Dungeon Fighter Online was developed by a South Korean company called Neople who previously only published a number of casual online games through their own
game portal site. It was originally planned as a small game as the entire game was developed in five months based on the forecasted life expectancy, but the response was better than they expected so the budget was increased and the game was expanded. In terms of genre,
Dungeon Fighter Online was initially planned as a
fighting game similar to
Tekken or
The King of Fighters but this idea was scrapped as Neople felt that players wouldn't want to keep playing if there was a gap between them and their opponent's skill level. With this in mind, Neople looked for similar but different genres and ended up using belt-scrolling games such as
Dynasty Wars and
Cadillacs and Dinosaurs as an inspiration for making
Dungeon Fighter Online an RPG. Extensive testing took place before the premiere launch in Korea. Three closed
beta periods were held between December 17–31, 2004, February 1–13, 2005, and June 28 – July 11, 2005. Neople accepted only 999 players per test and allowed only one hundred minutes of gameplay per day. Content was fine-tuned and updated daily throughout the test period based on testers feedback. Even though many games being released at the time were
3D, Neople decided to create
Dungeon Fighter Online in
2D because they did not believe it affected gameplay, they did not feel a 3D game could capture the look and feel of the original illustrations of the characters, the ease of casual players getting into the game, and they had more experience with 2D games. Hi-res is not a likely path the game will take because director Yun Jong Kim's main focus is "efficiency".
North American release Five years after the original release in Korea, Nexon America developed plans for an English version of
Dungeon Fighter Online. The title was renamed from
Dungeon & Fighter to
Dungeon Fighter Online because of the awkwardness to say "Dungeon and Fighter". Thousands of applicants were accepted into closed beta, which held for seven days between July 28 – August 3, 2009. Open beta started on September 22.
Dungeon Fighter Online officially launched on June 9, 2010. The North American version of
Dungeon Fighter Online was shut down on June 13, 2013. Neople held an alpha test for a global version of the game in 2014. Beta testing was launched on March 24, 2015. Although a closed beta test for
Dungeon Fighter Online was scheduled for release around March 2015, due to them moving their office to the island of
Jeju, located off the south-west coast of South Korea, it became an open beta test because the Facebook page for the game had reached a specific number of "Likes", something that had been previously promised by Neople when it was still planned for a closed beta test.
Dungeon Fighter Online Season 2 was released in January 2016. The game was released on
Steam as
free-to-play on August 9, offering achievements and paid DLC.
Dungeon Fighter Online Season 3 was released in January 2017, followed by Season 4 in February 2018, and Season 5 in the following year. ==Reception==