Whatever happened to Legends of Aria aka Britaria? (2023 edition)

May 16, 2023 3:00 PM

We turn our gaze away for just a little bit and suddenly a tire fire has sprung forth, and that tire fire is named Legends of Aria.

MMO players will recall through our past coverage that this MMO started life as Shards Online and drew in Kickstarter funding for its old-school multi-shard sandbox MMO plan, though it shifted gear through development and morphed into an indie game called Legends of Aria. But in 2021, Citadel Studios and its game were bought out by a blockchain company that tried to mold the MMORPG into a P2E title, fumbled its Steam release, reneged on plans for a non-P2E server, and then rebranded itself as Britaria with a $DREAD mint to match that almost immediately tanked in value – and has recently managed to sink through the floor.

Since then, the story has only gotten more concerning. Back in January, the LOA Discord announced that it would be breaking its community in half, as it rebranded its original server to represent Britaria while the LOA community was moved to a new home focused primarily on the still-running Ethereal Moon server and community servers. The end of January then saw $DREAD distributed to those who participated in private and seed sales.

The studio also put out a February development report for Britaria, which heralded the creation of a browser-based “showcase demo,” creation of a skill tree, and the addition of fabled mounts. Additional progress reports were shared in the Britaria Discord in March and April, when the game hired a worldbuilder, lost a lead artist, shifted its camera view back to an over-the-shoulder perspective, promised a “workflow overhaul,” and renamed its studio from Reaper Games to Moonglow Games. (Moonglow, like Britaria itself, is another clear attempt to evoke the game’s Ultima Online aesthetic.)

This leads us to this month and a warning shared by an eagle-eyed Redditor who traced the game’s Twitter breadcrumbs to its new account, where the studio heralds game features like hiding, healing, and inscription… except a reverse image search suggests that some of the art associated with these posts has been lifted from other games and doesn’t represent Britaria at all. One image appears to have been clipped from video footage of Haenir Studio’s game Blight Survival, which disavowed a relationship with Britaria.