Big news from Citadel Studios: the final alpha test for Legends of Aria (the crowdfunded MMORPG that began its development under the name Shards Online, and which includes several former Ultima Online developers on its development team) will commence next week:

Greetings Travelers!

We are excited to announce that the official Legends of Aria server will come back online September 21st to all current pledges with full access to new areas of Celador and a fully updated feature set.

As we approach this launch we will be providing new details about our features starting this Saturday at 1pm EST in our Community Roundtable. (add to calendar)

We will be making additional updates in the coming weeks with all the details and a full breakdown of what to expect as we enter into our Final Alpha test.

It’s not to late to pledge to support the development of Legends of Aria. Citadel Studios’ on-site crowdfunding portal is still up, and $40 USD is the minimum spend to get access to the alpha version of the game…this final alpha test included.