Dungeon Runners entered the closed Beta phase in May 2006, and a game trailer was exhibited at the 2006 E3 convention.
Dungeon Runners implemented a classless system (see Classes, below) and offered regular updates through patches.
One of the most acclaimed patches was the update coined "The Heave" that introduced the first player summon "Chill Bill", and a new high level dungeon.
The character could learn all the skills available in the game if the player wished; however, only ten could be accessed at any given time, being limited by the number of slots in the Bar.
The gameplay and graphics styling of Dungeon Runners had been compared to Diablo and Diablo II,[6] especially noting the instanced dungeons (whose level layouts and content were randomly regenerated each time a player logged into the game), the "action RPG" gameplay style, the naming conventions for in-game items, the variable class structure based on three archetypes (five in Diablo II), and the absence of a "healer" class, among other similarities.
One notable difference is that Dungeon Runners was rendered using polygonal models, rather than the sprite-based isometric graphics of the Diablo series.
GameSpot and Eurogamer,[7] stated that the graphical quality, third-person point of view and screen layout more closely resembled that of World of Warcraft, another MMORPG.
Dungeon Runners' in-game music was composed by Tracy W. Bush as straight forward game music in the vein of Diablo II, whereas the boss monsters had their own theme songs, varying in such styles as black metal, synthpop, klezmer and funk.
The announcement was accompanied by news that NCsoft had laid off a number of developers working on its casual MMOG Dungeon Runners, as well as cancelled plans to bring the game to other platforms.
Dungeon Runners had dropped, as producer and lead programmer Stephen Nichols confirmed that the game will be taken offline on December 31.
Dungeon Runners, which operated under both a free-to-play, microtransaction-supported and subscription-based business model, launched to good reviews for the PC in July 2008.
Nichols noted that those with paid memberships to Dungeon Runners would receive digital copies of City of Heroes' Architect Edition and Guild Wars: Prophecies.