Remember this past summer when Citadel Studios announced that it was finally launching Legends of Aria on Steam with a huge overhaul patch that would shake up the game’s ruleset, essentially making it easier for new players to join and avoid being ganked? The studio’s post today suggests that it wasn’t a total winner for the game.
“As Steam approached, we became caught in the moment and made some bad choices. Legends of Aria needs a healthy population to succeed, and we believed that making the game more accessible would solve the population problem,” Citadel writes. “Certain changes were put in place because we truly believed the game – and the genre – was ready to be brought to a wider audience. But it wasn’t. This has been a talking shop within our team for months, coming to a crescendo in recent weeks about where we go from here. Legends of Aria has many futures ahead of it, but we simply must pursue the one which speaks to us, its developers, the core playerbase, and speaks to why we made this game in the first place.”
So now, the game is testing a new plan, with new rule tweaks for PvP that look a lot like yet another version of Ultima Online (probably for good reason).
– Guard Protected areas are limited exclusively to Towns and Cities.
– Long and short term murder counts are being added.
– The criminal flag is being added.
– Severe risks for player killers are being deployed.
– New skills: Stealing & Snooping.
Everyone playing on the official server right now is going to need to choose between the new Ethereal Moon server and the Amber Moon server too. The next big release is also expected to include the macro system, martial abilities, an overhaul for crafting orders, and plenty of new content.
“We’ve made the decision to look crazy while making a game we actually want to be making,” Citadel concludes. “We hope it ends up being the game you want to be playing.”
