In another post someone made a comment along the lines of "Dungeon Runners is the grinding part of WoW."

Now I was thinking about this. Yeah I know, that's dangerous.

Anyway, like I said, I was thinking about this. And essentially it's true. Now the grinding thing is what made me give up on WoW a long time ago. So why does DR seem different? I have an idea that works for me, and it may just work for some other DR fans as well.

1. The drops. There are a lot of them. It's only a matter of time, probably a short time, before you get something really cool. King's Coins add to this. Last time I played, I started with ~60. When I was done playing for the night I had 104. It's just a lot of fun. As well, at level 23 my fighter has 780,000 gold. The only thing that I've really needed to buy so far is health pots. I guess I'm just a... um... treasure (insert euphemism for lady of the evening here).

2. Variable difficulty. The difficulty slider is sheer genius. Right now I'm playing on extreme just about everywhere. With the occasional foray into insane. Extreme is the one just before insane right?

(One quick question: Is there any way to keep difficulty settings separate for each character? My level 10 mage was getting pureed for a while before I realized that she was on extreme just like my 23 fighter.)

Maybe I missed something here, but I love this game. Call me fanboi. I don't care.

To answer the question part of your thread. No, there isnt a way to keep separate between characters. It has thrown a number of us for a loop. Right now the settings are tied to your account and not the specific character.

This has bugged us since multiple character support was on the test server (August):

Linky...

While it's not particularly game breaking, it would be a nice QoL fix.

That's an interesting way to look at it. On the other hand, I also see DR to be a game that has extracted all the GOOD elements from the MMO genre, while leaving out the rest. Basically, it has all the action without the pre-requisite "work" that other games sometimes include.

1)Travel times. Obviously, we don't really have any

2)Solo-friendly. I don't know of many very games where enjoy the experience of taking on that many mobs while still enjoying the freedom of playing solo...

3)Easily accessible content. There is no "getting keyed" stuff to worry about; if you happen to fall within that level range, you can start doing what you want. There is no "oh I gotta do all this other stuff first."

I can see the beauty in all sorts of MMO styles, and I'm not saying one way is better than the other. I just personally have noticed that some MMOs hide their "carrots" very carefully with a bunch of loops you have to jump through. Now, you may like hoops. That's cool too.

Then you got the games where you can see the carrot...but it is soooo far down the path it feels like it will take forever to get there. There are NO carrots along the way. Sure, you are real proud when you finally get that carrot, but did you have fun along the way? (Some people would, and some people wouldn't. Again, it just depends on what you like.)

And then you have DR, where you happen to get plenty of carrots. Hmmmm. carrots.

To me, grinding is something you have to do a lot of before you notice an achievement. (It can be almost painful....) And in DR, you get a lot of achievements, so I personally don't think it is a word that quite fits. You may just not get an achievement for say, "underwater basket weaving" since we do tend to be about fightin' and lootin'

All this talk about carrots. I'm getting hungry.

And since it is Halloween, replace all the "carrots" here with the word "pumpkins".

/I ate too much sugar today, so I hope my analogies made sense.

And thinking is good...I'm glad you posted, because I'm enjoying it. This thread is pretty non-dangerous in my eyes

Ive played alot of games starting back in EQ1 & of course WOW. Tested alot even Ryzom. I think I like this game because it doesnt require alot of thinking to play. You can just jump in & have some fun. Talk to peeps if you feel social or not.

& the comment about Devs responding to the players is a big plus. I was really surprised by it & felt dam they actually care.

Your talking about grinding. Sometimes I wonder if you ever really did. I remember sitting on a rock in EQ after about 3 hrs of doing nothing but killing Ice Dragons & asking myself why am I doing this? In Wow there was "farming" killing the same monsters over & over so you could get a certain item so you can make another so you could go raid. Yuck! I hate grinding I hate farming.

I like this game right now it suits me. I can solo even as a squishy mage. I rock! I rarely die & even dying is painless. Ever been on a corpse run as a squishy? O its fun.

The carrot to me is the next level or the next level of the dungeon. & of course what cool outfit can my mage (or ranger) find today. (IMO need more varity but I bet thats coming). I like the silly humor. Whisper: Need to give that dam banker new lines.

Somebody showed me the shadow dungeon yesterday I was glad to know that the dungeons scenery does change. (Reminds me of Diablo) Makes me wonder what the crazy Devs are going to do in the future & thats the other thing you know there is going to be one. That they are going to add more content, new dungeons, quests etc. I for one am looking forward to it.

I like the nice peeps I have meet in game too. I tend to solo till I meet a boss I cant do & then ask for help & never failed to find somebody willing. Thanks guys.

When I first found this game I thought how silly bet this gets old fast & now lol Im still playing somehow its addictive. Its a great way to escape the real life grind & relax.

All this talk of carrots ... much prefer skittles. Lots and lots of skittles.

It's different than most mmorpg grinding because the gameplay is actually, well, gameplay. You don't just click a mob and wait for it to die. You run around and actually interact. It's kinda fast paced.

One of the things that irked me the most about WoW is the "get 10 wolf's paws" type quest where you ended up having to kill 100 wolves because not all of them would drop a paw. I thought that was ridiculous. Especially since if you tried to fight more than 2 wolves at once = death.

Yes, DR has the same type of quests - paint buckets, fizzy drinks, etc. But instead of getting one drop out of 20 kills, you can sometimes pick up several items from just one group of enemies.

The game just doesn't feel like a grind fest. The only time it does feel a little "grindy" is when I have to re-visit a lower dungeon to complete a quest. i.e. The contact is on level 2 of the dungeon and I have logged out between getting the mission and completing it on level 5. But, I live with it as it's only a minor complaint.