In the recent update , Worlds Edge was replaced by Activision
What lies ahead for Age of Empires???
1: We don’t know.
2: Activision+losing half of World’s Edge are not a good sign in any way shape or form.
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Probably the End of Times of AoE2 as we know it, hope I wrong
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As long as villagers don’t run up walls or perform double jumps (jokes aside), I hope we see some exciting new features—or at least that they keep up the good work.
I’m being optimistic.
Meh, probably the same as now, but with more blatant decisions aimed at increasing sales.
Just a quick reminder: WE were the ones who decided to kill aoe3 before.
It was WE who decided to have an R3K DLC instead of adding civs that actually shaped the history of China in the aoe2 timeframe, such as the Tibetans, Tanguts, and Bai, just to pander to the Chinese market and get more sales and better reviews. It failed, and Chinese players hate that DLC. It never even crossed their minds to pick the Tibetans and Tanguts as new civs, even though they’ve been highly requested since the first mods era like the forgotten (unofficial version). The Bai weren’t as well known, though.
It was WE who decided to make an underdeveloped Tribes DLC and picked the Muisca, Mapuche, and Tupi instead of large and powerful empires in the bronze age that shaped the history of the continent, such as the Chimor, Wari, and Tiwanaku, just to boost sales in Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia, apparently thinking they’d get more sales and better reviews. Well, the reviews are awful even today, people don’t like it. It never even crossed their minds to pick the Chimor or Tiwanaku, even though they’ve been highly requested since unofficial mods like Realms and The New World. The Wari weren’t as well known, though.
Anyway, what should we expect? I don’t know, but there will be cosmetics DLCs now. I bet.
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Looking at the game’s recent history, the game will be flooded with low effort content.
I mean just look at Three Kingdoms and V&V. A significant amount of the playerbase just ignore the quality and buy every single damn DLC like there’s no tomorrow.
Overall, it would be super logical for Activision to use aoe2 as an easy source of money.
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It’s over, bros.
Out of all the publishers that could have taken over it had to be Activision. They’ll nickel and dime the playerbase for literally every penny possible and then F off and the game will be as good as unrecognizable by then. The game has been abandoned pretty much and they want to siphon off as much money from the playerbase as possible before officially dropping it.
I mean the game has been going in the wrong direction for years now but at least there was still some hope for it. It’s truly over this time
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Letting Activision take over is pretty much the same as taking the dog out back.
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Never be first adopter, wait till reviews come and don’t buy if it suX. I am still missing some dlcs for that reason alone. Companies understand only money, don’t give em until they do it right.
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They can still release products that will make the game unrecognizable, even if it sparks a backlash.
Ultimately what happens also depends on us. Publishers want to sell things so they want to make what people want to buy. They are not completely brain dead.
Please don’t buy anything you don’t like just to “support the developers” because that tells them to make more of that.
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I agree and and as a matter of fact I only buy the dlcs that offer what I want. I don’t really believe in buying a dlc for the sake of supporting the devs.
The issue is that most of the playerbase seems to buy everything they gobble up and Activision also has a history of ruining games and not giving a fuck about the playerbase.
AGAIN, it’s Activision we’re talking about here. Brining in Activision means that it’s been decided to maximize profits and milk every cent possible before dropping the game altogether.
It’s pretty much over. The game’s on a limited lifespan now
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Yes, I expect a “Warzonization” of the game: seasonal battle passes and DLCs becoming seasonal content full of skins every 3-4 months or even every month. Think, for example, of the seasons and UI in the CoD saga, AoE 4 and AoE Mobile…
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Activision is such a bad garbage company, I’d actually prefer them to just cease development all together than let that shitstain on the industry destroy the series.
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Haha, of course but hope they will update and fix bug of game like dev before @@
I agree with this, but in the case of Activision they’d take a different approach by instead going mostly for reasons that would have the highest chance of attracting players. So essentially expect something like a Teutons or Italians split DLC.
There would probably be cosmetic microtransactions and perhaps even a battle pass. I could see them doing a thing where there’s a battle pass that gives you a new civ that’s rotated every 3 months or so. The civ is technically free in the free battle pass but you have to grind for it but can get it instantly if you get the paid one. Along with some new season exclusive cosmetics.
WE already did this pre lords of the west with the various Collab events and special cheat codes. So this would be that but more blatantly predatory. Oh and the civ in the battlepass is gone if you don’t get em within the 3 months.
To be completely honest here, Activision does have IP other than COD that they handle somewhat differently (such as Spyro and Tony Hawk Pro Skater). have things changed? Internally for sure, how this will impact things externally remains to be seen, as always though, be vocal if there is something you disagree with. We do not know what lies ahead the only thing that can be done is wait for what is next and then assess based on that.
Honestly there’s a couple microtransaction-type content pieces I could get behind; they are as follows:
Regional unit skins: There has been a debate amongst the community as to whether people want regional unit skins or not, I think a cosmetic DLC to add it would be perfect, as long as not purchasing makes it so that the cosmetic isn’t available at all to you. That way the people who want the regional unit skins can buy the DLC and get them, and the people that don’t want them can opt out and their game is unaffected.
Campaigns: Hear me out, but we have a number of civs that don’t have their own campaign (and tbh I’d add Saxons from the new DLC to this list). Dropping a $3 or $4 item that is just a campaign for one of those civs is something that personally i’d be down with if it means filling out the roster of campaigns. Maybe i’m in the minority, and of course i’d rather get them in bigger DLCs, but i’m not convinced we’ll get the roster fully filled out otherwise.
I will say while I have some concerns about microtransactions, I don’t have as much concern as some others seem to have. The reason why is that WE still exists. If they had fully liquidated WE and put FE directly under Activision i’d be more worried, but with WE still existing as a middle-man I have some faith that they can shield the game from some of the most nutty of microtransaction ideas. Also keep in mind this is in the same Microsoft environment that recently stopped pushing Microsoft Copilot into the gaming sector because customers didn’t want it. So it does seem that the Xbox head does seem to listen to what the customers want. I have hope that the most predatory of microtransaction stuff won’t happen, but we shall see I suppose.
Yeah, I have also heard that outside of COD, Activision has recently started to walk back some of their garbage in some of their other games. That also gives me some hope.
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I am in the same boat. I am not too worried about what comes next. The DE:s already had time limited things (such as the community events for 2DE/4 and Retold) and have dabbled in optional cosmetic DLC already (3DE and Retold come to mind here). Activision is not taking over development duties entirely, the structure that we’ve had remains in place to some degree (although yes WE has been significantly reduced as part of this shakeup), also keep in mind that aside from WE none of the other studios working on this franchise are MS studios and are contracted to work on this franchise.
Again, there has been shakeups and changes on an internal basis (such as the loss of the internal WE project) but I would be surprised if too many changes will happen too quickly. They might test things such as more cosmetic DLC options but in my eyes if it proves unsuccessful they will simply not do it and try other things. AOE as it is has been has been largely successful making too many changes that risk alienating the base feels unwise.
Note AoE2 is also about as if not more popular than Warcraft 3 Reforged (They are speculated to have similar player counts and AoE2 has larger eSports audience than WC3), a game Activision Blizzard is still supporting to this day. Even with added features like a, better graphic style in the new DLC for reforged. They also pretty much reverted OW to how it originally was minus a few a things but now it’s free to play.
Blizzard is under Activision like how WE and all it’s associated developers are. So it’s likely they’ll just keep doing what prints them money cuz deviation messed things up before.