Then it’s because they need to work on the patch itself. If they have actual works queued up then I believe everyone can understand it. I can accept it if that was the reason they gave.
But “after it got fixed it is put to the end of the waiting list” sounds really, really bad because one does not need to look up history to find out patches NEVER avoided each other. Not to mention it seems to have been fixed quite a while ago, and it still took a month and an emergency meeting to decide the release time of the patch note.
Edit: I’m not blaming the actual devs or the communication people for saying these. There isn’t much they can say unless it is approved by the management.
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Agreed. I personally don’t watch much of the pro scene for any of these games and the Anniversary Event was beyond lame even if 3DE was mentioned. However, this isn’t about what we like but drawing outsiders in. And also the disrespect for leaving 3DE out of these things in the first place.
FE/Tantalus are doing their jobs, it’s time for WE to do theirs and that means doing whatever they can to make this ENTIRE AoE family as successful as it can be.
But what I do care about is exposure. If a couple of people watching these events or perusing SM unfamiliar with 3DE were swayed to try it out then that’s a good thing in my book. It’s all about exposure and no one can deny 3DE has been on the short end of the stick.
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It baffles me. If you go on MobyGames and look for the reviews from OG AoE 3, you see that review score-wise, it’s not far off from AoE 4:
Both games get equally praised.
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I just want to add that if you do not play the annoyingly demanding kid, they won’t consider you as someone easy to get along with. Instead they will lower the bar further and further.
Totally omitted in the promotion of the new game? Fine we have a DE anyway.
Being the only one left out in a tournament? Fine we have a DLC anyway.
Not invited to the 25th Anniversary Event of the series? Fine we have a big patch anyway.
Now you see the consequence: the big patch got delayed for a month with little communication. We only got some vague information and a release time of the patch note after people started to become angry.
If you keep retreating, they will always find more rooms for you to retreat.
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It’s weird to me that the notes will not accompany the patch, but come before it. What is the point of that?
“Hey, here are the changes you will be getting…but not yet! Enjoy.”
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We need a new dlc now!Brazil or Persia please!
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We don’t need any civ, we need they to finish completing the oldest civs. There are civs with 11 unique units and others with 2.
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I doubt steam is bottlenecking. Steam does those verifications automatically. The bottleneck is the release management of the series. Steam can patch all aoe gemes in parallel. Quite often we would get patches for 2 and 3 or 3 and 4 or 2 and 4 at the same time. No overlapping is a very hard to believe excuse.
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Yeah, it’s strange to me as well, which is why I posted originally. I’m assuming there was a technical problem, somewhere, I don’t know where, instead of some kind of weird command from on-high that dictated III: DE couldn’t have a patch in the same time frame (because, as you’ve said, we’ve had patches at the same time before).
Ultimately the only folks that can give any clarity on this are the devs, if they’re approved to do so (like ArrivedLeader22 said, by management).
Again I am sure Microsoft is being told lies by Worlds Edge. Microsoft theoretically wants all its IP to be successful, not just aoe2 and aoe4. So this can only be explained by internal worker bias inside the management team… which is again Worlds Edge.
Given the stuff aoe3 recieves, which requires, at least asset wise, more workload than the other aoe series, strictly talking about aoe3 devs involved in aoe3, they seem to care about it, so there are only a few possbilities left on why.
and not to be fuel more conspiracy, but i can’t remove my like given to Inferno (from mobile)
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I think that’s probably an oversight.
I’ve seen that before for other games from other studios.
Seems like publishers often don’t really care about that metadata being correct.
But we can’t really tell from the outside how involved they are with each individual game in the franchise.
They likely did a lot more work on AoE4 but hard to tell what they did for AoE2DE snd AoE3DE.
And FE seems not to be in charge of AOE3 either 
But it shows up on their webpage.
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Rather than dig in too deeply here, I wanted to just post what my expectations are about Age3DE.
- I expect the Microsoft and whatever company they create/hire to manage the marketing of Age3DE and the rest of the series are interested in promoting it to new players and making money, and will do so for all of the titles they manage, not just for some preferred titles.
- I expect a professional level of social media communication. Which means posts should be made at appropriate times to promote patches, events, promotions, sales, and new content releases. “For fun” posts are certainly welcome when they are relevant and in some way spark interest of fans. Posting a comment-less picture of berries isn’t that. Teasers for new DLC are one thing (remembering the tomato pics prior to the KotM DLC), but this clearly wasn’t that.
- I expect that a certain amount of transparency, in particular with your insider fans and beta-testers, is going to be forthcoming. Full patch notes, updates on changes during the PUP process, communication via bug reports, and communication regarding the schedule of PUP opening, closing, and patch deployment should be standard fare via the various platforms used to communicate with players (these forums and Steam especially, but also other socials for the major changes. We invest our time in helping you make the game better and we do it for free because we’re passionate about the game, and that should be treated with respect.
- Not all announcements or changes will be popular or universally liked, but we should still hear openly and honestly about them, and if unpopular, the collective team should make a good faith effort to address concerns or, if necessary, change course.
This isn’t a terribly long or difficult to predict list. It’s frankly, pretty standard. But I feel like I have to post it because it is clear that these expectations, right now, aren’t being met. It’s the wrong way to communicate with fans and customers who you want to continue to buy your products and play your games. Specifically regarding the July patch, the development team clearly put a huge amount of effort into making a lot of new unit art which I would think the marketing team would be clamoring to show off. Instead, we get old pics of a berry bush and a frigate firing with no commentary. You have developed a tool specifically to let us take great screenshots of in-game content (photo mode), and yet, you don’t use it even to do a filler social media post. It comes across as insulting because it’s clear that no effort at all is being put into this interaction with your customers.
I’m glad that Inferno is stepping up to open the doors of communication a bit. It’s clear he’s listening and trying to figure out how to improve the situation and I respect that. I’m frustrated that it should have taken weeks of radio silence and a large outcry from fans to get to the point where someone took on that basic responsibility. Perhaps it’s because WE is expected to do that and it’s not really Inferno’s job to do that? I totally understand organizational dysfunction, but from our perspective, we just want someone from the collective organization that manages the game to talk to us. I always appreciate developer insight, and perhaps going forward, even if someone else is managing the day-to-day socials, he could post about the thought process behind changes being made to the game when new balance changes or DLC content is released. That’s something many dedicated fans really appreciate.
Please think about that fourth expectation. Things haven’t gone perfectly. Please recognize that and make a good faith effort to make it right going forward.
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They didn’t update their Twitter bio after 2 DE’s release. Same for their Strategy Center page which says that AoE 1 DE and AoM: EE are still under construction 
https://www.forgottenempires.net/strategy#
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What about people who like both AoE2 and AoE3, like I do? Do we take the blame for that as well
I do agree that AoE2-onlies are often annoying as hell tho.
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It’s wild how bad companies are at maintaining their websites sometimes.
Go to https://www.ageofempires.com/ and hover over the Words Edge logo on the bottom, the link is: https://www.ageofempires.com/#worldsEdgePlaceholder
I wonder for how many years it’s been like that.
This website is a relict of their early times working on Forgotten Empires. Maybe they should just redirect to the official AoE website instead.
Most AoE3 fans don’t seem to have a problem with AoE2. Many people probably like multiple or even all main line games in the Franchise.
But because AoE2 has a lot more fans it’s more likely that an AoE2 fan doesn’t like the other AoE games then the other way round.
I personally also like all AoE games (AoE4 feels a little unfinished and I can’t get over the visuals of AoEO) but I’m not getting emotional or jealous over uneven treatment.
We are talking about products of a company. If a product is more successful then another one then why keep supporting both of them equally? Most game companies just completely stop supporting one game then they release the next one.
There is nothing that makes AoE1 or AoE3 entitled to get the same support as AoE2.
But if we look at what AoE3DE is actually getting compared to AoE2DE as in real things in the actual game, AoE3DE is clearly getting more content then AoE2DE.
AoE3DE is getting more support then a game with 5x the player base and then people cry about a patch getting delayed.
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People aren’t crying over the patch delay, do you read yourself when posting stuff?
People are complaining about the situation surrounding the patch delay.
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Iirc Tantalus is bigger involved in 3DE
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Patch getting delayed with zero communication.
You can say tournaments, events and promotions are not important. Up to you. You can pretend they do not matter at all and continue to play your game in vacuum. But do you think such negligence will only be limited to these?
And now here we get what we all deserve: they delay a patch for a month, after public testing. Wondering when you’re going to get it? Well they won’t bother to give you a hint. Just shut up and wait.
Not until people really became angry, did they make an emergency meeting to decide the release date of the patch note.
Such attitude is starting to DIRECTLY HURT our gameplay experience. It will continue to creep into every aspect of the game. That’s why it starts to become intolerable.
Then what?
They make a surprise update that messes up the game and there is no fix in a month, nor does anyone acknowledge it?
The server is suddenly down for unknown reasons and we’re left in complete darkness for another month?
When the decision makers realize there is no cost neglecting AOE3 and its players, how do you think it will affect their future decisions?
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