Most of the people that read this probably are avid DR-for-life fans that love to play the game, like myself. A lot of us really enjoy DR for different reasons, including humor and the "not-a-game-taking-over-your-life" feeling but could the reasons we all love DR be the limiting factors in keeping DR a small-community game that will never see the stats other MMORPGS rake in?


1. Free! And small membership fee!
This actually appeals to the widest portion of the gaming world- People that like to play for free. Good? Sure, but not profitable.
For example: Runescape is also free with small membership fee, yet look at it's great financial success! How is DR failing at this? Maybe it isn't because of this. This in itself isn't a huge "reason", but doesn't help the situation when you look at #2.

2. Arcade-feel Casual-playing hack-n-slash
There, I said it in the title.
Arcade-Feel: I'm going to be bold and say this: There isn't a lot of depth to the game, compared to other successful MMORPGS. Storylines and Quests are lacking in content. All there is to do is kill monsters, and once you cap at the highest level, there's nothing else to do. This turns off many mainstream gamers.

Casual-playing: WoW and Runescape, for examples, both have millions of players with testimonials of giving up their complete social and family life just to play the game 24/7. They're addicting, they're the fad, everyone's doing it. Dungeon runners may well be the exact opposite. In DR there's a small community to start and all there is do to is hack up monsters and chat with friends. When you leave DR you really dont get the "omg i have to sleep 1.233 hours so i can get enough energy to push the buttons for another 50 hours straight before another sanctioned 1.233 hour break im so addicted omggggg" feeling. You can casually come on, play 15-30 minutes, and log off and leave it for another day when you have some free time. This again, is a turnoff to mainstream gamers.

Hack-n-slash: Simple.. all there really is to do is kill monsters, or PvP.


Mainstream gamers like to be captured by the game they're playing. They like to have the "i want to play more, forget other things, i just want to play more" feeling after the first click or push of a button. Whether it be PC MMO's, or console games, people like to play a game that's exciting, capturing, and one that everyone is talking about. While DR gets more and more free publicity and marketing each day, and plenty of positive buzz, it just isn't enough yet to keep the knowledgable-of-MMO gamers around. Most of the reviews I have read came to similar results: Good game, but only for a little bit until you get bored of it.

This review doesn't surprise me, and when other people read the reviews, they get the idea "oh ill just get bored of it after an hour anyway, im not even gonna try it". Word of mouth is a powerful thing, whether it be good or bad for you. Unfortunately for DR, the style and casual premise behind the game could be the reason why numbers aren't exploding upward at ungoshly rates of speed, and a reason why I personally think that the Retail Box won't be that big of an increase in dedicated players, and why I think DR will always have the same kind of numbers and playerase.

Feel free to agree or disagree, or add to it; This is all just my observations and opinions, so please keep an open mind

I think you're basically right, for the most part, but I think that's ok. DR doesn't have the foundation, really, to support the kind of populations that other games maintain. I certainly hope the game continues to grow, progress, and evolve, but in order to realize the kind aspirations you suggest, DR would have to be turned into something else.

I have spent a lot of time on console games, delving into RPG storylines and enjoying the ride and the character develpoment (narratively and battle-wise). Those games were built on a pretty fundamentally different foundation. With it's current set-up, how deep a story could DR really have? I enjoyed the quest line in Shadow's, where you had to backtrack to fight in old dungeons and travel the DR land to gather intel- all the way back to Dew Valley, but unless a player-driven narrative were developed and new locations built to support it, I think those quests are about as deep as it's gonna' get.

I occasionally replay my old PS2 RPG's, and what usually happens, in cases where I can't skip the storyline, is I drop the controller and twiddle my thumbs until I can get back to active play. Many of the storylines are great, but they're only great once. With DR, since I have multiple toons, I can just jump right in and get to what I want to get to.

And with the exception of w1, where I go for short visits at most, the community is small but not chaotic, which is my preference. Of course, the bigger the player base, the bigger the potential for financial growth, but there's a certain line I'd rather DR not cross as far as its community goes.

So those are my thoughts on the matter.

DR will have to thrive in its own way. I think it is on its way to doing so, albeit slowly. It may never be as big as other MMOs. That is fine as long as the game remains true to itself. Certainly it is possible for the developers to skyrocket DR, but it would lose itself in the flight.

And that's fine with me since there really isn't another MMO quite like Dungeon Runners. It wins on originality.

In addition, the fact that you can't trade money totally eliminates the gold farmers, the coin-selling websites, and especially the morons who constantly create free (or trial) accounts & characters just to spam 'guarantees of the lowest gold prices' and 'visit goldhackingwankers.com' (or whatever), etc... across all the chat channels.

The fact that Stephen has said that "THERE SHALT BE NO TRADING OF THE COIN" is incentive enough for me to remain a paid subscriber to this game.

Also, The 'small' feel of the game is GREAT, and with servers limited to 250 players, the game doesn't feel like someone tossed a bucket of hundred dollar bills off a building in downtown New York (ok, visualize, people... visualize -- lots of free money, big crowd... ah, nevermind...), and if it does, you can always log into another less populated server to play. (a feature I think is long overdue in online games!)

and please tell me: which mmo has no maximum level? or what do you do in other games when you reach max level?

If I reach lv100 I'll try to create the ultimate PvP character, and gonna PvP a lot. I'm playing mmorpgs for 5 years now, and until now this game has the best pvp system by far.

You don't die by one hit from a noobish kid who plays 24/7 or spent hundreds of dollars to "buy" his character.

If you have above average items (85-90%), and you'r talented, you can beat stronger ppl than you in a balanced battle.

There's no other mmo where you could do this.

Wirth, the point I was trying to make is that there is no endgame for level 100's besides farming for the best T3 gear over and over. Some go to PvP for some fun, but others dont enjoy PvP. When there's nothing to do besides farm a boss over and over to get the best t3 loot for kicks, and no endgame in sight, a lot of players see no point in staying, and leave. Therefore less people playing the game. Sure they get replaced by new members, but we will have to reel in MORE new members than people leaving the game in order to see growth. This is where the nature of DR limits itself as far as playerbase goes.

Eve Online.

I'd rather play a level limited game, or one with a re-mort system, like which has been suggested. Otherwise, you can just grind levels into oblivion.

Out of curiosity, what sort of end game content would you, ForT, or anyone else, suggest? Suggestions I've seen are for side-games, 100 only dungeons that reward special items, things that would definitely add some diversity but wouldn't really address the gameplay goal- distracting from the grind or collecting loot.

This is where I'm confused...isn't DR supposed to be all those things? Meaning, a casual, non-involved, not really but semi-addicting, chat room that you can beat stuff up in? So if it is, then DR has succeeded and what's the point of the topic?


As for doing stuff at level 100, or the lack of stuff to do besides farming for more gold, better gear and PvP...isn't that what the rest of the MMORPGs do? I mean, I just started playing WoW on a trial account a few days ago and have talked to a few folk who are level 70 as well as have read boards and that's all anyone seems to do at max level there. One person told me that when the WoW expansion comes out it will be "...grind to 80, get new gear and start a new Death Knight toon". So again, what's different about DR than WoW other than WoW has more classes/races (and also cost $15 a month after the initial game cost)? Grind grind grind....farm farm farm...gear gear gear...chat chat chat. It's all the same the way I see it.

Exactly. Nothing really changes at level 100, except you don't get exp anymore. It's still the same gold and gear farming you did for 99 levels previously...

Nothing to say. Just "bravo". *applauds*

To Alien:

I do not specifically have any suggestion for endgame material. I have not thought about it nor am I one that has left due to no endgame. I am simply making observations of players actions and noticing trends in reasoning why they are leaving, limiting the playerbase from growing at a faster rate. That is what this thread is about, to discuss reasons why DR limits itself from growing at ungoshly rates.

Yes, DR is supposed to be all those things. This topic was meant to shed light to those who have high hopes for DR becoming a super-huge-player-mmo-that-is-top-of-every-single-list-and-always-talked-about. I guess this was a semi-blog-type post, not really saying much but hoping for those who read it, to have an open mind and realize some things that are painfully obvious. DR is successful in it's own way, but will never see numbers that huge MMO's produce. Another reason why I posted this is to give hope to players that might think DR is "going down the drain" just because we lost a few staff up top. It isn't. DR HAS been seeing a slowly growing playerbase over the months, and with the Retail Box in stores, the numbers should go up a bit too. But it's important to realize that DR limits itself from being at the top played list just by the nature of the game, so numbers will probably always look similar to what they are now.

-Goya