From the Project Lead: Welcome to Closed Beta 2!

Greetings, Adventurers!

We have been so excited to show off Legends of Aria’s new look, and it has been great to read all your positive feedback. These next few months are going to be fun as we begin the ramp up to our Early Access launch.

If you haven’t logged into Legends of Aria since CB1, you definitely need to check out the changes. It feels like a different game, and we need to gather as much feedback as we can to get things just right for Open Beta and the Early Access launch. We are also going to be giving out loads of trial keys, so there will be lots of new blood running around the beta server.

(Image originally appeared as part of the screenshot scavenger hunt at MMORPG.com)

The term “Early Access” can be confusing since we are not going to Steam right away. Let me take this opportunity to explain our plan for Legends of Aria for the next few months. You can follow along on our roadmap page.

Closed Beta 2. It all begins this week with CB2, which kicks off with a beta server wipe. This wipe gives everyone a fresh start and allows us to gather important data about our skill gain curve as we make the final tweaks to get it right. We’ll use your feedback to prioritize our efforts in Open Beta.

Open Beta. Sometime around the end of August/early September, we will launch Open Beta. We’ll be giving out thousands of trial keys to stress test the servers, and open the floodgates to create the living world you know LOA can be. We plan to run both an NA and EU server for this testing period.

Early Access. Once we have worked out the major stability and performance issues, we will do our final wipe of the servers. This begins our Early Access launch. We will shut down sales for seven days, and everyone who supported our development with a Founder’s Pack or a Kickstarter pledge will get a seven day headstart on building houses, gathering materials for a crafting career, taming wild beasts, starting wars, planting towns, and breathing life into our world. .

The final step is to put Legends of Aria on Steam. We’re still hoping for this year, but it all depends on what you have to tell us during these last rounds of testing. And of course, we have to finish the major content patch planned for that launch….

So there you have it! The master “plan”! Please keep in mind that we got to where we are now because we’re willing to change the plan in response to the unexpected. And in game development, there is no shortage of unexpected events!

I personally have never been more excited about the future for Legends of Aria and I hope you all feel the same. Thank you all for being a part of this incredible journey. Your feedback is absolutely vital to us as we steer the ship towards our Early Access and final wipe.

Join us this Friday night at 8 PM EDT/midnight UTC as the dev team answers questions on Twitch and live in-game at the Valus Theatre.

Forward!

Derek/”Supreem”