NCSoft, all things golden in massive-multiplayers that don’t end in ‘craft’, today announced the official launch of Dungeon Runners, their new MMORPG based on team-raiding fantasy-themed dungeons. Sporting a more playful, cartoony art style than Guild Wars, Dungeon Runners also features a similar price tag to GW, free! That’s right, Dungeon Runners is NCSoft’s first free to download and free to play MMO. There is a premium subscription model at $4.99 however, which gives players access to a bank to store their dungeon treasure, high-level equipment (such as armor) and the ability to stack potions in your inventory. All around, it’s looking good and I’m hoping NCSoft’s approach starts to work. Now, if they’d just quit screwing around and introduce that one-price, play-all subscription model similar to SOE’s which NCSoft’s CEO teased us all with a year or so ago!

Official press release after the jump..

NCsoft Unveils Dungeon Runners Game With A Free-to-Download and Play Business Model

Tuesday 29th May/…NCsoft® North America announced it has opened to the public its first free-to-download and play game, Dungeon Runnersâ„¢, as the company continues to expand its online entertainment offerings. Dungeon Runners is an online, multiplayer role playing game in a fast-paced sword-and-shield setting where defeating monsters and evil enemies results in piles of loot and treasure.

Dungeon Runners, currently available strictly via free digital download, has a play-for-free tier where players can access large chunks of the game’s content, and a “membership level” for $4.99 per month where players are given, among other things, log-in queue priority and access to the most powerful items, weapons and armor. Membership status also includes bank storage for up to 220 loot items and the ability to stack potions in one slot to save room for even more loot.

In Dungeon Runners, there are a variety of character archetypes to choose from including fighter, mage and ranger in a classless RPG system where players are not locked into skills that are usually associated with their specific archetype.

Dungeon Runners focuses mainly on action and battles with limited death penalties and endless gold, weapons, armor and magic items available to claim after defeating hordes of monsters. The game also features a lighter side, with subtle and not-so-subtle humor sprinkled throughout the game including names of many items in the game. For example, one particularly dangerous sword is called “Shifty’s Crystal Sword of the Hypersonic Monkey” and a very helpful magic item called the “Pulsating Dragon Eye Amulet of the Thorny Donkey.”

“Dungeon Runners is a lot of fun and doesn’t take itself too seriously. But the game will take players into an action packed-adventure, where they blaze through a maze of dungeons, face fierce monsters and formidable opponents to become a hero,” said Stephen Nichols, NCsoft’s producer and lead programmer for Dungeon Runners. “Regardless if a player pays to be a member or plays for free, Dungeon Runners will deliver more than 200 hours of game play and a continually growing number of missions and quests. The game is also designed to appeal to gamers who have limited time to give to a game, but it will have the content to keep players adventuring for hours at a time.”

While NCsoft presents Dungeon Runners as a scaled down version of its other online games, Dungeon Runners is far superior to other “free with membership” type games due to the high standards NCsoft’s development team applies to all the products it creates, regardless of business model.
“Dungeon Runners is a bold leap into a new business model for NCsoft and it is taking us into a new direction in terms of the kind of games we can provide our customers,” said Robert Garriott, CEO of NCsoft North America. “There are plenty of other ‘free’ games available for online RPG fans, but none that packs as many features as Dungeon Runners has or comes with the NCsoft stamp of quality. We expect that players will receive this game warmly because it is fast, fun and free. It is hard to beat that deal.”

Dungeon Runners is available to download and play for free at www.dungeonrunners.com/join.html.
Moreover, an exclusive Dungeon Runners promotion with bonus contents can be found on FilePlanet.com can be found at http://www.fileplanet.com/promotions/mmoclub/dungeon_runners.aspx from now until July 4th 2007.

Play free: Dungeon Runners

9dragons, the martial arts MMO from (the new) Acclaim is currently running their open beta phase and have finally added a European server for us on the motherland. 9dragons is a massive-multiplayer martial arts title, re-creating the ancient myths of early Asian, allowing you to explore, learn and battle rival fighters along with your friends, mentors and fellow disciples.

Chop more: 9Dragons

Having played around with developing on the Torque Engine in the past, I still like to pop in and see what’s going on with the enhancement of the engine and related tools from time to time. That’s how I came upon Dreamlords and whoa was I surprised. The power of Torque is starting to really shine and Dreamlords looks to be an extremely interesting title. Combining an MMORPG with traditional RTS battled and long-term tactical strategy, Dreamlords looks to be a must for any indie games and MMO fan.

Hit the jump to watch an introduction to Dreamlords gameplay..

Dreamlords

Rupture, the social network for World of Warcraft players run by Napter-founder Shawn Fanning has gone live, allowing users to meet with real life people who play the most popular MMO in the universe. Rupture allows you to automatically publish your character and guild profiles to your profile page, as well as share pictures, chat with friends and recruit new people into your fold.

Read more: Rupture

World of Warcraft developer Blizzard Entertainment today announced that worldwide subscriptions to it’s monster MMORPG have surpassed the 8 million mark. A fitting announcement 1 week before their much anticipated expansion, Burning Crusade, which debuts on January 16th. Prediction: expect a global meltdown of servers as users attempt logging into Blizzard servers all at one time. Have fun!

Read more: World of Warcraft surpasses 8 million subscribers worldwide

Oh how I wait anxiously for a Battlestar Galactica MMORPG, but, until that highly unlikely day dawns, I’ll have to live with user-created machine in order to live those dreams out. Here, we’ve got the opening credits of the amazingly sci-nerd television show, recreated from within World of Warcraft. I especially love the multiple cyclon clones and the “Six” model.

See more: World of Battlestar @ Machinima

Hit indie MMORPG Minions of Mirth has won Game Tunnel’s technical excellence award, a nod to the single-developer project which was created over the course of 11 months. Using the indie games engine of choice, Garage Game’s Torque 3d, Minions of Mirth sports over 30,000 registered players, offers both Windows XP and OS X clients and even allows players to host their own persistent game servers, all run by a highly technical and experienced two man show. Kudos MoM, keep up the great work.

Minions of Mirth was created using the brilliant Torque Engine from Garage Games, a brilliant and expandable indie games engine which scales well for MMOs, RPGs, casino games, RTSs and much more.

Read more: GameTunnel.com’s 2006 awards | Minions of Mirth

Many, many, many, many many people are losing their shit in anticipation of World of Warcraft’s upcoming expansion, The Burning Crusade. Dropping January 16, 2007 in the US and EU, The Burning Crusade is increasing the level cap to 70, the killer feature will most certainly suck WoW’s certainly reverse WoW’s slowly increasing burnrate, along with many new spells and talents for each class and two new playable races (Blood Elves and Draenai), among many other additions.

Watch Blizzards somewhat recently released intro for The Burning Crusades after the jump..

Read more: The Burning Crusade | Burning Crusade entry @ Wikipedia

Codemasters Online announced last-week that fantasy-based MMORPG Archlord will become free to play on January 4th, 2007 for all players, both old and new. Codemasters will continue support for the fledgling Korean massive multiplayer, which has been struggling with balancing issues and attracting an audience in the massively overrun fantasy MMO world. Archlord’s expansion to Episode II is still underway as planned and all players who buy the boxed copy will be able to access both Episode I and Episode II for free.

Read more: Archlord now free to play

Armada Online brings an indie tear to my eye. A sci-fi themed MMORPG with some of the sickliest-sweet art direction I’ve ever seen, Armada takes the hyper real art style of Eve Online and gives it a coating of playfulness. Don’t be mistaken though, Armada is already a surprisingly solid game, featuring quite an in-depth items, weapons and stats system for the RPG nerds deep down inside all of us and a rapidly growing and enthusiastic community. Currently the world features 1 PvP and 1 PvE instance, though I expect this to grow as more players discover the joy of massive PvP space battles. Hopefully a Mac client is forthcoming, since this would be a nice addition to the paltry options available to us Mac users (who like to keep their PCs permanently shutdown).

Read more: Armada Online