Age of Empires Online, forgotten by Microsoft?

@PCS70 said:
@CostlierParrot3
Where did you find those statistics?

As a very old time player I’ve been in the beta test of AOEO from the start and I liked every bit and byte of it, also the casual elements you talk about which were optional for progressing.

Did you know that AOEO was the first RTS game with wearable upgradable gear?

It takes a lot of courage to reinvent your own wheel.

believe me, no courage! and honestly I’m not even interested in demolishing aoeo. nobody is paying me for that. I’m just saying my thoughts. They are not cheap: I read reviews, and comments that can be found on the internet. Over time, since they closed the servers, they talked about aoeo, and I read these statements. I’m talking about normal users; not paid reviews to say the fake. as I also read about people whom the game liked; I also liked it … but not as a game that can be called AoE. I just ask you one thing: are you also thinking that AoEO is the best of the whole series?

@CostlierParrot3

You are entitled to your own opinion. Also I think it failed because a lot of ‘casual’ players never could get over the MMO part inside it, although it was fully optional. And I can understand that some hardcore traditional AOE fans were actually shocked by this version, it was really a leap ahead in time. Really some groundbreaking work has been done there. The currently very popular MOBA RTS genre is actually based a lot on what you find in AOEO.

The way I see it Valve with DOTA took the fruit of their work.

To answer your question, although you didn’t really answer mine. I think every version stands on it’s own and that the definition of the best, the biggest and the greatest mostly depends on your personal flavor.

All of those don’t belong to mine though.

I happen to find AoEO the best in the series. It’s also pretty rough around the edges and particularly difficult for an outsider to jump into and find their way on their own. Leveling up Civs and navigating the game through various questgivers and jumping around to cities is super clunky. But as far as pvp gameplay, AoEO crushes the others, in my subjective opinion. And the civ design is brilliant. The deeper I look at those Civs, the more nuance I find. Swoon.

After they shut it down, I tried going back to AoM and AoE2. I found them very poor substitutes.

@PCS70 said:
@CostlierParrot3
Where did you find those statistics?

As a very old time player I’ve been in the beta test of AOEO from the start and I liked every bit and byte of it, also the casual elements you talk about which were optional for progressing.

Did you know that AOEO was the first RTS game with wearable upgradable gear?

It takes a lot of courage to reinvent your own wheel.

@“Andy P” said:
I happen to find AoEO the best in the series. It’s also pretty rough around the edges and particularly difficult for an outsider to jump into and find their way on their own. Leveling up Civs and navigating the game through various questgivers and jumping around to cities is super clunky. But as far as pvp gameplay, AoEO crushes the others, in my subjective opinion. And the civ design is brilliant. The deeper I look at those Civs, the more nuance I find. Swoon.

After they shut it down, I tried going back to AoM and AoE2. I found them very poor substitutes.

Of course, I knew that aoeo was the first RTS game with wearable and upgradable equipment. Honestly, these moba and mmo elements that you are talking about, I did not appreciate them in an AoE game. Beware, I did not say it’s not a nice game! I said that the innovation of those elements in the AoE series, secondly, did not work well. However, I fully respect your ideas, and I’m glad to be confronted with you! as you said, depends very much on your own taste!

@“Andy P” said:
I happen to find AoEO the best in the series. It’s also pretty rough around the edges and particularly difficult for an outsider to jump into and find their way on their own. Leveling up Civs and navigating the game through various questgivers and jumping around to cities is super clunky. But as far as pvp gameplay, AoEO crushes the others, in my subjective opinion. And the civ design is brilliant. The deeper I look at those Civs, the more nuance I find. Swoon.

After they shut it down, I tried going back to AoM and AoE2. I found them very poor substitutes.

Completely agree with you; after playing AOEO from early Beta until its demise and especially playing lot of co-op quests with friends, running my own free crafting service for the community and interacting with a lot of people to gather all the best crafting recipes it is close to impossible to go back to the bland AOE2 or 3 and enjoy it after the depth and community feel AOEO offered; not to mention the much more fluent and improved pathfinding and other countless improvements from previous AOE titles.

After MS announced thay are working on AOE 1 ,2 & 3 DE’s, and AOE 4; it was rather sad to see that they are not trying to revive AOEO, especially since there is a strong community that is trying hard to bring it back to life through Project Celeste, etc…

@Will10154
I do think that’s were it all starts. A lot of good things came from forgotten games and their communities. MS will catch up with it again eventually. With the current pace it will take them until 2020 before they can start with AOE IV development.

Yes indeed, the pathfinding works very well in that version. Actually if you get along with this version all others are quite boring to play. The only reason afaic to play the new DE versions are better graphics and 4K support, but if it results in gameplay not running smoothly it’s a waste of our time and MS’s money.

Are you in need of some gold, mate? :wink:

1 Like

The only good part of AoEO was the PvP. If they removed the leveling, crafting, and quests, it might have been a hit. The art style was great.

RTS devs keep trying innovate but keep failing. The most popular RTS’s on Steam are all old games.

I fear for AoE4. I’m sure the devs are going to add some kind of gimmic like a card system or heroes in an attempt to keep the game “fresh.” All I want is StarCraft set in ancient times.

@Jaguar775
You have an excellent point with “If they removed the leveling etc. it might have been a hit”.

@Jaguar775 ; If by ‘StarCraft’ in ancient times you mean ‘Warcraft’, I would honestly be a little worried if AOE 4 turned into that. The over-emphasis on competitive play, APM and general unit handling in those titles are very different from the Age series.

With that said, if you are curious to see what a hybrid would be like, I would point you towards the excellent yet cruelly forgotten gem, Armies of Exigo. A lot of folks have described it as a mix between the two, and they aren’t too far off the mark with that. It’s ■■■■ hard to find these days, but I believe it does still run with relatively little trouble on modern rigs. (and hey, maybe GOG will listen and finally grab it!).

@Antagonist Does the game really still exist on player ran servers (or on anything), and if so how do you access them to play?

  • @“Da Messenjah” said:

@Antagonist Does the game really still exist on player ran servers (or on anything), and if so how do you access them to play?

It does and you can read here how to install it.
https://reddit.com/r/projectceleste/wiki/how-to-install-and-play-aoeo-celeste-fan-project

@PCS70 Thank you so much!!!

@“Da Messenjah” said:
@PCS70 Thank you so much!!!

You are welcome.

I would install by option 2. Installing it through Steam and updating does work, but wen you launch it one time from the Steam interface it can damage the installation.

The new Celeste Project launcher has great improvements by the way.

@PCS70, It works beautify, but the multiplayer PvP, and Co-op will not work, is this normal, or is their a patch for that??

@“Da Messenjah” said:
@PCS70, It works beautify, but the multiplayer PvP, and Co-op will not work, is this normal, or is their a patch for that??

Through settings you will have to make the choice between LAN and WAN play. So you can use this version to play PvP on your own LAN party with friends.

Also you need to know the player’s name tags to invite them. They still work on the add friends part.

If you play through WAN you also need to make sure UPnP is enabled on your router or if not that the specified ports are then redirected manually using NAT or port redirection to your PC on the LAN.

It might still be a little cumbersome to get this working, but I can assure you it does and I really like the fact that you can play this version on LAN, so actually they took the Online necessity out already. Another big improvement too.

I hope this helps your further again.

@Augustusman said:
Better than DE.

Utterly ridiculous!

@Will10154 said:
@CostlierParrot3 said:

       @Will10154 said:
 It was really dissapointing to see Microsoft not even mention AOEO during the AOE Anyversary celebration, such disregard and disrespect shown to the AOEO devs, Alpha and Beta testers, and the countless great gamers that made the AOEO community one of the best around.

      Microsoft should bring the Project Celeste guys in-house and relaunch AOEO, it was the best and most polished AOE game to date.





  I would not say too strongly that AoEo was the most beautiful game of the AoE franchise. We say that of the series, it was not the best. A cute game, but it does not compare with AoE 2/3.

I would have to disagree with that; once you look past the cartoony art style, the gameplay and the depth of the game goes well beyond AOE 2 or 3;
AOEO had truly unique civs and very different tech trees for each, not simply one castle unit being different along with few techs;
The Home City aspects with crafting gear, etc also added a lot to the game and the comminity feel together with great co-op missions is unrivalled in any other AOE game;
Overall IMO AOEO took AOE gameplay to a whole new level, the problem was many AOE veterans did not even want to try it because of their bias against the art style, which I think was a big mistake on their part as they missed a great game.

Its is unfortunate that the game was so terribly mismanaged by the devs from a monetary stand point;

Saying it goes beyond AoE3’s depth isn’t much of a stretch.

Saying it goes beyond AoE2’s depth is utterly insane.

@“Andy P” said:
I happen to find AoEO the best in the series. It’s also pretty rough around the edges and particularly difficult for an outsider to jump into and find their way on their own. Leveling up Civs and navigating the game through various questgivers and jumping around to cities is super clunky. But as far as pvp gameplay, AoEO crushes the others, in my subjective opinion. And the civ design is brilliant. The deeper I look at those Civs, the more nuance I find. Swoon.

After they shut it down, I tried going back to AoM and AoE2. I found them very poor substitutes.

LOL At AoE2 being a poor substitute. It’s the greatest game ever made.

AoE Online is… meh.

@OldCartoon466 No better engine than the AOE Online engine yet, both from technical point of view and smoothness of gameplay. Pathfinding works excellent there. I would like to see a crossover in AOE II style on that engine, but then in 4K with a brand new XBox Beta Hub styled main interface. But they always save the best for last, don’t they? :slight_smile:

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@OldCartoon466 said:

@Augustusman said:

Better than DE.



Utterly ridiculous!

AoE Online uses same engine than AoM and AoE 3. Bang!

Is obviously you don’t even have an idea about game engines…