We’ve had our eye on Legends of Aria since, well, long before it was called Legends of Aria, meaning we’ve been watching the game since it’s start as a scrappy shard-centric spiritual successor to games like Ultima Online all the way to now, when it’s a full-fledged MMORPG. Just ahead of the new year, Citadel Studios kicked off Aria’s early access for backers but postponed its Steam early access launch while it worked on stability, in part because it was a bit too popular for its own good.

Today, Massively OP is getting an exclusive first look at the game’s latest update in the form of a blog piece from designer Jeffrey Edwards. Edwards covers everything from the fact that the team is actively hiring to client performance and of course the game’s first major content update. There’s even a tease for what comes after that. Enjoy the whole piece!

Legends of Aria Development Blog – Steam Release Tease

Team Update

First we’d like to offer you a brief update on our team, what has changed since Early Access launch and what we have been working on. As many of you will have noticed, Citadel Studios is recruiting to fill a number of roles as we continue to add to our growing team. You can find these vacancies on our Careers page.

Our live team is hard at work on bug fixing, optimisations and improvements to our live experience. As mentioned in a previous news post, we are committed to a bi-weekly (or two week) Point Release which will deliver high priority bugs, balance adjustments and incremental improvements to our characters skills and content. This will begin next week.

One area which has been receiving special attention is client performance; work is currently underway to move our client to Unity 2018.3 and we’ve hired fresh blood to help us optimise our client for much better framerates and to start minimizing the effects of load lines.

We have a patcher! It is currently going through testing and we hope to make this available to you in our next client update.

As for the rest of the team, we’re heavily engaged in preparing for our first major content update. This update will not only increase our landmass and bring new and exciting skills, features and items, but special attention is being given to some areas of our existing content which we’re eager to complete. We’ll be unveiling much of this in upcoming blogs, however there is one significant content update which we decided to bring forward in our schedule and release to you in our very first Point Release…

The Dungeon Expansion

Our 3 wilderness dungeons, Deception, Contempt and Ruin are receiving a graphical overhaul and have expanded to include perilous second levels complete with puzzles, traps and plunder.

Each dungeon has been revamped to be consistent with their host environment, creating a more immersive experience to dungeon delvers.

This expansion has also given our team the opportunity to include some exciting new features to our dungeon experiences including an assortment of interactive traps, puzzles and other outside of the box features to give each dungeon experience a unique twist and reward experienced dungeoneers.

From a design perspective, this expansion was vital for a number of reasons. Our dungeon real estate has more than doubled, increasing the availability of highly sought after monsters in to better serve our population. It is an opportunity to improve our item distribution by increasing the range, distribution and availability of vital resources, feeding vital professions and feeding the in-game economy. Last but not least, we can now provide higher concentrations of challenging foes to create far more treacherous, group oriented and ultimately rewarding dungeon encounters.

We know that this expansion has been much asked for and a long time coming and we’re excited for the community to explore these new areas.

That’s not all

As this is our first Point Release, in addition to the usual bug fixes, players can expect a range of other changes including some long awaited tweaks to crafting and Animal Taming which will certainly make some positive changes to gameplay!

Next Time…

Codename Mythic

We’ve established a strong foundation upon which players can begin to engage in rewarding crafts, dive into the deepest dungeons or most competitive of battles with items, equipment and abilities which are worldly, manageable and balanced. This is a fundamental aspect of Legends of Aria which we long wish to maintain as it is a driving force behind large aspects of our world.

Central to completing our vision for Legends of Aria concerns adding a wealth of progressive and powerful PvE features and items which is going to fundamentally change a players options in how they engage in PvE.

Are we talking about more active abilities? Passive abilities? Maybe new high level resources and craftables? You’ll have to wait for the next blog to find out.

Thanks for reading and we wish you well in your adventures. Until next time!

K