Dungeon Runners (one of NCSoft’s babies) is moving out of the shadows just a bit. I guess they’re doing a ‘friend of a friend’ invite thing to test out the bugs, and they’ve now got a much more informative website up. It looks exactly like what it sounded like when I first heard about it: Yet Another Diablo Game. What’s interesting, though, is their payment setup. Like Guild Wars, this is going to be a freebie … in fact, they’re not even going to charge for the client. The catch is, of course, that this will be a tiered universe and the haves will always be better than the have nots.

• As a member, you will be able to use the most powerful in-game items, weapons and armor. Without these powerful artifacts, it’ll be almost impossible to conquer the deeper dungeons of the world – the places where the richest treasures and toughest monsters can be found.
• You’ll also look cool wearing armor and wielding mighty weapons that only members can use.
• When servers are full, there’s a line to get into the game, but as a member, you’ll skip straight to the front of the queue for easy access to Dungeon Runners whenever you want.
• Where a non-subscriber has an inventory 10 x 8 in size, a member gets an additional lockbox that’s 10 x 14 in size; that’s 80 inventory slots for non-members and a whopping 220 inventory slots for members
• Dungeon Runners currently features two types of potions – one to restore health and one to restore mana (magical power). Both items are indispensable for the serious Dungeon Runner – or anyone that just likes ‘not dying’. Non-members will find that each potion takes up a valuable slot in their inventory, reducing the amount of space for loot. However, members will have the luxury of stacking potions, meaning that multiple potions will occupy one inventory slot, saving room for loot.

I understand why they’re doing this … and heck, the price isn’t even that bad. When I was playing Diablo II every other day back in the day, I probably would have payed “US$4.99 per month” to maintain Blizzard’s servers.

That last item on the list there is kind of shit, though. Being unable to stack potions seems like a pretty fundamental element of the game; essentially by paying you’re getting access to an entirely differently designed game than the non-members. Obviously, they’re hoping to make some money with this, so it seems like a reasonable way to go about things, but I had kind of hoped the differences between the norms and the uber would be just a bit less biting.