Legends of Aria – Out of early access
Developer: Citadel Studios | Publisher: Citadel Studios | Platform: PC | Release date: July 8, 2020| Model: Free2Play
What is this game about? Legends of Aria is a sandbox MMORPG that is inspired by classic titles like Ultima Online. It emphasizes freedom and offers content like:
- A huge fantasy world that you can explore freely
- Crafting and trading
- A player-controlled economy
- A classless system with many skills
- Housing
- Dungeons
With its conservative graphics and classic ISO perspective, the game clearly targets fans of old sandbox MMORPGs.
What is special about the game? Originally developed as Shards Online, it relied on community-created servers. Now there are also fixed worlds created by the developers. Nevertheless, players and modders can create their own worlds.
Legends of Aria received a lot of praise for its custom worlds. There are actually servers that remind players of the old days of Ultima Online. The official servers are, however, seen as weak.
How is it received after the release? Legends of Aria launched in summer 2019 in early access on Steam and had limited success there. This was also due to some questionable design decisions and numerous delays. Initially, it was supposed to be released on Steam in December 2018.
In December 2019, the game switched from a buy-to-play model to a free-to-play model. But this also did not bring a significant boost.
According to SteamCharts, in the last 30 days, an average of 143 players played the MMORPG on Steam. At peak, there were 235 online at the same time. These are probably not the numbers the developers had hoped for. With only 56% positive reviews, the reviews are merely balanced.
Therefore, Legends of Aria also belongs to the MMOs that I predicted would die this year.
