The MMORPG Legends of Aria is oriented towards old-school MMORPGs and was supposed to be a home for fans of Ultima Online. However, it is currently struggling with low player numbers. Now, a paid DLC has been released that is supposed to turn things around.
How is Legends of Aria doing? The sandbox MMORPG is currently in Early Access and in a difficult position. The core idea of creating your own worlds, where you as a host can change the rules, is really good and led players to have great hopes for Legends of Aria, then still known as Shards Online.
However, the game servers offered by the developers did not convince players. Especially, a lack of content and even Pay2Win have been criticized. That’s why the MMORPG switched from a Buy2Play model to Free2Play in December 2019. However, the hoped-for player boost did not materialize.
In the last 30 days, an average of less than 100 players have logged into the sandbox game on Steam daily. At its peak, Legends of Aria had over 1,000 players in August 2019 (via Steamcharts). Although there is also a standalone client, many players report of very empty servers on Steam. In the last 30 days, only 50% of the 57 reviews were positive.
DLC to Provide Endgame Content
What is changing in Legends of Aria? On April 2, the first DLC for the free MMORPG in Early Access was released. Dark Sorcery costs $19.99 and is supposed to finally provide endgame content.
The new features are:
- New skills related to dark magic
- A new dungeon called “The Monolith”
- A new boss
- General content for crafting and cosmetics
- An exclusive mount for pre-orders
According to the developers, the DLC has been in development for a long time. Work on it began before the Steam release in August 2019. But can this update steer the MMORPG in the right direction?
Players View DLC and the MMORPG Critically
What are the reactions to the DLC? The YouTube video currently (April 4 at 12:30 PM) has nearly 4,700 views and almost three times as many thumbs down as up (39 Upvotes, 101 Downvotes).
There is significant criticism regarding the fact that a game in Early Access, which is still unfinished, wants to offer paid content:
- T T comments under the video: “The 100 players will surely be happy to pay 20 euros for a DLC to an unfinished and unoptimized game.”
- Thomas Hellmann also reacts negatively: “Really? The game is still in Early Access… Get your tasks done, optimize the game, and then we can talk about DLCs. And yes… I already paid $30 for the game.”
So far, there have mostly been negative reactions to the DLC on Steam. Many hope that the base game will first work well and especially receive endgame content before money needs to be spent.
For many, there have also been too many directional changes in the game. The user Stoned Doggo describes the situation as follows:
This game is a huge mess, I have played over 1000 hours, but it is not visible here because I played before the Steam release.
The developers constantly change direction, and now they announce an expensive DLC with new content – that’s a joke. A paid DLC for an unfinished game. When you invest hundreds of hours in a game to achieve something, and then suddenly see your efforts reset to 0 because of a patch, then you get this game.
Great effort to look like Ultima Online, but you should better play on community servers because the official servers are bad.
How long will LoA remain in Early Access? According to Project Lead Derek “Supreem” Brinkmann, the DLC is supposed to be a milestone towards the full release of the MMORPG.
There are plans to soon release a plan for the end of Early Access (via Legends of Aria).
What does MeinMMO author Alexander Leitsch say? I have only spent a few hours in Legends of Aria myself and certainly have not yet seen its full potential. However, the beginning did not captivate me.
Even though the idea of the MMORPG sounded good on paper, I found the implementation so far lacking. The low player count will not help either. Most especially use a community server that is heavily based on Ultima Online.
For me, it belongs to one of the 6 MMOs that will not survive 2020.
