Age of Empires Online

So far the free to play stuff is nice, if the game picks up I might pick up a premium pack. So far there at level 5 there are quest rewards for people with the VIP stuff. I cant see paying $100 for this game right now, there are still a lot of bugs that need to be worked out, lots of glitches that from what I could see were in beta. I hope this game goes far, I just dont know that its got the legs.

I played some of it last night. Only made it to level 3, so I'm somewhere in the tutorial.

I can definitely see the trappings of an AoE game in there, but it's going to be hard to really know until I have everything (or more things) available to me, and the ability to start a city from scratch and advance through some ages.

So far, I can say I generally like the graphical style, I don't detest the interface, and I'm glad they stuck with the basics of AoE (i.e. building names, tech tree, etc.). I spent some Empire points in the tech tree and was glad to see some of those classic abilities returning, though I'm wondering how that will play into matches. It seems like they've turned it into a global leveling system, rather than occurring in a specific game. Not sure I like that, as it was half the appeal of playing Age of Empires (as in, the leveling within a specific game, and advancing in age). I'm willing to give it a try, but I'm not sure I like that, yet.

I definitely don't like the kids playing the game. I watched the "Global" chat feed as it streamed across and, good God, it was appalling. It took these kids less than a day to find the game and they're already talking like they "grew up on Age of Empires," when it could only, possibly, be Age of Empires III that they have any experience in. I realize this problem is endemic to all gaming, but seriously, it just seemed worse last night than I've seen it in a long time. It must be the "free to play"ness of the game, or perhaps the Xbox Live Achievements, that attracted them.

I'll be disabling Global chat, believe you me. Has anyone looking into a GWJ chat channel? Do we even have enough people to make it worth it? I'd like to see conversation streaming across in that chat window, but I'd love to be able to limit it to people with a high school diploma (at least...).

I downloaded it, and enjoyed it so much for the first half hour or so that I picked up the premium Greek civilization. I figure the single player stuff will be a decent thing to do when I need a distraction at work.

TheCounselor wrote:

I downloaded it, and enjoyed it so much for the first half hour or so that I picked up the premium Greek civilization. I figure the single player stuff will be a decent thing to do when I need a distraction at work.

Nice. After you play for awhile, be sure to post about whether you think the Premium pack is worth it or not. At least, whether you feel as though you got your money's worth (or more or less).

If Microsoft put the Byzantines up tomorrow, and if they played like they did in AoE II (ish...), I'd drop $20 on it.

TheCounselor wrote:

I downloaded it, and enjoyed it so much for the first half hour or so that I picked up the premium Greek civilization. I figure the single player stuff will be a decent thing to do when I need a distraction at work.

That's good to hear. I'm installing it now. How much was the Greek civ?

Jeff-66 wrote:
TheCounselor wrote:

I downloaded it, and enjoyed it so much for the first half hour or so that I picked up the premium Greek civilization. I figure the single player stuff will be a decent thing to do when I need a distraction at work.

That's good to hear. I'm installing it now. How much was the Greek civ?

Greeks and Egyptians are $20 each. You can play as either one to a somewhat limited extent. Most reports I'm seeing suggest that the "free content" should be able to last you around 40 hrs, though your mileage may vary.

ilduce620 wrote:
Jeff-66 wrote:
TheCounselor wrote:

I downloaded it, and enjoyed it so much for the first half hour or so that I picked up the premium Greek civilization. I figure the single player stuff will be a decent thing to do when I need a distraction at work.

That's good to hear. I'm installing it now. How much was the Greek civ?

Greeks and Egyptians are $20 each. You can play as either one to a somewhat limited extent. Most reports I'm seeing suggest that the "free content" should be able to last you around 40 hrs, though your mileage may vary.

Thanks. I was wondering, because when I logged on, it had both an "upgrade" and a "play now" button under both civs, so I was confused, wondering 'where is the free civ then?" I'm pretty unfamiliar with how they handling the money part. Anyway, I'll give it a try. I already like the art style quite a bit.

edit: I set about to find the difference between the free and premium civs, and found this comparison chart.

In short, with F2P civs:

* you may acquire but not use rare or epic gear
* you may not craft rare or epic gear
* you cannot use star techs, or advisors
* you cannot play ranked PVP
* you may play in, but not host, custom PVP matches
* the number of inventory buildings, workshops, and craft halls you may have is limited (you get significantly more of these with premium)
* you may acquire but not spend Empire points
* you may not earn money from capital stores

GiantBomb has their "Quick Look" up for AoE Online. If you want to watch 50 min of the game, rather than install it, you should check it out.

I started playing this last night. I haven't put a huge amount of time into it, but it feels like AoE.

For somebody that doesn't have the 20+ hours a week to devote to an MMO, I like the idea of paying for chunks of content in lieu of a subscription fee. My question to people who have purchased premium civ packs: is one pack worth the same as two months of WoW?

I'm kind of surprised at the lack of interest in this game. It's free, and seems to be quite well done. Since release, this thread has had what, 10 posts?

I have to admit, Giant Bomb's quick look interested me a lot. Does anyone know how much co-op is in the game? I'm trying to find games to get my girlfriend into and I think this could fit the bill well since she does really like playing Civ V with me.

Jeff-66 wrote:

I'm kind of surprised at the lack of interest in this game. It's free, and seems to be quite well done. Since release, this thread has had what, 10 posts?

Agreed. I haven't had much of a chance to try it beyond my initial experience a few nights ago, personally.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

I have to admit, Giant Bomb's quick look interested me a lot. Does anyone know how much co-op is in the game? I'm trying to find games to get my girlfriend into and I think this could fit the bill well since she does really like playing Civ V with me.

Their Quick Look has interested me more, too, now that I've seen some of the classic AoE units turning up, as well as some new ones. I just really don't like the Greeks or Egyptians, but I also don't really like the Celts or Persians...and at the same time, I don't know if I want to wait to see what the next set of civs will be. I want them to release new civs faster!

I've got a buddy that is planning some co-op with me. We aren't sure whether you have to get through the tutorial before it lets you do so, though? Is there a level where such things are enabled? Or can you do it from the get-go?

As far as I can tell, all quests can be played in co-op mode as long as one player has a premium civ. (Only premiums can initiate a multi-player game. This might only apply to PvP.)

Edit: stupid autocorrect. Civ != cob

What is going to be interesting with this game is how different tech builds will compliment each other in co-op. Two civs specialized in different skills (eg. Resource gatherings + military) will be more powerful than 2 well rounded civs.

After a few hours in and up to level 4, I'm enjoying it a lot.

How does friending and the servers work? I tried to view someone's kingdom, who was on my Live friend list, and appeared to be online playing AEO, but it siad they weren't on the same server. How do choose servers?

Propagandalf wrote:

After a few hours in and up to level 4, I'm enjoying it a lot.

How does friending and the servers work? I tried to view someone's kingdom, who was on my Live friend list, and appeared to be online playing AEO, but it siad they weren't on the same server. How do choose servers?

I don't remember the details, but when I set up my Egyptian city (which I cleverly named 'Cairo'), I remember seeing an option to choose a server, and I think I also saw a button to migrate to another server.

If some goodjers are going to be playing this, we should settle on a common server for co-op.

ilduce620 wrote:

I've got a buddy that is planning some co-op with me. We aren't sure whether you have to get through the tutorial before it lets you do so, though? Is there a level where such things are enabled? Or can you do it from the get-go?

If it's like the beta (which I'm guessing it is), you need to go through maybe half a dozen or more single player tutorial levels before co-op opens up. Missions need to be explicitly marked as playable via co-op to work, but I'm guessing many of them are once you get into it.

From the beta, my only complaint with co-op was that the host was essentially the primary civ and other players were secondary. So the mission might have the primary civ starting off in Age II or with several buildings, while the secondary players have to start from scratch. It was annoying as the co-op partner always felt "less than" the host player. Maybe that goes away in later missions, too... uncertain.

Otherwise my only complaint from the beta is that the early game was way too easy. I really liked leveling up, finding loot to upgrade units and buildings, etc. The reward system was great, I just wanted the game to be more challenging. Again, maybe it gets harder later on and of course there's PvP which could be fun.

For $20 I'm willing to pick up a civ and give it a shot.

Jeff-66 wrote:
Propagandalf wrote:

After a few hours in and up to level 4, I'm enjoying it a lot.

How does friending and the servers work? I tried to view someone's kingdom, who was on my Live friend list, and appeared to be online playing AEO, but it siad they weren't on the same server. How do choose servers?

I don't remember the details, but when I set up my Egyptian city (which I cleverly named 'Cairo'), I remember seeing an option to choose a server, and I think I also saw a button to migrate to another server.

If some goodjers are going to be playing this, we should settle on a common server for co-op.

The Qt3-ers are on Marathon, it seems. If we want a wider pool of friends, that might be a promising server.

Yes, I'd probably take a Byzantine or Assyrian civ myself, as long as they were truly different. I'm liking my free Egyptian civ right now and have no plans to pay for anything, because I'm not that wild about the game yet and I want to see how the pricing structure sorts itself out.

I named my Egyptian city ThothAmon which I know is incredibly original. Love to get some games in and help with co-op.

Natus wrote:
Jeff-66 wrote:

If some goodjers are going to be playing this, we should settle on a common server for co-op.

The Qt3-ers are on Marathon, it seems. If we want a wider pool of friends, that might be a promising server.

Marathon is what I'm on already, so that works for me

We tried some co-op last night, but couldn't get it to work. Firstly, we had to get onto the same server, and the documentation on how to do this was negligible, at best. We figured it out after I logged out of the system and found the button beneath my city profile. After that, I was level three, and my buddy was level 1. He quickly found that you have to be level 3 before you can enter co-op in any capacity. Finally, we found that only the party leader can invite to a co-op experience, so you have to "Promote" your party member to party leader in order to have them initiate co-op. However, I tried this on one particular quest, and it said "Single-Player Only," so some of it is still subdivided.

[I don't have an Xbox or use XBL, but it seems to me that, if you have someone on your Friend's List, you should be able to double-click their name and get a "Join Party" option that simply, automatically, moves you to their server and gets you into a match together. Guess that's just me...]

Which brings us to that last, "particular quest." It's titled "Mow 'Em Down."

In short, it is broken.

In the quest, you are given some special units that you can't produce any more of. You are charged with destroying 15 enemy houses, 5 war huts, and 4 specific bandits. The game registers that you can remove the houses and the war huts from existence, but it won't register that you've killed the four bandits. After the first bandit, all the ones after that will only give you XP, but won't register to the quest log, thus allowing you to actually complete the quest.

I tried it four times last night. Apparently it's a problem, if you do a Google search about it. I've tried a few of the things suggested (e.g. get the bandits out of order, don't get the first treasure you come to, etc.). No dice. I got frustrated and quit.

Anyone else have this problem? I'm definitely digging the mechanics of the game, even though the co-op experience is quite unintuitive. It's kinda silly to have a game-breaking bug this early in the game...

ilduce620 wrote:

In the quest, you are given some special units that you can't produce any more of. You are charged with destroying 15 enemy houses, 5 war huts, and 4 specific bandits. The game registers that you can remove the houses and the war huts from existence, but it won't register that you've killed the four bandits. After the first bandit, all the ones after that will only give you XP, but won't register to the quest log, thus allowing you to actually complete the quest.

That was broken in beta. I thought for sure they'd fix it up for release as I consider that to be pretty significant. Quest-breaking bugs - especially ones that early in the game - are not a good thing.

I started playing this a bit until level 3 or 4. I actually like the meta game in this (I was not a fan of it in AoE3 and thought it was more of an annoyance), it's pretty well implemented and the quests don't feel too grindy.

Question for those who have played co-op: is it easy to send your ally resources?

FedoraMcQuaid wrote:

I started playing this a bit until level 3 or 4. I actually like the meta game in this (I was not a fan of it in AoE3 and thought it was more of an annoyance), it's pretty well implemented and the quests don't feel too grindy.

Agreed. Though I'm not very far in (and stuck at that infernal level...), it seems like each game is most similar to AoE II, while the "meta game" is more similar to AoE III. I wasn't a huge fan of the "home city" concept in AoE III, but moving it outside of each individual game, where you can reap its benefits while keeping it out of your way, is pretty wonderful. +1 to them.

Though, -1 for breaking the "Mow 'em down" quest. Averages out, I guess.

I finished the Mow 'em Down quest with no problems.

Same

Propagandalf wrote:

I finished the Mow 'em Down quest with no problems.

FedoraMcQuaid wrote:

Same

Mmm... With Greeks? Did you just follow along the path as otherwise described? Were your archers up there with the charge? That was one suggestion: only let your melee special units forward to do the killing, as anyone else landing the "killing blow" would cause the kill not to count. I hadn't tried that.

Regardless, glad it's working for some people! I'll try again tonight, likely...

Rob Zacny posted some fairly negative impressions over on GamePro today. The whole having to grind through hours of starter content before getting to the "real" game aspect sounds pretty lame. Have you guys been getting the same feeling?

I'll be checking it out tonight. Anyone else?

cube wrote:

I'll be checking it out tonight. Anyone else?

I am patching right now in hopes of taking a look.