Ultima Online vets aim for emergent MMO gameplay with Legends of Aria

Most massively multiplayer online role-playing games take their cues from World of Warcraft: lots of quests and storylines that the designers mete out to players. Legends of Aria wants to show that emergent gameplay can work in MMOs, too.

Ultima Online vets Derek Brinkmann and Tim Cotten founded Citadel Studios in 2013 with the aim of creating an Ultima Online- and Neverwinter Nights-inspired sandbox MMORPG. Its previous incarnation, Shards Online, raised a little over $105,000 on Kickstarter in 2014. Prior to launching it in paid alpha, the studio changed the name to Legends of Aria to signal to existing fans that the scope of the game has changed. The early version of the game has removed the original 64-player limit and updated the map to be 25 times larger than the original, in addition to existing features such as 22 character-based skills, loot drops, and a persistent focus on emergent gameplay.