Even though Stephen has stated Dungeon Runners isn't shutting down, it's nice to see some official news released about DR, given the speculation in the marketplace about it's future. For example, DR dropped to #10 on Ralsu's Top Ten Free-to-Play Games on TenTonHammer, due to rumors of it going away. From The Escapist:

By support and attention, I'm assuming he's referring to the much smaller development team. Other service aspects, like Customer Support and Network Administration are shared resources.

... a.k.a. 13 of 18 are no longer there...

Official news is nice to see though. Not that I doubted Stephen, but official statements mean that NCSoft are going to keep DR around long-term, and keep putting resources towards it. Not as much as before maybe, but still...

Yay DR. And yay that the rest of the dev tem will still have jobs!

I just wonder: Why did they hire more people just before they let so many go? Seems... Evil.... Ok, don't tell me Bush had had a finger there too! Hehe!

A lot of companies just lay-off as a way of replacing people that have needed to be replaced for a while, but that they could not get rid of in any other way. Employees close to retirement, the ones that are.. um... not the brightest... that sort of thing. The bench-warmers, bluntly put. Lay-offs hardly ever hit the top performers personally. Stars have job security.

Not saying that's the only reason, but a part of the new hires were probably to replace some of the ones that were let go.



Edited by Khazandra (09/19/08 02:32 PM) — reason: clarified

Wasn't it 18 of 23?

Maybe, but that might explain a couple people... not likely that 18 were sub-par. With larger corporations, it tends to run something like this:

Lower level management sees a need or an opportunity and hires accordingly. Upper level management sees the quarterly report and has a knee jerk reaction, in spite of the fact that the new opportunities haven't had time to develop properly.

Of course. I was speaking in very vague general terms, not about the DR dev team in particular.

And yes, that's usually how it happens. Disconnect in communication between levels of management.

From seeing the latest Chunk patch notes,I would say that DR is not shutting down anytime soon.And to be honest,I think that DR is just now taking steam.More people seem to find DR than before. So I think DR will keep growing.
Now the small development team doesn't mean less quality or less attention.As it was pointed in another thread,back when DR had a small team,more patches were done and more fixes.
As far as player support,I would say that it is the community that should provide such support for current,old and new players

quote ' it's unlikely that those titles will receive the same sort of support and attention that they have previously.'

Hmmm, DR always seemed to have a small staff and a pretty nonexistant budget before, so this little cryptic message has me somewhat confused. Stephen I know you can't tell us exact numbers and such, but is your staff even gonna become smaller????? I hope not, because in my mind that would spell the end of DR as we know and love it...... Just my 2 pennies, prolly thinking too hard.

Sooo (and someone PLEASE correct me if I am wrong) this means that while Dungeon Runners wont be going anywhere (for the short term future) we will not be getting much if any new content. Support for game side issues and bug fixes will also appear to be minimal as well as in the quote above the majority of resources will be focused solely on the Guild Wars and Lineage franchises exclusively....

I guess enjoy this Chunk when it goes live as it will likely be the last one we see for a while....

It sucks that if you read between the lines, they ARE planning to kill DR, albeit slowly and far more painfully then if they had simply decided to end it now..... If you cut off the content and support you are guaranteed to lose players due to attrition and not get nearly as many new ones to replace them. Once that ratio gets too great (let's say 2:1 or 3:1 people leaving to joining) THEN in 6 months or another year, the asshats at NCSoft can say "See, no one's playing this game any longer to make it worth our while to keep the game servers going so let's just shut it down".

Why do I end up loving the games that are doomed to failure? This one bothers me the most (as opposed to Hellgate for example) because Dungeon Runners is not a crap game and has real potential for success if NCSoft was willing to invest in it's continued growth and expansion, which after reading this, they have already made up their minds to only devote the barest minimum of resources to offer the most basic game play experience and keep the servers up... that's it.

Sorry for the rant.

DR WILL NOT CLOSE!

If it does, it will get sued by a lot of people. They can't shut it down after people paid.

Sure they can. They can issue pro-rated refunds on any remaining subscription times left in peoples accounts, or they can simply offer people a free 6 month subscription to another NCsoft title which would be the easiest for them to do as there would be no monetary hit to transfer you from DR to COH/COV or Lineage....

Don't think for one second that this isn't about business, first, last and foremost. If NCsoft manglement makes a decision to shut down DR for good, they will do it AFTER consulting with their legal department to CYA (Cover their @$$es) from a legal liability standpoint.

I'm off to stop the autorenew on my credit card and let my free 6 month membership from the retail box kick in. IF the game is still flourishing and thriving in 6 months I *may* sign up again, or since I will likely reach lvl 100 before the 6 months expires, it might just be a good way to go out on top..... who knows?

I took the quote to refer to the cuts that have already been made, more or less. Rather than the support of 23 staff, we have 5. Rather than money for marketing experiments like the box and the collector gnome, DR might let the existing stock of boxes sell out and go back to a more traditional income scheme.

Stephen already said that the smaller staff might allow them to get back to smaller, faster updates -- just not so grand in scope as Chunk might be.

But am I the only who isn't reading a shutdown of development into this?

No, you're not. Just like I might not be the only one who has toyed with the idea of buying Guild Wars, if I still like DR a few months from now.

That's what DR is and where it can shine. It's the first step towards the pay-to-play NCSoft games, it's the bait that lures us into the real revenue traps.

I don't see DR shutting down.
However,I would like to also suggest for all current players to launch a player recruitment campaign to attract more people.Not only will more people make it even more fun to play,but also it will show NCSoft that DR is worth keeping.
On another note,lets also be more friendly,help each other in and out of game

Ummm no In fact back when I stated the first week of release the content was much faster even though they had less devs. Stephen is dedicated and has a great vision IMHO. The staff cuts will not affect content as bad as people think if it is anything like the old days.

Yeah , lately all they seem to release is chunks. back then they released patch after interesting patch and the occasional chunk. The patches always had something worth looking forward to too.

I am sure now they will go back to that

Technically, Chunk #3 was a heave. Steve was calling it that on the boards, but PR announced it as Chunk #3, so there you have it.

Actually, truth be told, I would much prefer the 'updates' to the game to be in smaller patches. As you said, there was something worth looking forward to--don't get me wrong, the upcoming chunk has a LOT to look forward to, but I think that this chunk has really slowed things down as far as game progression, since it's been over 2 months since they've really put anything new in. It's like Christmas--I much prefer getting lots and lots of toys and opening the presents than just 1 big toy.

BFK--still a kid at heart.

I was reading along the same way. when box first came out, and even shortly before that there was 200+ in world 4 everynight. now 75-100 and other worlds seem to be down on attendance as well. if players stop playing then yes would shut it down they are in business to make money after all. in there they keep mention guild wars and another but not dr as getting the attention. personally hope goes no where anytime soon