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Kill Ten Thousand Rats

The most common enemies throughout the low levels of Dungeon Runners are the whiskers, humanoid rats of many shapes and colors. There are rat men, rat blademasters, rats in clouds of poison, rats that spit poison, rats with flamethrowers, rat shamans, poisonous rat shamans, exploding rats, and a poisonous rat shaman boss who has a rat blademaster bodyguard and summons rats in clouds of poison. Your first dungeon boss is a rat, and you will be pursued through the next three dungeons by his vengeful family, friends, former roommates, masseuse, and DJ.

: Zubon

A week in the dungeon: day 1 2 3 4 4.5 5 6 7

Dungeon Humor

Dungeon Runners is funny. It does not take itself seriously. NPCs mock themselves, each other, and you. The newbie merchant is a great example of this: “All my stuff is crap!” You will meet Lothar of the Hill Mound People and some intentionally poor celebrity impersonators. Random item names follow Diablo II’s pattern, only you might have a Vacillating Cardboard Axe of the Penitent Koala. You can summon a giant BBQ turkey leg.

The dungeons are explicitly theme parks for violent tourists. You are a dungeon runner, not a hero. Quests include auditing monsters, the “Crazy Cat Lady” series, and collecting miniatures. You will fight for the five rings of Captain Planet Pollution. Conventions are used or skewered as is most amusing. The new dungeon will have goldfarmers as enemies to slay.

And, for the more juvenile, the AE poison skill is a fart joke. Its damage is based on intelligence, so the smartest mages in the world are the most likely to be… No, I cannot finish that sentence. I ignore that animation as I am fighting.

As some have noted, this hurts immersion. It does, however, make for a fun time.

: Zubon

A week in the dungeon: day 1 2 3 4 4.5 5 6 7

They’re killing PvE!

(hot damn, I so love sensationalist titles)

I look at many of the upcoming titles, and what do I see?

Age of Conan: Mostly PvP
Warhammer Online: Mostly PvP
Pirates of the Burning Sea: Mostly PvP
GW:EN / GW2: Mostly PvP

And so on. What the hell, people? Have we given up on PvE? Have we collectively accepted that there’s no way around WoW’s raid-centric PvE (almost universally maligned, yet at the same time almost universally played), so we don’t bother anymore? What’s a progress-minded soloist PvEr to do? Do I have to write a manifesto? Would it have readers, or would they all be busy killing each other?

Do I have to start letterbombing some offices? No! I can’t! That would be PvP! Aaaaargh!

This Dungeon Has No Class

When you start, it looks like Dungeon Runners has classes. You start as a mage, ranger, or warrior. Townston has three trainers, one for each class. You quickly learn that anyone can learn any skill. Your starting class only determines which four skills you start with. The elemental resistance buffs are spread across the three classes, and one of the best mage AOE damage spells is a ranger skill.

Your limit is that you can have ten skills active at a time. Think Guild Wars, only you can change them mid-dungeon. You have one hotbar, with 1-8 plus two mouse keys. This includes your passive skills, which only work if you have them on the hotbar. Changing skills activates their cooldown timer, which is irrelevant for attacks but keeps you from having all the buffs active at once.

A respec is just a button that resets your stats (and costs you gold). Re-allocate your stats, change your skill bar, and put on some new equipment. Congratulations, you are a ranger today.

: Zubon

A week in the dungeon: day 1 2 3 4 4.5 5 6 7

Cat Figurine: 1/46

I was telling a friend a couple weeks ago about the Spectral Tiger pet from the Warcraft CCG. Sexy blue sheen and transparency for the low, low price of only $500 on eBay. They do look pretty awesome, but $500. Holy shit! That’s when my friend told me about the tameable Ghost Sabers you can get. No sexy blue sheen, but you get the transparency for a fraction of the cost. And by “fraction of the cost” I mean “free.”

But surely, they wouldn’t happen to be the level I needed, right? I checked Petopia and was pleasantly surprised to see that the ghost sabers are levels 19 and 20. My main at the time was a level 19 (I just restarted) Blood Elf. Perfect!

Continue reading Cat Figurine: 1/46

A Quick Run Through Dungeon Runners

Dungeon Runners is Diablo II with humor instead of horror. How would you react if Blizzard announced ongoing support for Diablo II, with an update every month or two and a $5 monthly cost?

Dungeon Runners is better than Diablo II. It is colorful and tongue-in-cheek, family-friendly without being Disney. The graphics are large and rendered MMO-style, rather than Diablo’s perma-zoomed-out view. You pick up a variety of WoW-style quests that lead you through a variety of dungeons. The game is classless, so you can learn all the skills from all the trainers. It has much better connectivity than BattleNet. You can play for free with no box cost.

Dungeon Runners is the same as Diablo II. You click on monsters to swing or shoot. The same models keep returning with different colors. Sometimes they will be bosses with glowing auras. The inventory screen even looks the same.

Dungeon Runners is worse than Diablo II. It costs $5/month to use the bank and the best items. The range of abilities is small, with nothing like the necromancer, assassin, or druid. There will not be PvP until the next patch. You can have only one character per account until the next patch (and three thereafter). It has no slotted items or Horadric Cube function.

That is the quick version. I will have more comments over the coming week. I have already sent them $4.99.

: Zubon

A week in the dungeon: day 1 2 3 4 4.5 5 6 7

Ghost towns

What’s up with MMO developers creating isolated cities in their games?

It’s odd. In WoW, we’ve get Darnassus and Silvermoon City both in the middle of nowhere. There’s all this beautiful content that you pretty much never experience unless you’re a newbie, or have to go there for an occasional quest. And on those occasions, it’s a lonely, isolating experience.

It doesn’t seem to be a mistake — after all, this had clearly already happened with Darnassus when Blizzard devided to build Silvermoon out in the boonies. I hear that when the expansion first came out, Silvermoon was teeming with noobs. Now it’s pretty desolate.

I saw the same thing in Asheron’s Call. After the initial release, all player activity coalesced into a few cities. The rest were ghost towns — a bunch of NPC’s hanging out, staring at each other from their storefronts day to day.

Does this happen in most MMO’s, or are these exceptions? Are there reasons I’m missing for not making these cities more centrally located?

Get yer stickyfingers outta my pockets!

Stealing, Thieving, Pickpocketing, Robbing, Breaking and Entering… Should this sort of stuff be allowed in our MMORPGs? There is certainly a nice adrenaline rush to the process of robbing someone blind and getting away with it, but what about the victim? I had a car stolen once and I felt completely violated and helpless. For me though, it wasn’t that my car was stolen, it was that I didn’t know who did it and I couldn’t DO anything about it. All of my anger and venting was towards a ghost.

Anyway…does having these skills and abilities in a MMORPG make it better? If you remove the thieving bits from the classical rogue archetype, is sneaking, backstabbing, and picklock enough? Do they HAVE to be able to steal? I’m not asking about how to implement this, or rules and restrictions to keep things fair or not, but rather what do you think about having it as part of the game to start with?

Stealing, pickpocketing, corpse looting, robbing player homes…you get the idea.

Give me your arguments for or against and any personal anecdotes. Try to look at things from the other point of view as well. Some things are a necessary evil…and others are not at all.

Good news offline

To me, at least, but I suppose it’s also very good news to a few other crazy gamers like me out there.

Apparently, Mafia II is being made. By the same guys, even. Which is pretty much the gaming equivalent of Scorsese waking up one day and saying “Hey, you know what? I think ‘Goodfellas’ needs a part two”. The first one was a superb game, with incredibly yummy storytelling and ambiance. So if you haven’t played it, you can pick it up on the cheap nowadays and it’ll end up right up there in your list of best gaming dollars spent.

I’m a grown gamer, one that handles screenshots with a lot of care, but I’ll be damned if they don’t look good.