Today we are happy to announce a big milestone in the development of Shards Online – Shards Online has become Legends of Aria!

Legends of Aria is the next evolution of Shards Online, a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying game set in the the vast persistent world of New Celador. Legends of Aria is an increase in scope to build the game that our fans have been longing for – Shards Online brought to the massively multiplayer platform.

Legends of Aria is in no way a departure from our commitment to customisation and community run shards. Legends of Aria will feature full server customisation and the tools for players to create massively multiplayer worlds as set out in our Kickstarter campaign. Developments made in growing our platform will provide administrators with expansive content to create bigger worlds than originally planned for launch.

Apparently, the world of Celador — the setting of the game — has grown in size by a factor of 25, which is a pretty significant increase.

As you might expect, project lead Derek Brinkmann took to YouTube to explain the change to supporters of Shards Online:

And because they’re showing off the rebranded game at PAX East this weekend, there is — naturally — a new trailer as well:

At the end of the trailer, of course, you’ll note that Legends of Aria is slated to be released on Steam. However, backers who supported Shards Online — either during the Kickstarter campaign or now, as part of the project’s ongoing crowdfunding — will get a bit of an advantage over those who purchase it from Valve’s digital storefront after release:

We are very excited to launch Legends of Aria on Steam in the upcoming months. A topic of discussion that has come up frequently amongst the team is how do we wipe the slate clean for Steam while still making sure the people who supported the project, the people who made this entire thing possible, get just a little bit of special treatment.

• All supporters who pledge before the crowdfunding campaign comes to a close will get a 1 week head start on official servers prior to the Steam Release.
• New and improved Loyalty Store.
• Unique in-game titles based on lifetime loyalty earned.
• Reminder: All loyalty points spent during Alpha will be refunded.

You can find out more at the Legends of Aria website!