Between now and next month's E3 Expo Dungeon Runner, NCSoft's free-to-play online dungeon crawler, is getting some major updates.

The game will still look the same, but once the upgrades hits Dungeon Runners will feature voice chat, a new play control system, more quests and, the best part, some player versus player action. One thing though won't change, the game will continue to run on a split free and pay-to-play model.

"This is an experiment for NCSoft," said company spokesman Mike Crouch. "This has gone exceptionally well for our company."

In Dungeon Runners gamers can either play for free, getting access to the full game minus a few features or choose to pay $5 a month to unlock some extras. Currently paying gamers get access to special stackable potions which are more powerful than the sort the free gamers can use. Paying gamers also get an in-game bank to store items and more high quality level items (think WoW's epic items).

Game designer Stephen Nichols said NCSoft plans to release new builds of the game every month, with every other month's build including a major new feature.

The first new build for the game will hit in a couple of weeks, he said, and include some major tweaks and bug fixes to the game as well as a lot more content.

"We've cleaned up the niggling control issues that people have complained about," Nichols said. "The (June) build has the ability to move around while you chat."

The June build will include 60 more quests for characters who are level 40 to 50, four new armor sets and a handful of new items including some mythic ones, such as a mythic guitar that features two necks and bares a striking resemblance to an electric guitar.

The July build will fix up some of the client server lag associated with movement, but more importantly it will launch both voice chatting and player versus player gaming.

The player-versus-player will two teams of five people to take each other on in a randomly generated dungeon instance. Gamers will be paired up with an automatic matchmaking system and then dropped into a PVP map with base camps on either end of the map.

Initially player-versus-player gaming won't come with many incentives, besides the fun of ganking your fellow gamers. After the issues have been worked out of PVP and the mode balanced, NCSoft plans to add the ability to level up your character in PVP and perhaps the ability to win special items in PVP matches, but that upgrade probably won't hit until September, Nichols said.

The voice chat hitting in July will use a proprietary similar to the one used in Auto Assault to allow up to three players to talk to one another. Non-paying gamers will only be able to listen and not talk, Nichols said.

Nichols said he's been pretty happy with the number of gamers who have checked out the game and decided to stick around, but that want to try and get more people to give it a try. While he declined to discuss the ratio of free to paying gamers for Dungeon Runners, he said it was a "healthy ratio."

I haven't really had a chance to check the game out. I played around with it for a few minutes a couple of weeks back and from what I saw it looked pretty impressive. I particularly liked the sense of humor the game seemed to have.

I'll be checking it out more later this month. If you play feel free to drop me some tips. Brian Crecente

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