It seems that Age of Empires Online is available through Project Celeste mod project! It is completely free this time, no way to spend real life money it.
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sweet, thatsā a good news !!!
Going to try it out (never was able to play it before), though should AOEO be included at ageofempires.com? They have aoe1, aoe2, aoe3, aoem and the up and coming aoe4 but nothing for aoeo, is there a reason?
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Well Microsoft scrapped AoE:O back in 2014 and it was revived by modders as Project Celeste in 2007. So it isnāt managed by Microsoft. (Therefore not generating revenue)
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That is a bit sad, Chris Taylor worked on the game so i am looking forward to giving it a go.
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I wish Microsoft revives AoEO and hires celeste guys
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Well, they deserve it
The core gameplay is really good! Compares quite favorably, imo, to AoE2 and AoE3.
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Celeste team is doing amazing work. Slap some logos here and there, pay for more artwork and ads about the game and you can say this is a normal, official support.
Iām having zero issues with anything.
It almost makes me sad. These guys totally deserve some funding and support from Microsoft. The have a fantastic title in their hands. With some work I see it bein re-released on Steam as f2p with EP premium currency to get cosmetics straight away without grind or farming login rewards etc.
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Exactly. I thinks its a good game!
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PLS PUT THIS ON STEAM, would make so much money for microsoft with all the dlc races etc. and we have such a good marketplace and trade system i rly loved this back than, if this comes on steam id play this 16/7 again xD
Well, AoEO still is on Steam. You can use the Steam version for the Project Celeste patch.
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It never went away, itās just delisted and hidden. Developers/Valve rarely completely purge games from the database, even if they sometimes want to.
As mentioned above, Celeste is not a standalone game for various technical and legal reasons. It requires AoE:O to be installed:
Install - Age Of Empires Online Celeste (projectceleste.com)
Age of Empires Online (App 105430) Ā· SteamDB
In the end, itās their game, so shouldnāt be hard to bring it back one way or the other, but it would be messy and most likely not worth it (for them). Celeste is great but turning it into a commercial product would be a pain in the ass for a few reasons, and starting from the vanilla buildā¦ would require a lot of dev time to turn it around into SP-based + optional coop/multi-platform.
Plus they already have online AoE in the market- all DEs still have official support for multiplayer.
Iād be happy to pay 15-30$ for some official, polished release of Celeste, assuming fan devs working on it would be appropriately compensated.
AoE:O couldāve been a great thing, but it had a messy development, was a bit unlucky and abandoned maybe too soon. There was and still is nothing like it. Thereās a huge amount of content and charm in it. I could see it being a solid spinoff entry to the series, living alongside 2DE-3DE-IV, as its own thing.
And that highly stylized art style holds up shockingly well. Just add some fancy, customizable graphical effects, bump up some texture rez, some accessibility options and youāre ready to go.
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Project Celesteās unfair advantage is that we arenāt doing it to make money and we never have to worry about making payroll. Once money is off the table, everyone left is there out of love, and the quality shines through.
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Whatās the point of getting Celeste if you have to buy AoE:O? Once you buy it, doesnāt that mean you can then actually play AoE:O, which is what I thought Celeste was purporting to make possible?
So, speaking truthfully, what is the benefit of Celesteā¦ if you can you help explain? 
I had or tried AoE:O once long ago. Had potential, but I didnāt like the cartoony graphics and animations. Theyāre well done for what they were, donāt get me wrong,ā¦ but I just donāt want cartoony graphics in my AoE experience (personal preference). I might try AoE:O again, if given the cheap or free opportunity someday
Yeah, I noticed a few days ago AoE2:HD got āRetiredā (not quite yet de-listed) when I went to re-install it on a new hard drive, which is a bummer. There are many reasons why people would prefer to play/buy HD instead of DE. Does Retired mean it is going away soon? Why does it need to be labeled as āRetiredā (what does that mean to the gamer/potential buyer/end user)?
āRetiredā means itās a retired re-release of the AoE II: Age of Kings and no longer officially supported and receiving updates and new content, nothing more. Itās a tag added to the title (as many people are too lazy to read even the basic description of a game) to make sure people donāt buy older versions and realize it after playing more than Steamās refund policy allows for.
In practice it means nothing and nothing changes, itās just product management- AoE2 is messy because there are numerous versions out there, including a couple of digital releases, and since they took the older version down (for marketing or legal reasons), they wanted to make sure potential buyers are directed in a way they want- since they wonāt make more money on 2013-HD, where DE receives new DLCs and cosmetics, etc.
Wellā¦ you āgetā (itās free) Celeste if you want to play Celeste, a fan-made revival of Age of Empires: Online.
Itās free, but at some point, you have to pay for something- AoE:O didnāt go open-source abandonware or whatever. Mods usually require the original game. Doesnāt matter if thatās Battle for Middle-Earth, Skyrim, or DOOM2.
Bigger mods that can act as standalone games are relatively uncommon (in practice I encounter most of these around the STALKER series).
AoE:O is shut down, no longer working, thatās why they donāt sell it. Celeste is not AoE:O, itās an expanded (and changed in many small ways) version of it. It uses original files, and the only legal way for Celeste to function publicly is to rely on said files=require users to own the game.
Otherwise, itās asking for legal trouble from Microsoft.
The benefit of Celeste is being able to play Celeste, which is the only real way to play AoE:O, because that game is dead and unplayable and has been for years.
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I see! Thank you for all the info/knowledge. That helps a lot
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Yes, I had proposed in the forum that FE launch AoEO DE for 2026 taking advantage of the 15th anniversary of the gameās launch (just as they did in 2020 with 3 DE)ā¦
Yes, the same, FE continues to release excellent paid dlcsā¦
AoEO is not Celeste, but Celeste is the launcher of the server where AoEO worksā¦ you close Celeste and AoEO does not work, but it opens the old launcher of the gameā¦
The same thing happened to me, I couldnāt play it at the time because I couldnāt install it on my Pentium 3 and also because I prejudged it with its cartoon aspect, so I decided to play it when they released it in 2017 with my i7-3770k and I liked it a little and I played it until I got to level 10, then I took it up again in 2022 with my ryzen5-3400g and from there I got into it until now and reached level 40 with the Greeksā¦ it is a very fun masterpieceā¦I stream it from time to time when there are events in the saga (in a week I do AoE 2 DE-AoM EE-AoE 3 DE and AoEO) (AoE 4 my games slow down every hour thatās why I donāt play it much)ā¦
Sure, 2 HD will still be there, but new content is received on 2 DE (the same will happen with AoM EE when AoM Retold comes out)ā¦
Of course, in addition to the fact that unlike AoEO (which you had to buy the civs packs or dlcs), all the content in Celeste is absolutely freeā¦
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Indians release trailer for AOEO just dropped guys
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Very curious to see how these play once they launch, neat to see a trailer for them.