Free-to-Play Spotlight: Dungeon Runners

It's been two years since NC Soft released its tongue-in-cheek MMORPG-slash-dungeon crawler, Dungeon Runners, and now the self-proclaimed "Mother of all RPGs" is finally getting primed for a much-awaited cash shop. In keeping with DR's light-hearted tone, the ingame shops will be called TURDs, ostensibly an acronym for Townston's Universally Recognized Dollar which is also going to be the cash shop currency. According to the patch notes for the latest game build, which went live last week, "TURDs are delayed until October (at the soonest) as we work toward integration with NCcoin." Not much has been said about exactly what it is that players will be able to buy with their TURDs but in a game that hasn't seen too many updates lately, any change seems to be welcome.

Dungeon Runners is a fun game that plays a lot like Diablo and Diablo II. You get to play as a Warrior, Mage or Ranger, the differences among the three classes having to do more with playing style than group role as it's quite possible to solo your way through. Warriors are the melee fighters with the most hit points and defense but they lack the offensive capabilities of the two other classes. Mages are the magic users, dealing huge amounts of damage from a distance. Rangers are skilled fighters with ranged weapons such as bows and guns. There are no restrictions as to what armor or weapons each class can use so a mage can very well wield a sword or a crossbow if he or she chooses to. The "stats" on the item pretty much determine what's useful and what's not to a particular class so of course, you'll find more +Intelligence stats on staves rather than on axes, for instance.

This mob won't be dropping any turds.
All of the dungeons are instanced, but there are town centers where NPCs buy up your unwanted loot and sell potions, portal scrolls and gear. There are also quest givers and although they invariably want you to kill something in the dungeons, it's definitely worthwhile reading the quest text. Like everything else in DR, quests are often off-the-wall parodies of other MMO quests. Sometimes, they're just off-the-wall altogether. As an example, there's one quest that wants you to teach the Poison Whiskers a lesson about paperwork because they failed to file their expense reports after going to the "recent F3 Conference", which we assume is the Whiskers' equivalent of E3.

The townies also have some humorous lines. "I had a terrible dream last night. I was shaken but not stirred" wouldn't be half as funny if the line wasn't delivered by an NPC who sounds a lot like Sean Connery.

DR is free to download and play, although players find out soon after venturing into their first dungeon that the $5-a-month premium subscription may not be a necessity, but it certainly is a temptation few can resist. Quite a few of the rare loot drops can only be worn by members, and there's even a whole tier of gear that's better than purple (rainbow-colored!) that is exclusively for members. And if gear envy isn't enough of a lure, there's also the fact that free players can only use minor potions. In an MMO where healers don't exist, a 10% healing potion variance can spell the difference between living and respawning.

Last year, NC Soft released a boxed version of Dungeon Runners which you can buy at retail outlets for $20. This includes a 6-month membership, which amounts to a $10 discount. But what makes the box precious is that with it, you also get a sidekick called a Bling Gnome who helps you collect loot and "process" it into gold (don't ask how!), thereby saving you endless trips into town to sell off your junk. You can probably still get a copy from your local Gamestop for the original retail price, but our online search only yielded resellers on Amazon.com selling it for $30 to $67!

The game has built-in voice chat, banks and guilds (called "posses"), but there's no auction house, crafting, nor housing. And yet, even though it may not have all the features players have come to expect in an MMO, Dungeon Runners continues to score high in the Fun category.

Source: http://pc.ign.com/