Thursday, September 17, 2009

Another NCSoft MMO Bites the Dust

Dungeon Runners is shutting down. I can't say I'm surprised. I tried the game a few times and thought it was cute, but ultimately I decided the game wasn't for me. The game used a freemium model of play where you could optionally choose to pay for extras. Though those extras included better loot and stacking potions, and without them inventory management was annoying, so it kind, to me, like it was necessary.

I wasn't attracted to the humor or the cartoonish graphics. The game didn't take itself seriously at all, which might be part of the appeal to me, but not for me. They are putting a nuke in the main town set to blow up when the servers go down for good. Yeah, a nuke. And some of the weapons included pizza cutters and guitars.

So it's not a game that I'll miss. Though I have to wonder what's going on with NCSoft after several consistent failures in a row. Of course it makes no sense to run a game that doesn't make money, but it almost seems like they aren't even bothering to try. At least Sony tosses them into their Station Access collection where they can go on into MMO undeath. Sure, Sony shut down Matrix Online but they still have quite a few games like Planetside and Pirates of the Burning Sea that would have definitely seen death's door already if they were NCSoft titles.

1 comment:

Stropp said...

I've just posted about this on my blog as well.

I'm thinking the same thing, it doesn't look like NCSoft are even trying to keep their games going if they don't perform to expectations. There's no revamps, no marketing push, not even a NGE. It's a case of it's got a stone in your shoe, get the rifle and take it out the back.

It doesn't give me much confidence to start playing their games.