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Game Industry News, Online Games News
Legends of Aria was released and was a flop – now announces 2.0 version
With Legends of Aria, the developer Citadel Studios actually wanted to create a kind of successor to Ultima Online. There were many parallels. But the MMORPG was a flop on Steam. Now the stand-alone version Aria 2.0 is supposed to save the universe.
What about Legends of Aria? The sandbox MMORPG promised a lot of freedom and finally celebrated its release as a Buy2Play title in summer 2019. But the large numbers of players did not materialize. In the peak it only reached 1,170 simultaneous players.
That is why there was a change to a Free2Play model in December 2019, but that did not bring about an upswing either.
In the past 30 days, Legends of Aria only had 20 average players and 42 concurrent players in the Peak. In the Steam reviews, only 57% give a positive rating. Some planned updates also came much later than originally announced.
What will happen to the MMORPG now? In the October update, the developers announced that they are working on “Aria 2.0”. It should be a standalone game in the universe of Legends of Aria.
However, this version is said to have a better engine and some other perks that should make Aria 2.0 a better sandbox MMORPG. They also commented on the future of Legends of Aria.
New engine, new perspective and new game content
What should Aria 2.0 offer? The new game should run in the better Shards Engine 2. This will also change the perspective in the game. While Legends of Aria was played from the ISO perspective – just like in the Ultima Online model – the new title will now offer the classic Thrid-Person view.
The following adjustments are also planned:
- The expansion of the sandbox elements in the game
- A drop in the skill system that was planned before Legends of Aria was released
- Fight while on a mount
- New content, points of interest and regular PvE and PvP events
- A revision of the user interface
- Better collision queries with boats
- A swimming function
- An optional “Positional Voice Chat”
When should Aria 2.0 be released? The development of the new game should take months, but not years. A release seems to be targeted in the direction of 2022.
There will be an official announcement of Aria 2.0 shortly. The first play tests are also planned. This is where loyal Legends of Aria players should get early access.
Legends of Aria is to be continued
What will happen to Legends of Aria? Since Aria 2.0 will be an independent game, Legends of Aria will also be retained in its current form. Officially, the developers say:
We will continue to support Legends of Aria. The Legends of Aria Worlds program (community server) is alive and well and will continue to be supported in the future. When Aria 2.0 goes into testing, we will give our subscribers the opportunity to play it.
However, it is questionable what exactly “continue to support” means. Because the developers themselves have postponed the “Pont Release 11” indefinitely. It should actually come in 2021, but the team has shrunk too much to implement it. The last major update for Legends of Aria was in 2020.