According to steamcharts AOE4 peak number of players (53,953) are already higher than the all time record for AOE2 Def Edition (38,725). This does not even include the people playing on game pass.
AOE2 is a much older game of course. But I played it back on the Zone 20 years ago. If I remember correctly there where never more than a couple of thousand players playing online at the same time.
I miss the zone for sure. That place was a trash talking paradise.
Our wives will be pleased there are plenty of people to play with haha.
This doesn’t mean anything. On the contrary, it’s worring.
Considering Aoe2DE has been losing players since the last update due to the dodging timeout and the hackers who can control your units, and Aoe4 was released a few hours ago and its hype is the highest that will ever be. In that context, 53,953 against 38,725 is a very bad sign. I was expecting 80-100k. If the numbers don’t go up by the end of November, I don’t think things will look good next year.
I wish all the best for AoE IV. But personally, I’m happy that thankfully got refund of this game right now.
Name a single RTS game that has that playerbase.
what the hell ?? you thought that AOE 4 will get 80-100k ?? those are some crazy numbers only the most popular franchises get.
these numbers are great, also the game is at the top of sales list in steam ( with 2 versions) .
Edit: i just remembered that it’s not even the weekend, so expect the we will get much higher number than we’re getting today ( so you can expect 80k players 
)
This is the game that was supposed to reach that number. Surpass it even.
It has been catering to aoe2, aoe3, sc2 and tw players.
It’s been two hours.
I don’t see where it has catered to Total war players tbh.
It mostly seems to cater to aoe fans and classic RTS fans.
That’s why I said “by the end of November”. Let’s see what happens.
It basically just caterers to AoE2 fans.
They are the majority of Aoe fans tbf.
If you want some idea of what kind of players are on this forum, I made a poll a while ago.
Well of course it was expected to surpass AoE2 peak on Steam, else it would have been a disaster. Everyone was interested in a new entry in the series. I was hoping for 200.000 peak at launch, but I guess I was too optimistic, RTS is still niche.
Yeah I feel some people were expecting much higher numbers than are actually possible in RTS atm.
Reducing micro protagonism and favoring squad clashing (as a result of the current hotkeys. More casual I’d say) attracted tw players. Or at least tw players say that on discord.
Which makes me believe that some of the gameplay decisions explained here ( WinterGaming’s thorough review of AoE4 (a competitive player’s perspective) - Age of Empires IV / IV - Discussion - Age of Empires Forum) might have been intentional. Like Microsoft tried to get as much people as possible on board.
It dropped at 2am in Australia and 4am in New Zealand.
More and more will come online as they’re able, people also have work and schooling commitments… Decent start tbh?
It’s fun, some parts are mmmm and we’re still learning but I don’t mind it so far, except for when I zoom out that FOG is terrible lol like the camera is in the clouds or something…
It’s still early it may go higher it may not, as long as you’re enjoying it… That’s all that matters.
also don’t forget that there are other people who are playing through gamepass / MS store.
Its a shame they don’t have something similar to steam charts.
So we have no idea how many people are actually playing on it.
But im willing to believe its a decent amount.
The 50k we see now only represents the people willing to pay 60$ at launch for aoe IV.
A lot of the playerbase might just be playing on the $1 game pass trial for example.
For reference this is how many people can just download Aoe IV whenever they feel like it.
