Citadel Studios has announced that Legends of Aria, the indie-developed sandbox MMORPG is headed for Steam sometime in October. The game’s servers will be open to founders and backers first, and then one week later, launch on Steam as an Early access game. To prepare for that, the game will have at least one more stress test and several new events.
Citadel Studios has announced that the second closed beta of Legends of Aria will begin on July 12th. The game’s roadmap is due for an update since the last iteration aimed for an open beta phase in June and an early access phase in July.
Closed beta 2 will include hundreds of bug fixes, new features and a massive graphical update for the game’s world. The improved art-style and polished graphics were primarily the work of their artists Austin and Tiffany with some occasional help from everyone else on the team. Watch the reveal of the new graphics in the video below.
Citadel Studios is inviting entire guilds to experience the beta version of Legends of Aria. In exchange for reporting bugs and submitting feedback via their guild leaders at least three times, guild members will be able to play the indie-developed sandbox MMORPG for three weeks. Players will also need to keep their guild mates in check since “participants also agree that if one guild member is caught using an exploit after more than 24 hours without reporting it, the entire guild is subject to removal from the test”.
“All you have to do to get a one week trial key is…email me at sweathers at citadelstudios.net.”
It seems that new players are also encouraged to ask for keys to try the buy-to-play game with Citadel Studios stating that “if you just want to try it yourself, not because you have a friend playing, well, welcome to you! We hope all of you love Legends of Aria.”
The alpha client of Legends of Aria has received an update that changes player combat and forces players to work a little harder to get around. The combat tweaks involve an increase in healing amounts, an increase in damage output of STR, the removal of mana potions and the reduction of base weapon damages.
If you’ve played an MMORPG, an easily accessible world map via the “M” key may be a feature you take for granted. The latest patch to Legends of Aria takes away that function. Instead, players will have the ability to purchase physical maps of the 5 world areas of Celador in towns and outposts. They will also be able to rename and place waypoints on the physical maps.
Sandbox MMOs are massively multiplayer online games with minimal limitations on the players’ capabilities to roam and change their virtual world. Players have access to a wide array of gameplay features or tools to create changes or impressions that have lasting effects. Common features that help define an MMO as sandbox are player housing, structure building, player-driven economy, crafting, farming and other open-world activities that affect the creation or modification of the game’s world.
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Indie developer Citadel Studios has updated their roadmap and announced that the plan so far for their upcoming sandbox MMORPG Legends of Aria is to move onto open beta in June. Early Access will begin in July and will include the Final Wipe of Legends of Aria. At which point those who backed the game as Kickstarters and Founders will begin their one week headstart and the land rush will begin. The Early Access will not be available on the Steam platform.
A specified month or date for the final Steam launch or big market push is not on the roadmap yet, but their target for that phase is this coming Autumn. That is still an impressive timeline if they release fully in Autumn considering that Legends of Aria‘s Closed Beta was only a few months ago in January.
