Okay. So one (1) campaign among a total of 38 is a series of unrelated scenarios, while the rest of the campaigns are a sequence of scenarios with a cohesive narrative and a singular protagonist.
Yes, I’m sure Microsoft decided to base their definition of “campaign” based on 2,63% of campaigns instead of the other 98%. Totally. Perfectly valid.
There is another precedent for calling it a campaign, as far as I can see, the Devs are being internally consistent with all past messaging.
if they consider this DLC a campaign, why aren’t they even using the word anywhere in the steam description?
Battles of the Forgotten is bundled together in Historical Battles now. It’s still one “”““campaign””“” out of 38 that fits this very weird definition they used for V&V, while the vast majority has another model.
If Historical Battles is a campaign, then using the same logic playing vs AI counts as PVP, and playing 1v1 ranked counts as co-op.
I remember when one post about the Star Wars pride and accomplishment went crazy. I hope Microsoft or World’s Edge can come to their senses.
And there is other precedent, as well. Straight from the original author of the campaigns… errr scenarios, I mean. Notice this thread title by Filthydelphia himself, from 2019, I just came across when researching something else:
And this other thread he made from 2021:
On the contrary, in reading his thread titles and through his posts, it seems pretty clear he innocently (and as we now learn, probably accidentally, from a vernacular or colloquial standpoint?) used campaign and scenario interchangeably. And I see in those threads that fellow players used the terms interchangeably, as well! I haven’t looked through them all, but I didn’t find any posts yet where fans call him out on it.
I find it funny, though, that I was confused at the time (four years ago) about not being able to proceed to the next scenario after completing a scenario, as I was used to multi-mission/multi-scenario campaigns. Filthydelphia replied and helped me understand his creations better! 
I think his description of “single scenario campaigns” is not, necessarily, wrong… and is a nice, succinct way of how I felt Marketing was probably labeling his creations. Because the scenarios do exist under the Campaign button, after all. (Going back to, possibly, all this being an honest mistake rather than a malicious bait-and-switch or sleight-of-hand trick to swindle us.)
cc: @Quasibrodo
According to my 2002 copy of Age of Empires II Gold Edition, AoC came with four campaigns. Attila the Hun, El Cid, Montezuma, and…?
Ensemble Studios and Microsoft logos on both front and back cover, seems to be as official as it gets.
Unless you think this is somehow a counterfit? I don’t think so though…
I booted up my copy of AoC actually,
The first button under the Single Player shield reads “The Conquerors Campaigns”
This is where it leads to:
I suppose that tells the answer of what they considered to be the fourth campaign.
But within each of those, weren’t there multiple scenarios? Like at least 4 or 5 sequential scenarios per campaign? I thought that was the case, anyways (but I could be wrong)… and if so, that would support Quasi’s claims a bit
EDIT: Oh, I see, on AoE wiki, it says this for the 4th campaign… so you’re right for the 4th campaign (Battles of the Conquerors):
The Conquerors adds four additional single player campaigns… The fourth campaign, Battles of the Conquerors, is actually a group of unrelated single scenarios, each based on a significant historical battle. These include the Battle of Agincourt, the saga of Erik the Red, and the Battle of Hastings, among others.
Source: Age of Empires II: The Conquerors | Age of Empires Series Wiki | Fandom
The Battles of the Conquerors are a series of unrelated campaign scenarios in Age of Empires II: The Conquerors. They revolve around famous historic battles during the medieval period.
Unlike with most other campaigns in Age of Empires II, the scenarios in this campaign have no true order, instead all being unlocked from the start for play.
In the Definitive Edition, all eight scenarios are now part of the Historical Battles section, along with the Battles of the Forgotten scenarios.
Source: Battles of the Conquerors | Age of Empires Series Wiki | Fandom
Yes.
This is where the Attila the Hun icon leads to:
This is where the El Cid icon leads to:
This is where the Montezuma icon leads to:
And this is where the Battle of the Conquerors icon leads to:
Now in the first three, we can only see one scenario, the first one. This is because i haven’t played through them on this installation (as I just managed to install the CD on my PC just recently). But we know from experience and later editions that Attila offers 6 scenarios, El Cid offers 6 scenarios, Montezuma offers 6 scenarios, and as we can already see since the Battles were all instantly available, the Battles of the Conquerors offers 8 scenarios.
I felt it this way: Attila, El Cid and Montezuma are entrées while Historical Battles are appetizers. When there are entrées I don’t mind they say there are 4 campaigns (dishes).
But with a campaign-focused DLC I expect more than just appetizers.
Personally, I understand a campaign as a collection of scenarios that cover a specific topic, whether it’s the life of a person such as Attila or a collection of story-wise unrelated scenarios such as the Battle of the Conquerors.
It seems like others strictly see campaign as a 5+ mission spanning scenarios with a narration etc.
I agree with you guys! I don’t consider eg. Manzikert as a campaign and I would say so if someone asked my opinion.
But the notion that labelling a set of independent scenarios as a campaign is a brand new marketing scheme by AoE2 developers doesn’t seem very accurate to me.
My findings looking at my old copy of AoC today suggest to me at least that perhaps the definition of campaign from the developers has maybe always been at odds with that from the players.
@Darkness01101 Yeah I’m stunned. He called them “single scenario campaigns.” He may as well have called them “non-campaign campaigns” but that is presumably what he felt best described what he’d made. And given he made that statement four-ish years ago he’d not have had any incentive to employ terms he didn’t feel accurately described his content.
I still don’t think it changes what a campaign SHOULD be. You just can’t look at the dictionary definition of campaign and conclude anything else if you’re being intellectually honest and reasoning from first principles, but I suppose one needn’t have thought to consider the definition in the first place to employ a word.
But I acknowledge filthy believes these to be campaigns. I can’t agree with that for a second, for if I did I’d have to implicitly agree no words have any meaning, but I believe filthy believes what he made are campaigns.
I’m still skeptical about those at MS who decided to change the term for marketing from “campaign” to “single-player”. I still can’t fathom why they did this…but if I’m willing to concede somehow somebody thought single scenarios were campaigns (which frankly was IMO the far FAR worse interpretation. The historical battles as a single campaign interpretation was extremely shaky but I thought you could at least believe it if you hadn’t given it any thought) then I suppose someone else could have equally as thoughtlessly believed that “campaign” is the same as “single-player”.
My mind melts to contemplate the lack of consideration necessary to come to these conclusions, but they nevertheless they seem to be the conclusions that were reached. And somehow, someway these thoughtlessly chosen terms were employed in the only way possible to give off the appearance of a bait and switch.
I’m willing to concede that this whole episode must, despite all reason and likelihood, been just an incomprehensibly, occam’s razor defyingly, unlucky series of circumstances born only through stupendous lack of consideration of the meaning of words employed, but apparently all done without intent to deceive.
I still believe describing V&V campaign focused demonstrates nothing but a complete and staggering lack of command of the English language, but they seem to believe it, so I’m willing to let it go. I worry that we’ll have this kind of discussion about technology, unit, or civilization, in the future, but I guess we’ll cross that bridge when and if we get there.
I still think I’ll be very mis-trusting of anything they say in the future, not because I believe they’re lying but anyone who has thus far demonstrated such an inability to consider the meanings of words before employing them I can’t trust them to do so in the future. I’ll from now on be assuming any word used has absolutely zero correlation with actual reality. But apparently this behavior of grossly mis-using terms is only due to incompetence and not deceitfulness. I’m still disappointed, but differently so.
Seriously tho MS…if you aren’t sure what a word means, Bing it for crying out loud.
However, that leads me to the end. I’ve said from day one if they hadn’t lied to us, if they hadn’t bait and switched us, I’d already have pre-ordered. But as said above, this somehow, someway, seems to have actually not been intended as a bait and switch.
So…
I could see it happening if they thought they were accurate by saying ‘campaigns’ in the first place, but then the community revolt happened. That reaction may have caught them off-guard. And to bring clarity into their messaging, they promptly changed to ‘scenario’ (or ‘single-player’, as you say? I’m not sure which term to use offhand)
There’s also another possibility: that they are still using the words interchangeably… and it’s just highly coincidental if there seems to be a complete switchover to ‘scenario’. If this is the case, then who knows… ‘campaign’ may creep back in tomorrow or next week 
Since the official marketing vid 12 days ago uses ‘campaign’ in it, as we know, it’s hard to know if there’s been a total switchover or not. Video says, V&V is “the first ever campaign-focused expansion pack for AoE2:DE.”)
It’s a lot of what ifs, so it’s probably best to not go down that rabbit hole and just see what happens.
With Hjoerleif showing there’s AoE franchise precedence for this type of content being Campaign content, too, it’s hard to fault Filthy or Marketing on this. Plus, maybe Filthy was just using that term because that’s how it was being referred to in the studio, or how he saw players using the term over the years. Lots of what ifs and hypotheticals.
Omg, I hope not
WOW! To say I’ve very surprised is the understatement of at least the week! Complete shock on that one, Quasibrodo. That was quite a sincere analysis and reflection. Kudos to you for sticking by your word! I hope V&V proves enjoyable and, most of all, that you find it’s worth the $ price 
Not re-litigating, but campaign was only used to re-state it was “campaign focused”, then used “scenarios” in the rest of the video to describe the content. Again tho seems that was just cause “campaign”, “scenario”, and “single-player” are indistinguishable in their minds. IDK how but apparently it is. I’m just planning to mentally delete any adjectives and replace all nouns with “thing” for future communications and wait to find out for myself I guess.
Someone on the internet changing their mind in response to new and relevant information. Perhaps I should have told you to sit down first.
As I’ve said before, I assume it’ll be fun and I’m not that worried about the price.
I’m a bit concerned about the ethics of up-cycling content, but I’m willing to wait and see if it gets worse/out of hand before sounding that particular alarm.
Lol
Happens pretty rarely. Guess you should have. Sorry to give credit in a jubilant manner… I’ll temper my outward expressions next time, and be sure to give a more robotic, non-emotional kudos next time
Plus, you’re not exactly a typical internet person changing their mind. You wrote a nine page open letter, encouraged folks to start a petition on change_dot_org, had another thread saying, “Well the devs/microsoft/somebody just outright lied to us,” calling them “disgusting, deceptive, and shameless”, originally titled this thread, “Age of Lies”, etc. Sorry for finding it shocking – I mean, sorry for detecting a very small blip of surprise in my circuitry, that you changed your mind
Word
Crazy, but passionate.
IDK why you’re apologizing. I’d be shocked too if I were you.
I can live with them calling all of these scenarios combined a “campaign”, even though this isn’t what most of us meant when we asked for more campaigns.
What I can’t stomach, is that this is still a complete rip-off at this price. This contains only 4 or 5 new scenarios, but even if you count all those minor reworks as “new” it is still so much less than a normal DLC at the same price. This is incredibly steep shrinkflation, being an effective price increase of 100% at least.
I am going to buy this, leave a bad steam review and then refund. We can’t let them get away with shit like this.
