Dungeon Runners, NCsoft's free-to-play fantasy MMO, will be shutting down on Jan. 1, 2010. "Dungeon Runners just isn't cutting the mustard. If she were a ship, she'd be taking on water. Yeah, she's been taking on water for a long time now. Are my cryptic references too hard to decipher? The game just isn't profitable," said Stephen Nichols, the game's producer and lead programmer.

Nichols said the Dungeon Runners team is down to three members, and they'll be taking the game out in style. Mythic loot will drop more frequently, XP gain will be quadrupled and a nuke will be added to Townston that's going to "blow up on New Year's and take the game down with it."

Of course, NCsoft will be compensating players with paid memberships. "You'll be getting a 30 day game time serial code and digital copies of City of Heroes Architect Edition and Guild Wars Prophecies," Nichols said. You can read his full letter after the jump. Dungeon Runners entered open beta in December 2006 and officialy launched in May 2007, so the game has enjoyed a three-year run. Did you ever try out Dungeon Runners?

Get ready: the Bling Gnome Parade is coming to Dungeon Runners ! Festivities kick off at 7:30 pm Central on Friday, July 18th, in Townstown (multiple instances, multiple worlds). No word yet if bejewled silver goblets or golden teeth plates will be part of the event, but regardless, it should be a lot of fun!

To celebrate the arrival of the Dungeon Runners Bling Gnome, the Dungeon Runners development team is hosting a Bling Gnome parade through Townston, the game's main gathering point, where players with Bling Gnomes will march and participate in gnomish party activities. The Bling Gnome parade will take place across all of the game's servers.

The Dungeon Runners Bling Gnome is a bejeweled gangster helper that will save players the tedious chore of picking up loot and taking it to a game merchant for storage or sale. The Gnome follows your Dungeon Runner avatar around, picking up loot and instantly converting it to gold via a mystical bowel movement.

The Dungeon Runners Bling Gnome, which can only be accessed by purchasing the retail game pack which is available for $19.99 and provides six months of premium membership level play. Currently, membership level costs $4.99 per month and includes higher levels of experience, greater rewards, advertisement-free play, an exclusive server, extensive potion stacking, larger bank storage and access to the most powerful items, weapons and armor.

For more information about the Bling Gnome parade go to: http://www.dungeonrunners.com/news/current_news/bling_gnome_parade.html

Dungeon Runners, NCsoft's free to play MMO, has opened up IdeaRunners to get player suggestions and feedback!

Stephen and his Dungeon Runners team are always chock full of ideas, and now is your chance to contribute with this new experimental collaboration system, IdeaRunners.com.

IdeaRunners.com is a (currently) unofficial player suggestion website run by the Producer for Dungeon Runners!

Check out the site and see what ideas you can run with!

Dungeon Runners has introduced build 99, also known as Chunk #2!  Here are just some of the patch notes.

In-game Advertising
We’ve added in-game advertising to this build of Dungeon Runners. These ads are only visible to free players and they add a whole host of new functionality for our non-paying guests:

Bank Space
Free players now have one bank page available to them. Paying members now have three bank pages.

Stacking Potions
Minor mana and health potions now stack to 5, giving free players more room to hold loot. Major potions now stack to 10, making them twice as good as the free player potions!

Improved Loot Access
Free players may now use what was previously members-only loot. Of course, there has to be a catch… or else why would members be members? This is how it works: 75% of yellow items that drop may be used by free players and 25% of purple or rainbow items that drop may be used by free players. You’ll know if an item can be used because it won’t have “Requires Membership” in the tooltip. All items received from King’s Coin vendors are usable by free players – but are, of course, soulbound on delivery.

Lots more where that came from, so if you haven't tried this free game, give it a go!

Dungeon Runners has teamed up with Game Guides Online!

We've teamed up with Game Guides Online to create the Dungeon Runners Official Strategy Guide, which is now available for all to enjoy (for a price). It's chock full of Dungeon Runnersy goodness and includes free lifetime updates. How many things in your life have free lifetime updates? We thought so.

The guide is priced at $9.99 and has a variety of payment options!

Dungeon Runners Developer Diary Issue 3

Written by: The Dungeon Runners Dev Team

Subject: Dungeons to Run In

Early in the development process we decided that we needed to have dungeons. This may sound a bit strange since we call our game Dungeon Runners, with the natural assumption being that at the very least there would be dungeons, you know, to run through. This decision didn’t come lightly as we spent weeks debating it in endless mind-numbing meetings. However, once the dissenting team members were properly subdued, we made this momentous decision and the rest, as they say, is history.

Dungeon Runner has updated to build 95, which include some significant game changes.  To read the full patch notes, see below: