'Axie Infinity: Atia’s Legacy' MMO Game Coming to Ethereum Network Ronin

The makers of seminal play-to-earn game Axie Infinity just announced the franchise’s new massively multiplayer online—or MMO—game, Axie Infinity: Atia’s Legacy. And playtest signups are already open, letting players potentially earn crypto and NFTs by referring friends.

Axie Infinity: Atia’s Legacy sees players lead a team of up to four Axie monsters to farm, fight, and complete quests inside the whimsical world of Lunacia. This world has been destroyed following centuries of war, leaving ancient ruins and mystical secrets for the player to uncover. 

“The last time our teams felt this way was in 2018 when we hand-sent the earliest Axies,” the team wrote in a blog post.

Atia’s Legacy is set to enter its first alpha play test sometime during “summer 2025,” according to the trailer, after starting development in May 2024.

The original Axie Infinity made waves in 2021 with its then-innovative play-to-earn system. It exploded in popularity as players collected NFT characters to battle each other, with some even playing the game as a full-time job—until the game’s token economy crashed, leaving some players with near-worthless assets.

Now, Sky Mavis says that it has learned lessons—or developed “scar tissue” as the developers describe it—that will lay the foundation for Atia’s Legacy to succeed. With this, the MMO will be cross-platform and available on mobile from launch, will focus on social coordination, and will integrate the existing Axie NFTs and economy. This means that existing Axie NFTs—including land and rarer mystic Axies—will have “deep integrations” with the new MMO. 

In the summer playtest, the blog post notes, users will be able to lead a squad to fight through real-time battles, level up their characters, join guild wars, gather materials to get crafting, and chat with other players.

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Fans are encouraged to pre-register for the playtest, with players being rewarded for referring friends using their pre-register link. The Axie Infinity team said every successful referral will earn a raffle ticket to win a number of Axie NFTs, and the top 200 referrers will earn a slice of 25,000 AXS ($90,000).

Axie Infinity co-founder Jeff “Jiho” Zirlin claims that the MMO game received approximately 100,000 pre-registrations within the first 12 hours of opening its doors.

Sky Mavis’ own Ethereum gaming sidechain Ronin powers the original Axie Infinity experience, and will almost certainly also be the chain behind the new MMO. Ronin originally operated as a curated blockchain, as Sky Mavis focused on platforming what it believed were high-quality gaming experiences.

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But last month, the network opened its doors to anyone to build on top of it, which the team claims resulted in a "significant uptick” in interest from developers. This move was done in an attempt to accelerate the chain’s growth as it looks to onboard a game that boosts its player base—and Axie Infinity: Atia’s Legacy may be just that.

“Today is the beginning of a new journey,” the blog post finished. “Atia’s Legacy will forge new paths and open new doors for all of us. Let’s keep pushing.”

Edited by Andrew Hayward