Legends of Aria

Legends of Aria is nearing a pair of major milestones on its way to the tentative beta launch in April 2018. On December 29th, the crowdfunding campaign will end as Citadel Studios transitions to pre-sale Founder's Packs. Current reward tiers for crowdfunding backers will be gone after that date.

Legends of Aria, formerly Shards Online, has launched its final alpha, and TheHiveLeader wants you to know about it. Did you like Ultima Online and other old-school MMOs? Then this might be the game for you!

Legends of Aria has received its largest update every just in time for today's start of the Final Alpha as the game steams along to Steam Early Access later this year. Combat has been retooled with a focus on skills rather than archetypes. "Play your way", according to devs, means something unique in Legends of Aria with players able to literally use stats, armor and skill combinations to create hundreds of viable builds.

Legends of Aria is motoring along in development in preparation for Early Access on Steam, hopefully by the end of this year. Later this week on September 28th, players will get a look at some big changes in what Citadel Studios is calling “Final Alpha”. I managed to score some time with Citadel’s Derek Brinkmann and Lead Designer Jeffrey Edwards to see what’s new.

Legends of Aria will be entering its final alpha phase on September 21st. Servers will come back online that day. All "current pledges" will have full access to the entirety of the game including new areas, a "fully updated feature set". In addition, there are 32 new abilities, 100 new pieces of gear as well as 300+ new items and crafting resources for the taking.

Legends of Aria Alpha 2 is bringing a lot of big changes to the game including an updated UI, a dynamic map and a smoother, more polished client. We spoke with Citadel Studios' Derek Brinkman to get the inside scoop about the most recent additions to LoA and what it means for players.

MMORPG.com has partnered with Citadel Studios to give away a batch of trial keys for Legends of Aria.

Legends of Aria's next alpha phase will launch on Friday. As part of the new iteration, the land mass has increased ten times the original size, combat has been overhauled, the UI is new from the ground up, archery is now part of a player's combat strategy and more. Throughout the summer, alpha and then beta will continue with more zones opening up and much more. For tomorrow, players can look forward to a number of new systems.

The Legends of Aria alpha has shifted to May 12th in order to allow the team to deploy all of the final changes and additions required for testing. Players can look for interface improvements, a new MMO-scale map and reworked features across the breadth of the entire game.

The Legends of Aria site has been updated with a brand new series of articles to keep fans and players of the game informed about what the team is working on as the days to the April 28th Alpha launch draw to a close. The first letter begins with a brief development history of the project and how it has arrived in its current form. From there, it delves into what the team has been working on most recently.

Legends of Aria, formally Shards Online, is a sprawling sandbox MMO which really lets players decide how they want to interact with the world. The main thing arriving with the name change is the world map just got much larger.

Shards Online has renamed itself into Legends of Aria, a full fledged MMORPG!The game now offers much more space for housing to its players across multiple servers.

Shards Online is preparing for its Steam Early Access launch in the next few months. In order to provide the best experience for all players, current alpha data will be wiped ahead of launch. However, those who support the game prior to Steam EA will have a week's head start to get going.

If I’m honest, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy Shards Online. The retro-style MMO by Citadel Studios – a tribute to classics like Ultima Online – just didn’t grab me. The Diablo-esque graphical perspective, slow skill grinds and nod to player-killing just didn’t sound appealing in an era of sumptuous 3D and safe theme-park rides.

This past weekend, Citadel Studios and Derek Brinkmann took over the MMORPG.com Twitch channel to live stream Shards Online as its alpha phase of development kicked off. It was a great time and was filled with a lot of information about Shards and a good look at the game.