Dungeon Runners Dead by the End of the Year

Owen Good — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 20:00:00 MDT

It's a "crap sandwich" - bad news between two slices of nice - says Dungeon Runners' producer. While the game goes dark New Year's Eve, they'll try to throw as many bones to its fans as they can until then.

Stephen Nichols, putting it bluntly, says "the game just isn't profitable." Though the game's creative team has some ideas for how to inject life back into it, "they're expensive to implement and pretty risky. Those two facts, coupled with the recent loss of some key developers, make achieving the success we seek pretty much out of the question."

They're just a three man team now. (They were five.) So Dungeon Runners is caput when the big ball plops on Times Square. Until then, they put together some parting gifts for the Dungeon Runners community.

First, those with paid memberships as of Sept. 16 get 30 days free in City of Heroes: Architect Edition and Guild Wars: Prophecies. Nichols added that "any of you guys that need refunds for multiple-month membership purchases will be taken care of."

The other slice of bread in the shit sandwich? "We're going out in style," Nichols said, "with a few changes to the game for the coming 'End Time.'" That means more frequent mythic loot drops, cut rate prices at the King's Coin vendors, and quintupling XP gains "to help you finish the game before year's end!"

And what would be a grand finale without a fireworks show? "We're adding a huge nuke to Townston that will blow up on New Year's and take the game down with it."

Dungeon Runners is Shutting Down [Dungeon Runners, thanks Jason J.]

Video of Tabula Rasa's Final Moments

Owen Good — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 10:00:00 MST

Last night NCSoft shut off Tabula Rasa's servers. Early word had it that the Bane horde would either wipe out humanity, or humanity would do the job itself with a doomsday weapon.

I have never played this game (so have, like, not a lot of people, that's the reason the servers were being turned off.) So I have no idea what exactly is going on here. But several final night videos show humanity winning without annihilating itself. Seems the final battle went down in New York City and mankind triumphed. And then everyone was notified they had been disconnected from the server. Whee.

Here is another video, set to the power-chord ministrations of Queen's "We are the Champions" - that shows people breakdancing with glee once the disconnect comes. (Sorry about the obnoxious Halo Wars ads. I have no control over that, it's someone else's video.) You can also catch tons more screens of "The Last Stand" here.

Tabula Rasa: The Final Stand - Video Tribute [WarCry Network]

Kotaku: the short goodbye

Dungeon Runners Dead by the End of the Year

Video of Tabula Rasa's Final Moments