Good day everyone,
this is going to be one of those slightly critical posts that may or may not be anchored in ignorance and grumpiness.
The main topic of it will be the early access and logic on who gets to have it and who doesn’t.
Now let’s lead in with 2 statements: I’m super hyped for the new update and I love aoe4 in general.
With that in mind, watching twitch and discords over the course of today and talking with people I can’t really seem to fathom the logic behind access distribution. Obviously we have our big names, the ones with the highest reach and then egctv affiliated. And I’m not begrudging (most) of these people their access.
But some other names that shall not be named seem extremely random and leave a sour taste in my mouth as someone who is co-hosting the most aoe4 tournaments of any organization (Rising Empires, you may have heard of us) out there and didn’t see a single invite dropped their way. Now obviously it’s our own choice for spending hours every single week for the past year on running tournaments for the community and if we didn’t have that warm glowy feeling in our hearts we wouldn’t do it. But it does feel bad when there seems to be no recognition on the dev side of this whatsoever.
Now with the personal sob story out of the way I simply want to propose a content creator application process for these things in the future. So I at least have the priviledge of getting denied instead of just wondering if I should have been a little funnier in XYZ’s stream so I get noticed and receive an extra invite.
Take that however you will, Thanks for considering.
Ask A Lad
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If you ask me, there should not have been any “early access” to begin with.
Trying it one/two months ago for feedback is one thing, which I can understand as part of the developing process. 5 Days before launch? What is even the point?
If the point was to just showcase the DLC, why couldn’t they have filmed actual footage of the game themselves? The weekly breadcrumbs of vaguely describing 2 unique units isn’t exactly enticing marketing. And simply giving the game to a select random few players just before it is about to launch, well, besides giving them an actual advantage, also just seems like a dumb choice–all it succeeds in doing is make me envious.
As far as I can tell, they don’t intend on changing anything until launch either. So it literally just seems like the game is straight up available a week earlier to a random handful few people, for no actual reason. If we could already have been playing the game, what point is there to any of this?
As always, decisions with this company are entirely unhinged and meaningless at their core.
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Nothing is random about givijg early access to the most prolific AOE4 streamers? Everyone that watches the game essentially watches one or more of these “random few players”.
It’s very practical and effectively free marketing and functional beta testing. Its a win win.
Also these devs on the bug side of things have shit to do!!! They can’t pre-record 30 min each videos per new faction especially when the community is going to do it for them anyways (aoe4world.com, ageofNoob, beasty, drongo, etc etc).
I’m of the opinion that you and i are merely jealous that we weren’t among the “random few…” 
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This has nothing to do with Relic or AoE4. This ist just how Microsoft does the marketing for the AoE series and other games. The latest AoE2 DLC “The Mountain Royals” which was released tuesday last week had an early access only for contend creators. And for this AoE2 DLC the contend creator early access was even more like 10 days.
I know the frustation, I myself had hoped for an early access to everyone this weekend who had pre-ordered the game, because I can’t wait to try this expansion.
But it’s just 5 more days to go until it’s released anyway, so it isn’t the end of the world. 
We all of course have different opinions (which is great!), however I just want to make clear that your statement here is an opinion, and not to be taken as a fact.
For example, I am of the opposite opinion, I think Microsoft / Relic are doing great decisions and a good job overall with the game.
I have 100% intentions of buying the DLC; but I have YET to pre-order it! So in my head, I assume there are others yet to make the guaranteed purchase among those that may STILL be on the fence. THIS IS A BUSINESS AFTER ALL, so they need to see the sales numbers; so they TEASE & TEASE!
I would once again like to underline that I do not have an issue with (most) of the people on the official list.
There are some outliers and some who arent really using the access in the visible period until release but no matter. If anyone had taken a moment to read they would know this wasnt the point of the post in the first place. If you want to shit on marketing strategies or the game in general go do it somewhere else.
To paraphrase some more (which once again noone will actually read)
There are multiple people not on that official list that somehow still merrily play the early access version having gained it through unknown means.One can only assume it was good connections. And that just feels like a slap in the face to people who have poured literally hundreds of hours into giving to the community and are now sitting there knowing that nobody fucking cares in the higher echelons and if they were just on good terms with person xy they could play.
Now for the proposed solution (once again but this time I’ll highlight it so it doesn’t get ignored)
I want to propose a content creator application process to handle these things in the future
And to forestall all the you’re just jealous posts I think if you read above you can damn well see I am. And that I have good reasons for it. And to avoid for me (and alot of other people who are pouring their free time into making the aoe4 community a better place or one that still exists in the first place) to tilt out of their mind I’d simply like a transparent approachable process and not a black box smelling of politics.
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I have always said that there are still loyal creators who deserve to be and are not, but also those creators must move, communicate with the AoE Community Managers and not wait for them to knock on the door (unless they are big creators and outside AoE).
It is important to know how to move and look for opportunities, starting by applying to be insiders on this website and then apply to be in the discord of creators.
One can NOT merely assume a singular explanation to something unknown?? It needs remain UNKNOWN. One can SPECULATE? AND Had you asked one of these “random players” then you’d have a solid basis for your SPECULATION? You literally jumped to your own conclusions. Then made a thesis out of it??
Now for A proposed solution (again not singular defacto solution) to an ISSUE you PRESUMED? We have no idea what vetting (IF ANY) was done in setting the criterion for gaining early access???
Dude relax; we all like you want to play the game asap!!!
Yes, it was the same for the new Forza Motorsport too, it’s to build hype and make people want to play the new game / DLC because it’s annoying to see other people playing something you don’t have access to. It makes people feel like there’s something new and exciting that they want to join in with, so I assume the reason for it is to cause those players to buy the game / DLC because it’s just so annoying to not have it when the streamers you enjoy watching have it.
Their tactics appear to have become increasingly cynically profit-oriented over the last year, not so much specifically AoE 4, but changes to FH5 and the new FM game, and the early access for the AoE 4 DLC just continues this trend that has already been evident across their other games.
What is cynical or sinister about being profitable? I want to make a product that hopefully sparks your interest to intice you to patronize my business. I see no inherent trick? Or malice?
I’m not saying profitability is inherently cynical, rather specific techniques to achieve it are. It becomes cynical when it’s about emotional and psychological manipulation of people rather than simply making a good product that meets a need/want and is therefore bought by people.
I disagree with your use of manipulation to describe inticing advertising schemes.
If i sell ice on hot summer days and i decide to post my son near a children’s play area eating one of my many products? Am i tricking someone by portraying my son enjoying a delicious creamy vanilla con ice cream? Would not the potential patrons seeing my son NOT naturally almost have a cathartic yearning for their own deliciously vanilla cream???
The EARLY ACCESS for Sultan Ascend exists, but is only played by the tester which are the content creators:
Outside of that, there are only 4 days left, or 3 depending on the time region you are in. Personally, it has been an incredible advertising campaign for a expansion, with a lot of Hype. I think hardly another expansion in the franchise has had so much Hype.
Finally, like this expansion, we hope that the good reception encourages the developers to continue more future expansions for the game, with more historical civs and campaigns.
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yea thats way too long. I thought they give content creators 1 or 2 days early access, pre orders start playing at saturday and final release 14.11. but yea now we have to watch for 5 days without any infos about units and so on. content creators are flooding videos out.
I really love the game, but this dicisions makes me bad, at least its weekend, most of us have time and the only thing we can do is watching, yea lot of fun 
Given how content creators had videos ready to go, it’s not unreasonable to assume that access was for longer than five days.
Assuming the patch notes we have already won’t be updated at all (there are often undocumented changes in every major update), it’ll be fun to work out what’s changed in the official update (which logistically won’t be the same build used by the content creators).
imo early access is only an issue in following scenario: top 20 lets say of competitive players get this access while others that often play them but aren’t top 20 themselves don’t, doesn’t this feel just a tad unfair to those just short of top 20 to deal with players that were effectively given a headstart and an unfair advantage in a sense?
The funny thing is, he has now access too the DLC 
cry loud enough and you get what you want…
Oh really? Is he a content creator? I hough h was soeaking hypothetically thathey should be an application system. Now it makes more sense why he was grieving. He felt left out.
He said he was one of the people that does rising empires, the tournament that gets streamed for various elos (and is the main stream for non-professional tournaments)
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