Reaper Games Scraps NFT-Free Version Of Citadel Studios’ Legends Of Aria

When Citadel Studios and its flagship game Legends of Aria were acquired by blockchain company Reaper Games earlier this year, the new owners announced their plans to run two separate versions of the sandbox MMORPG. One version would have play-to-earn mechanics through NFTs while the other would be a traditional MMO that will get the same new features and updates but without the blockchain elements.

Unfortunately, Reaper Games’ plans have changed and it’s scrapped the crypto-free version entirely along with the planned subscription and battle passes for both versions. Players will instead have to pay a $10 one-time fee for each character they create in the game.

“When we first announced our move to the blockchain, our initial design was to separate our services into two models: free-to-play and play-to-earn,” said Reaper. “As a result of a lot of great feedback, we’ve decided to instead move forward with one model: play-and-earn.”

“Under this new design, you’ll need to pay a one-time fee to create a character to play with, which will be $10. This fee can be paid by credit card (or with cryptocurrency) and your character will be backed by non-fungible token (NFT) technology,” they added. “Your characters can then later be sold and bought on our NFT marketplace. In addition, you can mint any of your items (like weapons, armor, pets, and even the deed to your houses) into NFTs to resell them at any time, allowing you to play and earn some money!”

The currently-running Classic version, however, will continue to operate although it’ll basically remain in maintenance mode and will not be getting the promised overhauls and updates coming to the new crypto version.

For those in the Classic version, Reaper Games has also announced the closure of the Crimson Sea server. Affected players will be able to transfer their characters to the Ethereal Moon server for free.