Just Keep Running

A Review of
NCSoft’s Dungeon Runners

By
Cody
“Micajah” Bye


Laughter is the best medicine, or at least that’s
the common saying. With typical MMORPGs, everyone gets bogged down in
the seriousness of damage-per-second, developer scandals, and
statistical super-buffing, but often gamers just want to play a title
where they can relax and spend a few minutes killing beasties in their
down time. They want to be able to join their friends in a rousing romp
of killing while chatting a bit in-between monster crushing. With much
of the MMOG market devoted to serious and in-depth MMOGs, the games
that have allowed this sort of ease-of-play have been few and far
between with only a spattering of honest-to-goodness fun thrown in.

Enter Dungeon Runners, an MMOG developed by NCsoft
specifically for people looking for a diversion from standard gameplay
seen in today’s massively multiplayer games. Built upon the
notion of fast, intuitive, and humorous gameplay, Dungeon Runners is
attempting to strike at those users who are sick of raiding for hours
upon hours. Instead, Dungeon Runners offers gamers the chance to drop
into the game world, fight a couple monsters, find epic loot, get a
gut-rolling chuckle, and still be able to sit down and eat dinner with
their family.

style="float: left; border-collapse: collapse; height: 233px; width: 205px;"
align="center" border="1" cellpadding="3"
cellspacing="2">
class="textBodyLargeDark" style="color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">Publisher: NCsoft
Corporation

class="textBodyLargeDark" style="color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">Developer: NCsoft
Corporation
class="textBodyLargeDark" style="color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">Genre: class="textBodyMediumDark">Fantasy class="textBodyLargeDark" style="color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">Homepage: href="http://www.dungeonrunners.com">Official Site href="http://everquest2.station.sony.com/expansions/echoesoffaydwer/"
target="_top">
class="textBodyLargeDark" style="color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">ESRB
Rating
:
N/A
class="textBodyLargeDark" style="color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">Release
Date
:
class="textBodyMediumDark">May 24th, 2007

Becoming a True Dungeon Runner

On top of this foundation of fun, NCsoft has opted to make
Dungeon Runners free to download and play. Instead of bottle-necking
the number of users willing to play their title, NCsoft opened the game
up to any user with a computer and invited them all inside. A $5.00 /
month membership few is available, but the only limitations users will
ever experience concerning the membership few is access to the
“best” items, a bank account, and stackable
potions.

Arguably, a gamer could play through the entire game without
any of these options, but the player would have a relatively dull
experience compared to users of a similar level. Once a gamer reaches
level 6-7, they will begin finding more and more items that are
“membership only”. Upon first encountering this
problem, a user will probably be dismayed that he isn’t able
to wear the “Enraged Armor of the Whispering Baby
Seal” and be tempted to plunk down his $5 simply to strap on
the item.

And it’s no wonder this occurs, as NCsoft has done a
stellar (or is it frustrating?) job of making the “membership
only” items much more powerful than the standard items. While
a non-paying member might have two or three statistics increased on his
best piece of mail, his member friend might have all six statistics
raised along with his movement speed and an exceptional increase in
armor. This is true even at the lowest levels. The $5 membership fee is
extremely tempting to anyone trying to resist it.

But the membership fee wouldn’t matter a bit if the
gameplay of Dungeon Runners didn’t live up to its promise of
humorous and light-hearted fun. NCsoft has certainly provided ample
amounts of this, along with some other aspects that any gamer might
find pleasing.

width="200">
href="http://tth.tentonhammer.com/modules.php?set_albumName=album311&id=Zap&op=modload&name=gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php"> src="http://media.tentonhammer.com/tth/gallery/albums/album311/Zap.thumb.jpg"
alt="Zap!" title="Zap!" name="photo_j" border="0"
height="64" width="150">
Dugeon Runners is meant to be fun and fast.

Delving into the Dungeons

The initial set up of Dungeon Runners is a fairly simple
process, and NCsoft has taken the steps necessary to insure that users
will be able to quickly and efficiently download the client and
activate their free account for Dungeon Runners. Any trouble spots that
users may encounter will probably spawn from confusion generated when
they have to activate the game through the NCsoft store. Nothing is
charged to a credit card, but users still need to
“buy” the game.

Once you have an active Dungeon Runners account and have
logged into the game, you’re presented with the very Spartan
character creation screen. Unlike most pay-to-play MMOs (and even some
free titles), you’re only able to create one Dungeon Runner
at a time. There are no race options aside from the standard human, but
there are three different classes to choose from, Fighter (the melee
warrior), Ranger (ranged combat), and Mage (the magic wielder).
It’s a difficult choice, especially for the beginning of the
game, and NCsoft could have spared players (or at least members) the
initial trouble of deciding upon a character class if that had allowed
for more than one character per account.




To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Dungeon Runners Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

Comments