runners : ArenaNet to host 2nd annual PAX afterparty
Jun 29, 2008 08:30:00 PMDungeon Runners : Dungeon Runners retail box now obtainable through Amazon
Jun 18, 2008 07:30:00 AMDungeon Runners : The Bling Gnome in action!
Jun 18, 2008 07:00:00 AMDungeon Runners : Dungeon Runner/Bling Gnome giveaway
Jun 15, 2008 03:00:00 PMDungeon Runners : Dungeon Runners announces an EU server
May 25, 2008 10:00:00 AMDungeon Runners : Dungeon Runners' newest build: It's easy as 123
May 22, 2008 10:00:00 AMDungeon Runners : Dungeon Runners' retail box unveiled
May 19, 2008 04:30:00 PMDungeon Runners : Dungeon Runners Chunk 3 goes live!
May 15, 2008 03:30:00 PMDungeon Runners : Dungeon Runners new build and push for retail box sales
May 14, 2008 01:30:00 PMDungeon Runners : NCsoft Audio Director reveals his old-school secrets
May 01, 2008 05:00:00 PMDungeon Runners : Dungeon Runners heaves its next patch into testing
Apr 23, 2008 02:00:00 PMDungeon Runners : One Shots: Sending Chill Bill to his death
Apr 23, 2008 01:30:00 PMDungeon Runners : Dungeon Runners needs your ideas
Apr 08, 2008 04:00:00 PMDungeon Runners : Bling Gnome coming with Dungeon Runners retail box
Feb 21, 2008 08:30:00 PMDungeon Runners : The top 5 free MMORPGs
Jan 18, 2008 06:00:00 PMDungeon Runners : Our chat with NCsoft's new president
Dec 12, 2007 04:30:00 PMDungeon Runners : As the Worlds Turn: Land of the Free
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