For years we have been taught WE’s horrendous treatment is a fully rational and justified business decision because the game does not generate revenues.
And now all of a sudden the excuse becomes that they don’t want to generate revenues from this game in the first place.
Okay 
Many bad decisions have been made , and many will follow. But they won’t make up for it ever again. Because " The game industry is unforgiving" … Yes… We don’t forgive… And they are never sorry.
Maybe they “learned the lesson” that adding contents to base game for free is not profitable enough. So they “innovated” fancy ways to sell every tiniest effort they have made with higher prices. Don’t worry. We have enough people voluntarily (or maybe not?) defending whatever bs the company feeds and telling others their dissatisfaction is not justified.
Civ variants are a simple low effort joke.
3des revolutions have more features.
I think we found the reason why they want to downplay 3DE.
Edit: shhhh. They will think you are attacking their beloved AOE4 the game, instead of the lazy and greedy business decisions.
I really wish it is unforgiving.
If it is, why are we seeing more and more pre-orders for worse and worse releases throughout the industry?
You’re not wrong! I’ve never really thought about Revs vs AOE4’s Variants.
I think it’s pretty unforgiving. Games aren’t made for free, and I sort of doubt that they purposely spend countless hours including overtime and sometimes ‘crunch’ time to tank a game or make one that people won’t want to buy or play… when they’d like to maintain a job to support themselves and family:
“The video game industry experienced mass layoffs in the mid 2020s, peaking in January 2024. Over 10,500 jobs were lost in 2023, and an additional 14,600 jobs were lost in 2024”
Source: 2022–2025 video game industry layoffs - Wikipedia
Many variables go into it, including leadership sometimes not understanding the target market, or wanting to jump on the latest gaming craze or trend to try and get a piece of the pie, or assuming that ‘lots of money spent chasing AAA trends and on marketing will yield more money in my coffers’ – rather than going a more ‘smaller budget/indie’ route.
For me, the gaming industry is going in a general direction that favors gameplay and styles that aren’t my particular favorite… in general. There are still games that come out I really like or would like if I got them.
I wish my gameplay likes were more mainstream, but I’ve learned over the years they’re just not, which is tough sometimes. For pre-orders, I’ve been burned too many times by pre-ordering games that didn’t deliver what I was wanting. But also through experience, I just now know more of what I like and don’t like, so I’ve become hyper-tuned to looking for my red flags when watching trailers and gameplay videos. (Not to mention Steam and/or Blizzards’ return policy of “you play 2 hours, you can’t return it”… when sometimes just the intro cutscenes take 2 hours to get through.) That’s why I rarely, if ever, pre-order. If it wasn’t so easy to get burned by pre-ordering, like if the return policy was better, I’d probably do it more often. I know they’re probably worried about fraud and such.
What I mean is there a lots of people who still pre-order products from big IPs and big companies which would eventually be released at poorer quality, lower value and/or higher price (most of the time at least two of them).
I understand that companies may be short of staff and funds now. I’m just upset that they refuse to be honest about the situation. They could tell people why it takes longer to make stuff, why their productivity has lowered, why they had to raise the price due to inflation or whatever, and why and how they need to cut corners. I believe we gamers are adults and can understand. But instead of admitting and setting people’s expectations, they choose to sugarcoat their more and more lacking product and sound as if it’s actually a great bargain.
And many people still buy these bs (pun intended), or voluntarily defend them. Meanwhile there are always newcomers who dive in unaware of the current business practices. That’s why companies could get away.
Basically nowadays this whole industry relies more and more on “deceiving ignorant customers into buying what is not worth the price”, leaving it to the customers and fans to figure out why. Unfortunately it seems to work for the short term, but I doubt if such an unhealthy customer relationship is really sustainable.
Side note: we still have zero information about why they cancelled the AOE3 DLC, after a whole year of zero information about whether they had really done any work.
Ahh, makes sense. That’s fair. Yeah, more transparency and honesty would go a long ways to helping gamers understand better and accept evolving situations, if they’d be willing to do that. We all know games are usually expensive to make, but some nice open communication rather than radio silence would be great
It’s incredibly sad to see WE filching ideas from AOE3 and chucking them into AOE4 and implicitly pretending that they are new to the series. They take from AOE3 to sell AOE4 and simultaneously betray the game and community. We as the AOE3 community must boycott the AOE4 DLC.
We need has aoe3 has went to coming back again then world’s edge member we need to slowly listen the aoe3 players’s voices
AOE3 already offers plenty of “alternative ways of playing a civ” and adds more FOR FREE.
Yet now they are selling lower effort works at a higher price than full-fledged civs and calling it a great offer.
I guess the reason they downplay AOE3 is it sets the bar of contents too high. If the “ignorant” AOE4 players know more about it they will be upset.
And some WE minions still want to tell us oh inflation oh devs need to make a living oh layoffs oh company needs venue like our money grows from trees, like we don’t work for a living or get impacted by inflation. If you have to rob or deceive people to survive then maybe you shouldn’t survive.
Regardless of the criticism of the price/quantity of content, it has long been apparent that AoE3 has been the test lab for including its mechanics (but more simplified so players understand it and don’t freak out) in other games in the franchise.
Personnellement je trouve le système des civs mineures et le deck absolument génial, c’est cela qui m’avait convaincus d’y jouer malgré qu’il n’y avait pas de faction fantasy comme Nains ou Orcs
They why don’t they encourage more people to try them out, but instead did their best to hide the game?
Why don’t they give it any credit?
It’s not like they are actively listening to AOE3 players’ feedbacks. They don’t even collect bug reports. They don’t give a F.
I would not call this “testing”.
No matter how many AOE3 mechanics they take, bastardize, and shove into AOE4, I will not be persuaded to buy any DLC for AOE4 or ever play AOE4 again.
World’s Edge, if you want my business ever again, an apology is required. I won’t hold my breath.
Ultimately the main sin of AoE4 is that… the setting is boring.
If I wanted to play Medieval AoE I already have Age 2, I don’t wanna go to “Age of Empires 2 but worse.”
The graphics still look pretty dated compared to AoE3.
There’s nothing wrong with a medieval setting, and in some ways it does it better than AoE2.
My issue is the game simply isn’t fun to play. The core mechanics and pace are clunky and unenjoyable. The eSports focus and soulless UI don’t help either.
