Citadel Studios’ Legends of Aria Classic, which is a “return to our…ruleset of 2019” will launch on May 9th via Steam. This comes after a couple of overhauls, some rebranding, a pivot to 'pay to earn’ with blockchain after a studio acquisition, and spinning off its 2022 version as ‘Classic’.
This week, the team announced the new launch and that Legends of Aria Classic will reflect the pre-Steam Early Access period of 2019. In their email announcement, (spotted on the r/MMORPG subreddit) they put that decision into context.
“Early 2019 was a magical time for Legends of Aria. players had created some truly amazing player towns and houses, finally crafted with furniture and decorated with The Spoils of adventure. we had a balanced flow of red vs. blue(and orange) , Which played out across our world. We watched large dungeon raids and faction battles explode into meteoric chaos. These are the experiences we wish to return to and Faithfully build upon with Legends of Aria Classic.”
The relaunch will be a subscription-based game, launching on PC via Steam on May 9th with 30 days free and then a monthly subscription will be required to play.
Given the history of the game, there was skepticism from some with the announcement.
In early 2021, the team announced that Legends of Aria’s next update would be indefinitely postponed due to a decrease in team size and for financial reasons. At the end of 2021, the studio was engaged in an acquisition buyout by Blue Monster, a company known for blockchain games, though the sale never went through. A Citadel Studios spokesperson confirmed to MMORPG.com that the company still remains an indie studio, owned by its founders.
With that, plans for NFTs were announced, followed by announcement of a full transition to a ‘play to earn’ game. The version that had been running at the time, they renamed that to Classic and promised a free to play version without blockchain would also be released. Then, Citadel opened a beta for the blockchain game, before saying that they had completely dropped any free to play version plans in favor of just the play and earn model. That was mid 2022.
Legends of Aria Classic, with the 2019 rules, subscription-based, is coming in May.
Update: Our original story stated that Citadel Studios was acquired by Blue Monster, but a spokesperson for the Aria developer confirmed that this acquisition never ended up taking place. We've updated the story to reflect this.
