Freeloading Part 3: Dungeon Runners
It’s funny, I never get around to writing these until months after I play the game I want to talk about.
Dungeon Runners is a free-to-play mumorpegah (MMORPG). Well, maybe it’s not a MMORPG. I don’t really know. Dorkier people than I argue with each other all the time (on the internet no less!) over whether or not games like this or Guild Wars or whatever actually “count” as being MMOs as if the genre has some purity that must not be tainted. Whatever.
The game looks a lot like World Of Warcraft. It plays a lot like Diablo. You hang around some hub location like a town, shop, get quests, and then go run dungeons. The dungeons are randomly generated every time you go in. You kill monsters and get loot.
It has two things going for it. One is the price. The game is a free way to scratch that MMO itch should it happen to crop up. The company makes its money through advertisements and optional subscriptions. The advertisements show up in two ways: banner ads at the top of the screen while playing, and splash screens occasionally popping up for a few seconds when the game loads new zones. The banner ads sound obnoxious, but I actually found that they disappeared from my perception within seconds.
The optional subscription (5 bucks a month, I think?) gets rid of the ads, gives you some basic inventory perks, and (most importantly, heh) allows you to use the best items should they happen to drop for you. I must admit, it is pretty tempting to sign up for a subscription once you start to get a bigger and bigger collection of gear that is much sweeter than the junk you are wearing but is marked as “Requires Membership.”
The second thing this game has going for it is the overall tone. While I will defend the EQ/WoW style of gameplay when it comes to the actual combat mechanics, I kind of have to side with Jon Blow when it comes to the overall structure of your typical MMO as far as value to humanity. Setting aside extreme social criticism, however, I think that most everyone would agree that the quest design/writing structure in these games is on the whole pretty ridiculous. Dungeon Runners at least sort of takes that ridiculousness and, well, runs with it.
The first vendor you meet talks with Krusty’s voice and tells you to leave him the hell alone. The first town you reach is the town of Townston, where they send you to audit the dungeon of Algernon to make sure all of the monsters have their licensing papers up to date. (You verify this by killing the monsters and taking their papers, of course.) Generic rare items are typically given names like “Sweet Cardboard Sword of the Freakish Platypus”, and the unique items get even better ones like “Sissirat’s Brother’s Cousin’s Roomate’s Staff of Something Really Awesome” or “Mr. Fracture-Upper” or my favourite: the Random Axe of Kindness.
I drifted away from the game around the time I got to “Algor’s Terror Dome” where I had to go and kill the hippy environmentalist orc protesters and take their placards.
That sort of brings me to the downside of the game… it’s kind of dull and repetitive. The randomly generated dungeons spruce things up a bit, and maybe I’m just not an inventive enough player, but as a mostly mage-build I basically slotted in 2 or 3 spells, and held down a button or two until things died. Over and over. Not much variety in tactics at any point. Very mindless. The challenge is supposed to scale up if you group with people, though, but I’m kind of antisocial so that never happened.
The end result was that while I was playing before I came home for Christmas, when I got back I never touched it again. Maybe some other time.