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/

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Curse Village | Arcade |

Description:
An action defense game where you fight against waves of the undead. The world is being invaded by blood-thirsty zombies. In a brave attempt to save your village you're fighting back to keep the undead behind the barricades. There's no escape, fight bac

Instructions:
Defend your village in 30 levels from the invading zombies.

Use the [1 .. 6] numeric keys to supreme a weapon. Use the P legend to Music fermata and appear the menu. Mouse-click to say the selected weapon.

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Battle Forge

BattleForge is a new fantasy online real-time strategy game where you assemble your own army with collectible trading cards. Win, trade and buy your cards online to create your ultimate deck. Mix and match the elements of your cards to play with your friends online and conquer massive online battlegrounds.

BattleForge is a next-gen real time strategy game, in which you fight epic battles against evil along with your friends. What makes BattleForge special is that you can assemble your army yourself: the units, buildings and spells in BattleForge are represented by collectible cards that you can trade with other players.

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WoW Makes You Fat

We've all heard stories of people playing WOW and packing on enough pounds to audition for "The Biggest Loser" in as short as a few months. That's not exactly an exaggeration folks. I personally know a guy who put on 20 kilos in a matter of eight months. Saying that he was about 80 kilos to begin with, that was a nice 25 percent boost to his body weight. That's phat, pun intended, with a nice topping of sarcasm on top of it.

Whether gamers want to admit it or not, two facts cannot be denied. Firstly, there are a lot of people who became obese after playing WOW. Secondly, WOW probably has more real-life tragedies linked to it than any other MMORPG. There is definitely a correlation between the playing of WOW and the rate at which the lives of people go south really quick. To be fair, WOW isn't the first obsession to do this and definitely won't be the last. But it's bad enough that people should sit up and start doing something about it.


Everyone seems to know that certain WOW players are addicted beyond belief. You've seen the pictures of the shirtless 350 pound man sitting in a chair that is too small to contain his rolls of blubber playing the damn game. But no one has really tried to do anything about it. To be fair there isn't a lot that people can do. Video gaming is like sex. You can't really stop it from happening. But you can damn right try to cut it down. Unfortunately, that's going to be on Blizzard. The simplest and most obvious way to cut down the casualties is to cut down the total number of players.

I mean, if you have only 100 people playing WOW, you can't have a 101 fat and obese WOW players, can you? Raising the price will do that to some extent. And I don't mean a sissy 5 dollar raise. I'm talking doubling or even tripling the price of the monthly subscriptions. Problem is that firstly, Blizzard is going to take a stab in the foot for that. Actually, I take that back. There are enough WOW players that are rich enough and hardcore enough to continue playing. Blizzard might actually earn a nice profit from that. But that leads to the second problem.


If Blizzard is earning a greater profit even though it has raised the price of WOW substantially, that means that the majority of the gamers are still playing. There will be a tipping point, but honestly, how much can you expect the good folks at Blizzard to raise the price at one go? These guys are still going to play, and that means that they are still going to remain fat and lifeless, like Cartman was in that South Park WOW episode (one of my personal favorites). What Blizzard has done is simply just remove the poorer and casual gamers from its servers, which every good MMO has to have. You can't have just a bunch of psycho hardcore players that speak in acronyms more than they do in words. It doesn't work out too well.


The other solution that I can think up now is, amusing as it sounds with the economic and environmental problems we have right now, is for the government to instill some form of control on gamers. Not just WOW players. I'm talking everything. For every WOW player that is slaving over his computer (okay, maybe for every two. Or three), there is a player slaving over his Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 playing Street Fighter or Prototype. It obviously seems to be a waste, and to me, it is. But something has to be done about addiction. For the younger generation, parents can step in. But for those 30 year old guys playing WOW, there isn't really anybody who can stop them. Maybe a girlfriend, but if you play that much, I doubt you have one. Maybe friends, but if you play that much, your friends are probably doing the same thing as well.


Someone just has to go to these guys and tell them that however great the World of Warcraft is, it is not really a world. Even if you define it as one, it pales in comparison to the real world. The World of Warcraft is just a game, but some people don't get it. Maybe they do, but they are too into it right now to pull themselves out. It's like what I call "living in the past syndrome". You know that nothing good is coming out of it. In fact, it does more harm than good. But you can't stop yourself, simply because you either have nothing else or you are too weak to pull yourself out of your daydream, or both. Unlike the real world, WOW gives a lot of second chances. Unlike the real world, you can log off if you guild master (boss) is giving you a hard time. But, unlike the real world, what you do in WOW doesn't really matter. Which is a lesson I think some people simply don't want to learn.

By Thana Lee

source:http://news.mmosite.com

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The Pimps

Start your career as an Original Gangster and become the biggest pimp in over 200 cities. Weedfarms, coke pushers, hookers and bad-ass revolvers bring you to the top of your gang.

The game world of The Pimps is scattered over 200 cities across the USA. Each city has more than 300 districts. At the beginning, each player controls one district. A district is a possibility for a player to earn virtual money. More on this topic can be found under the heading "Business".

Prestige is the main goal of the game - all your efforts should serve this goal. The number of clubs and other establishments you run, the number of people working for you, the number of districts under your control - all these increase your prestige, which in this game is measured by virtual "Pimp Points".

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