I’m sorry to report this morning that Legends of Aria Classic is closing its doors – again. The news comes via the game’s Patreon and (we assume) lead dev Derek Brinkmann. “Legends of Aria Classic is Sunsetting,” it begins.
“It is with a heavy heart that I announce the sunset of Legends of Aria Classic and all Legends of Aria live services in 30 days, on March 18, 2025. Unfortunately, the Patreon has not provided enough support to cover server costs for several months. As I must dissolve Citadel Studios as a corporation, we will be discontinuing all live services. I have paused billing on Patreon and will be closing it when the servers go offline on March 18. I want to express my deepest gratitude to everyone who has supported this project. It has been an incredible honor to build this virtual world with you all, and I will always be grateful for those who joined me on this journey.”
Readers will remember this game better as the MMORPG Shards Online Kickstarted in 2014, which changed its name to Legends of Aria along the way to its official launch back in 2020. Those early years were marred with controversy and drama over everything from the business model to the PvP design, and then at the end of 2021, Citadel Studios was bought out by an NFT outfit that vowed to reboot the game as a token-infested Ultima Online spiritual successor that ultimately went nowhere and closed down in 2023. That seemingly paved the way for a return of the OG game as Legends of Aria Classic last spring.
But when we checked back in on the game a few months later, we found comms on Steam had dried up and the last major post in Discord promised a June update that did not materialize. Worse, we noted that the playerbase had also dwindled to just a handful of people. All of this is say that a sunset isn’t a surprise, just a sad ending to an otherwise colorful MMO that was once a promising template for truly player-driven MMOs.
In fact, it’s worth pointing out here that even as LOA Classic closes down, there are still some player-run servers that are still functional and aren’t actually affected by the closure of the official shard. Shards of Britannia is probably the most famous of those, and indeed, as of this morning its devs have posted they are full-steam ahead.
“At this time, [the sunset] does not affect Shards of Britannia and we will continue to operate unless otherwise notified,” that team writes. “[W]ork on moving to our own login server is almost complete. We’ll announce more when we are closer to that goal. Just to repeat again – we do not expect any impact on Shards of Britannia from the announcement that Legends of Aria is sunsetting. We are sad to see the project come to an end as it is the foundation of everything we have built here with Shards of Britannia, and we wish Supreem and co all the best for the future.”
