Today we are proud to unveil the first official Alpha build for Shards Online! This build is now running on our official server, Shards of Aria, and we invite all of our current pledges to head to the dashboard and download the new client. (It’s the big shiny red button that says Download)

• Digital Copy ($20) pledges now have full access to the game after accepting the NDA on the dashboard.
• All expired trial codes have been reactivated for the weekend.
• Lot’s of chances to win a 7 day trial code including giveaways at PCGamer, MMORPG.com, and MassivelyOP.
• We are officially waiving the NDA, allowing screenshots, video uploads and streams for this weekend only!
• We have activated double XP for everyone on Shards of Aria for the entire weekend.

Check our event calendar for a full list of events that are happening throughout the weekend both in game and on live stream.

Additionally, the promised European server has been brought online:

We are pleased to announce the launch of our Europa universe. Europa is a parallel universe on the Shards of Aria official shard. We hope these world regions will improve the gameplay experience for our large and growing European audience. Players may move freely between these universes using the new Gatestone item, allowing players from both American & European continents to explore Celador together.

Predictably, there’s a laundry list of patch and change notes accompanying the alpha release, which some of you may want to check out.