Just announced: Age of Empires Online

[Wijitmaker]

The problem is that the core gameplay has NO innovation.

To play devil's advocate, the AoE design time has tried innovative things in the past (AOE3) and it wasn't well received. Bruce Shelly even calling AOE3 a mistake.

I'll ask a hypothetical question: What is the balance between offering something new to players that is innovative vs. familiar? From reading the comments here, AOEO appears to be all too familiar (and in a reduced state) - AOE3 is too different. What does it take to make you happy?

[Mythos_Ruler]

AOE3's core gameplay wasn't innovative either, though. You still had the basic infantry, the counter-infantry infantry, basic cavalry, counter-cavalry cavalry, the same paper-rock-scissors stuff, no tactical innovation at all, formations were again useless, etc. Where it attempted to innovate was at the periphery (Home Cities, Shipments), and even then the innovations were half-assed, IMHO. 0 A.D. will add a bunch of innovation to the core AOE gameplay that will be very effective, IMHO. The thing is, either Shelley or one of the other ES bigwigs (I forget who) even said Age of Mythology was a "mistake" too. The only mistake with AOM was that it wasn't authentic enough, not the innovations. My problem with AOE3 was that they had this great age of technological change, but refused to depict that. AOE1 at least does that. AOE3's era had Napoleonic Wars, firing lines, grape shot, earthen fortifications, things like that, and they refused to depict that. Ships evolved from Spanish galleons to ironclads. They abandoned the feeling of progressing through time, which was what Age of Empires is all about. So, they abandoned some of the basic feeling that made AOE what it was, and then refuse to include innovations to move the series forward. Why move the series into the Napoleonic Age, yet refuse to properly depict Napoleonic tactics? Just a shame. Anyway, just rambling now!

[Pedro Falcão]

I was 3 years old when AoE was launched. My father and one of my cousins used to play AoE and watching them playing (i was 6 by this time) was how i started to play and to like Age series. But, sincerely, i found this AoEo the most disappointing of all the 5 games. Even my lil' brother could suggest new features to implement this time, but the thing they kept in mind wasn't the quality of the game, was the money they could win with it.

They'll probably not fix all the mistakes of this game 'til the final version, so i'll keep having fun with my old, but really good, AoE: Rise of Rome! At least 0 A.D. gives me hope for the future of the RTS games.

[edwardlongshank]

Age of empires online sucks!!!!!!!

People who try to play it for free are not only disadvantaged in pvp, they are also constantly being bombarded with rewards from boring pointless quests that are useless because you need to pay to use them. Why make free players select from a list of rewards after quest completion when none one of the rewards can be used by free players!!! Well obviously its to scam little kids into harassing their parents to pay for the game. If the parents then agree to pay for their child then they will have the task of constantly having to draw a line between what features they will and will not allow there child to pay for. This is done by the release of crap like the booster packs. And what better way to draw the kids to the game than having cartoon graphics, quests which require the person to be 4 years of age or up to complete, and rewards for completing these time consuming quests. I would rather play runescape! I conclude from all of this that the game was made entirely for profit and targets the most vulnerable consumers possible ( children )which in affect is likely to annoy the crap out parents.

I wont even comment on the game play because i cant get past the fact that the game was created for the sole purpose of making money sucking leaches very happy.

Current age of mythology and age of mythology titans combined online population 33. I will still play aom multiplayer over age of empires online any day of the week!

On an unrelated note when i had a quick scan of this thread i saw that someone said that they are insulted by the cartoon graphics because they felt war should not be portrayed in this manner , not his exact words but i think that was the jist of it. Regardless, i think that cartoons have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do WITH THE INACCURACY OF HOW WAR IS PORTRAYED in the broad scheme of things, if you want to go down that road then you cant just target cartoon games, you must target media institutions, writers, movie makers, government recruiting agencies and that's literally less that 10% of the people and institutions which you would be battling against. Just had to give me opinion.

[Zeta1127]

AoEO definitely looks like a waste of time and money, and at this point I believe Stronghold Kingdoms is far superior based solely on the Kingdoms beta. AoE, AoEII, and AoM were Age of Empires, while AoEO is just trying to be Evony and similar games by the looks of it. I don't even have AoM and I feel like I can say that with confidence. I missed the boat for AoE III, and feel like that was probably a good thing. 0 AD. is definitely what I thought AoE could have become.

Edited October 17, 2011 by Zeta1127

[jaimele]

they may want to make kids love strategy games... so that they will not vanish... it is a great problem of the gaming industry to make strategy games survive. that can't be done cause many have turned to consoles(after they got an online feature) cause they are cheap. just look the sales of call of duty on consoles and then see the number of it on computers...

yeah, and maybe get them interested in history too...

[Zeta1127]

yeah, and maybe get them interested in history too...

I like RTS games and history, yet I don't need cartoon graphics, maybe its because I am not a child anymore, and cartoon graphics do have their place, just not in history games.

Edited October 18, 2011 by Zeta1127

[darklight]

I'm still sticking with 0 A.D.

Age of Empires is now a joke. First AoE III, now this?

[Silver]

The game was rushed to market in my opinion. It's like the higher ups at Microsoft told the developers and community PR people "We want Age of Empires gameplay combined with Farmville and World of Wacraft" and then they wanted results and money too fast for the time put in and the 'dream' of what the game should be like.

[alkazar-ipse]

Yeah AoE online sucks, i loved AoE III.

too few units

Sorry to say, but 0AD has too MANY units IMHO...

In AoE III the WC and TAD civs were bringing the mess in: as long as you played european civs, you knew heavy inf kills cav, light cav ows heavy cav, which owns light inf, witch beats heavy inf ...ETC

I think 0ad could use some of those basic rules; now if historicly some units were exceptional, out of ordinary, ok... but dont give each unit with same weapons different strengths, only because they are from an other civ.

I'm looking forward for more regulations at that level for the future releases ;-)

Edited August 11, 2012 by alkazar-ipse

[feneur]

Yeah AoE online sucks, i loved AoE III.

Sorry to say, but 0AD has too MANY units IMHO...

In AoE III the WC and TAD civs were bringing the mess in: as long as you played european civs, you knew heavy inf kills cav, light cav ows heavy cav, which owns light inf, witch beats heavy inf ...ETC

I think 0ad could use some of those basic rules; now if historicly some units were exceptional, out of ordinary, ok... but dont give each unit with same weapons different strengths, only because they are from an other civ.

I'm looking forward for more regulations at that level for the future releases ;-)

In 0 A.D. there are two aspects to the units strength: individual stats and overall bonuses. The individual units strengths may vary from civ to civ, but the unit bonuses (shown when you hover your mouse over their icons when you create them for example) are the same between all civs. So a unit of one kind is always better against a unit of another kind, but the same kind of unit from another civ might be slightly more or less effective against it.

[alkazar-ipse]

yeahy.

I'v seen the crash, pierce (attack and defense) etc, and I've also seen the "2x vs all inf"

but i think that doing the math is still quite... entertaining ;-)

I must admit i havent played a lot yet. When I'll get used to it, I'll maybe agree that its not that complicated.

So, just sayin': for a newbe it's more confusing then AoE III ('S EUROPEAN CIVS!)

Also, what is new in alpha 11: heros get limited to one alive at the time, so i wont have 10 Hanibals, and complain about the other elephant unit, but rather have 1 hanibal and 8 normal elephants :-)

Edited August 11, 2012 by alkazar-ipse

[Patricius]

I cannot abide the cartoonish graphics. Still, it keeps the great series alive, so that must be endured.

[imperial13]

Age of Empires Online is a real-time strategy MMO originally developed by Robot Entertainment, then taken over by Gas Powered Games, and published by Microsoft. Although the latest RTS game Ecol Tactics is easy to play, you still need to use strategy such as choose skills reasonably and train armies efficiently to win battles. And the most important is that you need to think how to cooperate with your teammates.

Edited January 5, 2013 by imperial13

[Lion.Kanzen]

Age of Empires Online is a real-time strategy MMO originally developed by Robot Entertainment, then taken over by Gas Powered Games, and published by Microsoft.

why the clarification?

[Darklorder]

Have to say that Age of Empires Online will not be developed anymore...

This sayed a blog from the Devs. I hoped for the Romans but they will not come.

Rest in Peace AoEO.

PS: It's not dead, but i think many Gamers will leave the Game.

[Jeru]

Have to say that Age of Empires Online will not be developed anymore...

This sayed a blog from the Devs. I hoped for the Romans but they will not come.

Rest in Peace AoEO.

PS: It's not dead, but i think many Gamers will leave the Game.

Thanks for this info.

The blog post is very interesting:

It means that there will be no new content created for AOEO. There is a small amount of content still in the pipeline that will be released in the next few weeks, but that is all. No new features will be added. Most significantly, no new civilizations will be released; the six existing ones are the complete and final set.

[...]

Is AOEO dying? No. Nothing is changing for the existing game. You can still do all the things you do today; we’re not taking away anything you already have. There will be no new civilizations or features, that’s all.

[...]

What about bug fixes? Fixing any remaining bugs and addressing balance issues will be slower and, frankly, more difficult for the team. Some may, in fact, be unfixable. We will be watching carefully in case any critical bugs appear.

Why no more content? Because creating top-tier content, as we have been for the last year and a half, is very expensive—too expensive to maintain for long, as it turns out. We can no longer afford to keep creating it. AOEO already has a very large amount of high-quality, hand-crafted entertainment, and adding more is no longer cost-effective.

I agree that without constant improvement, AoEO will probably have a hard time supporting the existing community and attracting new fans.

[Pureon]

I wasn't expecting that.

[Mythos_Ruler]

If the game was making money, this wouldn't have happened.

[quantumstate]

I can't see much hope for the game now. Unless things have changed significantly since I last played the multiplayer setup was poor and there are no tools for users to create content. Without these things it is hard to have much of a community.

[Almin]

I wasn't expecting that.

If the game was making money, this wouldn't have happened.

Exactly my thoughts... Hopefully they'll learn from it and the next Age of Empires, if the series continues, will be playable again, like AoE 1&2. They are now ending up with nothing but a @#$% online game with no content, hopefully no money and not even a possibility to play it offline. In one word: FAIL!

[Gen.Kenobi]

A next AoE could be in the WW1 setting... but that's not going to happen...

[Lion.Kanzen]

with the original team out of the project, aoeo i was expecting that cartonish dumbhead kiddie game failed

[Pedro Falcão]

I tried it out and I can, now, say it is a crap.

I found the graphics so fancy that it seemed annoying, sometimes, not to mention it was hard to differentiate a Greek house from a warehouse, for example. They adopted the somewhat the same "Capital & Cards" gamestyle from AoE3 (which was very criticized), but with even less "upgrades" to choose from, and needing to level up your capital a lot to have a decent support from it.

It says the game is free, but you need to pay even to have your spearmen (the most basic Greek unit in-game) upgraded to 'Champion Spearmen'.

There is a system brought from the RPG/Adventure games that enables you to give an item to certain units or buildings to make them stronger, and the stronger the item, the more you have to play to earn/be able to buy them.

There is a PvP & Coop system, but it was taking too long to find someone, so I gave up.

Also you get bored with your unit roster pretty quickly, since you'll be playing many 'tutorials' and stuff and have to train the same units to defeat the same guys, it just doesn't feel like you're progressing.

One thing i liked is that you buy vanity items to customize your units appearance. But, of course, it had to have a bad thing about it: they have some outfits that totally kill the atmosphere of the game. Imagine you hoping for that epic PvP battle and then you see the enemy hoplites with rainbows drawn on their shield, spears made of traffic cones and a tribal helm...

[Lion.Kanzen]

I tried it out and I can, now, say it is a crap.

I found the graphics so fancy that it seemed annoying, sometimes, not to mention it was hard to differentiate a Greek house from a warehouse, for example. They adopted the somewhat the same "Capital & Cards" gamestyle from AoE3 (which was very criticized), but with even less "upgrades" to choose from, and needing to level up your capital a lot to have a decent support from it.

It says the game is free, but you need to pay even to have your spearmen (the most basic Greek unit in-game) upgraded to 'Champion Spearmen'.

There is a system brought from the RPG/Adventure games that enables you to give an item to certain units or buildings to make them stronger, and the stronger the item, the more you have to play to earn/be able to buy them.

There is a PvP & Coop system, but it was taking too long to find someone, so I gave up.

Also you get bored with your unit roster pretty quickly, since you'll be playing many 'tutorials' and stuff and have to train the same units to defeat the same guys, it just doesn't feel like you're progressing.

One thing i liked is that you buy vanity items to customize your units appearance. But, of course, it had to have a bad thing about it: they have some outfits that totally kill the atmosphere of the game. Imagine you hoping for that epic PvP battle and then you see the enemy hoplites with rainbows drawn on their shield, spears made of traffic cones and a tribal helm...

i love Inventory mode in military units, and villagers. and 4 slots to use a skill.