dungeon-runners posts

Even as NCsoft prepares to launch their long awaited (and already best selling) MMO Aion next week, the company has announced that it will be shutting down another of their MMO games. This time it's Dungeon Runners, the fantasy themed game that was the publisher's entry in the "free-to-play" genre.

Launched in 2006, the game suffered setbacks last year when NCsoft reorganized and drastically cut the development team that was in charge of running the game. However the bottom line, according to the game's producer and lead programmer Stephen Nichols is, "The game just isn't profitable." Therefore he announced on the Dungeon Runners web site that the game will shut down its online servers. It's last full day of operations will be on New Year's Eve of 2009.

Current Dungeon Runners players who decided to use the game's optional subcription service will be compensated with a 30 day code and digital copies of City of Heroes and Guild Wars Prophecies. And the game itself will have lots of events and bonuses from now until the shut down including "adding a huge nuke to Townston that will blow up on New Year's and take the game down with it." We love nukes!.

[Via Massively]

The Internet was all abuzz earlier this week on rumors that NCsoft might shut down their Austin, Texas office completely but now our sister site Massively has official confirmation that the MMO publisher will indeed lay off 21 workers at the Austin location.

According to the statement, some of the team members that lost their jobs work on the Dungeons Runners free-to-play MMO but that the game itself is not shutting down, contradicting earlier rumors. The other positions were working on unannounced titles and prototypes. So at the moment it appears that earlier rumors of the Tabula Rasa MMO being moved from Austin to another NCsoft team are untrue.

With the rumors of NCsoft planning to either shut down or cut their operations at their Austin, Texas offices, the MMO game developer/publisher announced their latest financial results for the quarter that ended June 30. Revenues were $78.6 million for the quarter, up 7 percent for the same time period a year ago. However, the company recorded a profit of $5.9 million for the quarter which was down 42 percent compared to the same period a year ago.

As per usual, the majority of NCSoft's sales came from its home country of Korea via its Lineage ($27.2 million) and Lineage II ($33.6 million) game titles. City of Heroes/Villains and Guild Wars brought in $5.5 million and $4.9 million in revenues, respectively, while Tabula Rasa only brough in $1.9 million for the quarter. NCsoft's only major new game launch for 2008 will be the fantasy MMO Aion which will be released in Korea late this year.

It looks like rumors of NCsoft cutting their Austin, Texas based studio might actually have some kind of weight to them. Our sister sites Joystiq and Massively are reporting through their own sources that NCsoft might actually shut down their studios in Austin entirely. According to their reports, the free-to-play MMO Dungeon Runners would close down entirely while their sci-fi MMO Tabula Rasa would be moved to another NCsoft development studio.

Neither story has any info on when this shutdown might actually happen, if indeed it does happen, but it is known that Tabula Rasa has not been a sales success and the rumors state that it might actually shut down by sometime next year if subscriptions do not rebound. NCsoft's other US based development studios will be unaffected by this move.

NCsoft will be spanning the globe this summer to show off their ever expanding MMO lineup. As we mentioned last week, they will be at the San Diego Comic Con (July 23-27, booth #5209) with stations up and running so that attendees can play the superhero themed City of Heroes, Richard Garriott's sci-fic epic Tabula Rasa and mech-mashing Exteel. Fanzine artist Dave Hamann will also be on hand to draw City of Heroes' character sketches for players.

A few days later, July 29 - 31 in Brighton, England, NCsoft Europe will be showing the media its highly anticipated fantasy, wing-sprouting MMO, Aion: The Tower of Eternity. This will be the first time western journalists will have seen Aion since the summer of 2007, and things have changed. Three weeks later (August 20 - 24) Aion will be on display again at the Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany (Hall 3, Booth B20).

The last stop on the NCsoft bus ride will be at the Penny Arcade Expo (booth #642) in Seattle, August 29 - 31. PAX has become a pretty significant gaming con, and for NCsoft to show up with many of the their games (Aion, Exteel, Dungeon Runners, CoX, Guild Wars, and Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa) says a lot. What's more, Guild Wars' fans will be treated to a special player tournament while Exteel and Dungeon Runners' teams will get play sessions in the special LAN area. There will also be speaking sessions in the auditorium for fans to learn more about their many MMOs.

Dungeon Runners, the heavily satirical hack-'n-slash free-to-play MMO, has gotten even more chunky and delicious with the release of the third "Chunk". The chunk, which is a major content update (in the same fashion that NCSoft's own City of Heroes does Issues) includes all sorts of improvements and benefits for free members and paying members alike. There's a balancing of the PvP system, added membership benefits, new quests and NPCs (of course), and a variety of quality of life enhancements. Overall, it's a very solid addition to the game, and if you play Dungeon Runners, you'll be delighted with all the new stuff.

On Tuesday NCsoft announced a strategic partnership with voice chat technology provider Vivox to add voice support across its library of titles. The partnership creates an NCsoft-branded communications portal between all games in the NCsoft library and will include a robust feature-set, including: voice mail and communication via regular phones and text messages.

"We will be able to offer our players a commanding set of communication tools that will simplify communications amongst the player base with far reaching options," said Peter Jarvis, vice president of operations for NCsoft North America. "We anticipate a successful integration and long-term relationship [with Vivox]."

No estimated date of implementation for the tech was announced.

[via Develop Mag]