Age of Empires Online

Our exclusive Steam sale content just went live!

Steam Summer Bundle is now on the Daily Sale. I'll be sending out a couple gifts, so if you're interested, let me know!

I'd be interested! Played it in beta.

I'm in on the Summer Bundle. Downloading now and looking forward to playing tonight.

Steam: bigkid66
Xbox: bigkid66

soonerjudd wrote:

Steam Summer Bundle is now on the Daily Sale. I'll be sending out a couple gifts, so if you're interested, let me know!

I'm confused (quite easily, apparently). I have an account through GFWL. What am I buying via the Steam version? Just the trinkets? Are all civs now upgraded at start of play?

Thanks!

The bundle includes several of our new vanity items and consumables, upgraded storage (24-slot warehouse!), and an exclusive building for your capital city.

Ok, but say I buy the bundle on Steam (in the next 15 minutes)...how does my current non-Steam account mesh with my new Steam account? I'd rather play it on Steam, frankly.

Thanks!

Sorry, just saw your post Natus. The deal's actually good until 10pm PST tonight, so there's still time. Anyway, your progress is stored on the servers, so you should be able to just install via Steam (or possibly just copy the files over) and you're off to the races! Just make sure that when you log in to the game, you're using the same GamerTag.

Edit: Just saw you already have it!
PS: El Producto, you should accept my friend request

Well, I figured I'd give it a shot and got the Steam sale content.

I was listening to the GWJ podcast and heard about the new patch and change to the price model. I'm so down for playing after the patch.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

I was listening to the GWJ podcast and heard about the new patch and change to the price model. I'm so down for playing after the patch.

There's a new patch about to drop?

Natus wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

I was listening to the GWJ podcast and heard about the new patch and change to the price model. I'm so down for playing after the patch.

There's a new patch about to drop?

I can't tell if it's already been patched. Here's the announcement.

Natus and Tuffalo, yes to both! The Summer Update has already dropped, making the game fully free to play. We are also preparing an Anniversary Update to commemorate the 1-year anniversary with more new content! Just this morning we livestreamed the reveal of Spectator Mode on our Twitch.tv channel, we've announced a few other features on our blog, and there's more to come!

I dip my toe in it a week ago and I was pretty happy with the changes. I'm still not a fan of the MMO/UI experience.

Give me a menu instead of these islands I need to visit. Need to play PvP mulitplayer? Go to Sparta and figure out which building you need to click! What about skirmish mode? Go to this other island over here and talk to this guy! An actually menu would be nice... it's really getting silly.

soonerjudd, I just wanted to thank you for all the help and advice you've offered on here. It's definitely a boon for us!

However, I must say that I am finding the whole AoE:O experience very frustrating and irritating, because ultimately I feel that FAR more thought has gone into meta-game issues than into the game itself. Perhaps that's to be expected, because this is suddenly an MMORTS, but i feel it's a poor fit, and the game suffers for it. This is not to say that the company is not making money on it--I hope they are!--but I hope this type of system is the last of its kind. Now, I have only spent money on the summer sale, but even that was an issue: Marcus Pollux has twelve new fun gifts for me, one a large warehouse, but I can't accept the gifts piecemeal, I have to have room in my warehouses for the lot, which I don't. This has led to the spectacle of me building yet another warehouse to allow Marcus to give me what I paid for, which includes a large warehouse that I now cannot build due to limitations. NOT well thought out.

After the huge change some months ago, I was expecting the whole micro-transaction side of things to take a back seat and not be so in one's face. But, no, at every turn the game reminds you that you can't have this adviser or that weapon or that armor or that upgrade or that building unless you buy a premium civilization. Did you just complete a tough quest and get four chests? Well, you can bet three of those will be items you can't use now, and can probably never use. Why can't I play the Persians? Because they alone are behind some kind of paywall, like so much of the content of this game. I am constantly astonished that Robot AND GPG thought this whole structure was ever a good idea.

This would be annoying but acceptable if the gameplay put AoE:O at the top of the Age of Empires heap. But no...gameplay was obviously far down on the list, after the art and the transaction system and the marketing and all the other non-essential ephemera the game offers. I am playing AoE concurrently with AoE3 and AoM, and there’s simply no comparison. Units in AoE:O move too quickly and are too alike...they all seem to be soft counters of each other. The quests are grindy and dull as dishwater, and don’t even get me started on PvP. Maybe it’s improved after the most recent patch, but of course the game is going to be unbalanced when one player can spend or grind his way to unlocked armor and tech, and the other player cannot. No matchmaking program can fix that!

As much as I want GPG to do well by AoE:O, I wouldn’t mind yet another huge patch where the smell of money and micro-transactions is hidden better. Don’t reward me with stuff I can’t use if I’m not willing to pay for the premium content. Shoving it all in my face is like being called by the same telemarketer hour after hour. This game is such a missed opportunity, and I really hope it finds its footing soon.

I must say that I am finding the whole AoE:O experience very frustrating and irritating, because ultimately I feel that FAR more thought has gone into meta-game issues than into the game itself.

+1 times a million to this (which would be one, but you get the point). If this game was just a Age Of Empires that is exclusively online and just had a great online experience, I would be down with it more. The whole MMO part is just annoying and frustrating.

Thanks for the input guys! Sorry I didn't respond sooner - we were pretty busy last week getting everything out for the Anniversary celebration. I can definitely see where you're coming from, I've personally talked with the producer about the large inventory requirements for the bundle. We just put out a special anniversary bundle that needs even more space, but hopefully the future bundles will be a little more storage-conscious.

As to the other issues, the Persians are different than the other civs - they're a "Pro" civ (the others are standard, and can be upgraded to "premium"). They're designed for an experienced player and have a different quest path. This goes for our new Pro civ, the Babylonians, as well. This is part of the reasoning why there's no free version.

As far as the PvP experience, you might want to try the Champion mode - gear is purely aesthetic here and doesn't give bonuses, it's our competitive skill-based mode. We run a live stream on this mode every week of community vs. our balance testers at our Twitch.tv channel. If you're interested in seeing how PvP works, I'd suggest you check it out. The streams are usually held Wednesdays at 11am PDT, and you can also watch videos from past streams.

Thanks, soonerjudd, I'll definitely check those streams out. I just wish the constant emphasis had been about the actual game and not about ephemera. A good number of man hours had to have been spent on creating the Celebration bundle, which as you know has no bearing on the game itself. And if the game actually surpassed its predecessors in quality, the window dressing would be great.

I look forward to playing the Babylonians.

If anyone's going to PAX, I'll be there roaming the halls with all sorts of AoEO goodies!

I'm sure I've asked this before, but I'm having issues with skirmish. Skirmish is really where I play these kinds of games, with PvP if the matchmaking system is good. I'm finding that in some skirmish matches vs the AI that I simply get wiped off the map, usually by a Premium Civ with Champion units. We aren't talking late in the game...this is Age 2 or so. If I weren't already proficient at this and other Age games, I'd think it was me and my level of suckage. The Babylonian Lancers on Standard are, from what I can tell, uber-units: spearmen are soft counters (not hard), they withstand tower and TC fire, and grind buildings down easily. What can one do but throw up one's hands? And what must these units be like on Strong or Fierce difficulties?

You might want to check out our blog at ageofempiresonline.com. The balance team had recently started a series of PVP tips that would probably come in handy for just such a situation. Also, in the last several weeks, they've given commentary on matches in our Twitch live streams, discussing strategies and the like. If there's anything specific you want to see in future blogs, etc., send me a PM, and I can pass it on for consideration.

So it seems all new content has stopped being produced way back in January. I don't know that too many people are surprised about that, but it's never a good thing for any game.

However, we will have Age of Empires II HD to look forward to. It's receiving a surprising number of sneers ("spend $17 to play a game I bought twelve years ago?"), but I'm very excited about it, especially the mutiplay on Steam. Of course, the hope is that the game will receive as many tweaks and fixes as possible while leaving the core intact. Ultimately, it could be a better "upgrade" than AoE:O turned out to be. Very glad MS is still working on this series!

Natus wrote:

However, we will have Age of Empires II HD to look forward to. It's receiving a surprising number of sneers ("spend $17 to play a game I bought twelve years ago?"), but I'm very excited about it, especially the mutiplay on Steam. Of course, the hope is that the game will receive as many tweaks and fixes as possible while leaving the core intact. Ultimately, it could be a better "upgrade" than AoE:O turned out to be. Very glad MS is still working on this series!

Oh, I pre-ordered it the minute I heard about it. Some buddies of mine and I tried playing it briefly almost a year ago until we realized how friggin' archaic connecting to each other via IP address was. The simple addition of Steam into the game is worth it to me!

Have you noticed any real graphical improvements, though? Personally, they didn't look all that stellar to me, but perhaps I'm just spoiled by newer RTS games. Again, I pre-ordered it so the graphics aren't a hitch for me, but I question the inclusion of the acronym "HD" in the title...

Age of Empires Online shut down today.

R.I.P. Age of Empires Online, 16 Aug 2011 - 1 Jul 2014

BadKen wrote:

Age of Empires Online shut down today.

R.I.P. Age of Empires Online, 16 Aug 2011 - 1 Jul 2014

Is that bad?

We're doing a livestream today to commemorate the game.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Is that bad?

I dunno, I played it a bit when it first came out. The extra races were kind of pricey, though. They did improve that over time, but I wasn't around for those changes.

I think maybe it suffered from a lack of marketing and from being tied to GFWL more than anything else. It was a decent game, and one of the few RTS games that hung in there for the past few years.

RIP indeed.

We now have AoM and AoE2 on Steam, but apparently no one can make or re-make an Age game for modern day. Drives me nuts, because it could be great.

I like it but the model was a bit off and the community didn't get there.