Or maybe not because AOE3 is not part of the series.
We all know in the 10 years of silence there was fierce oppositions between players of 2 and 3. Then 4 joined the fight.
I do not think it is in the company’s favor if players of different games attack each other, but in fact what the company has done since 2019 is providing more handy weapons for the attack.
This obvious and blatant exclusion combined with intentional negligence starts even before AOE3DE releases. In the old interview of AOE4, they were forever talking about how it inherits features from AOE2, how it is NOT going to inherit features from AOE3 (called AOEO in the original text) and called features that actually come from AOE3 (torch-throwing) as an innovation.
Yes I know I know AOE2 is more popular and more profitable, but does mentioning AOE3 positively even once affect your sales?
Then AOE3 is excluded or neglected in almost every event, including those that were about the “series”. When it was released, when it does well, when it does bad, when it gets new updates, it NEVER gets a proper promotion, or even acknowledge of existence, while every other game in the series (including the less popular ones) would in these situations.
I tend to persuade myself that the companies are cold profit machines that acts on only precise calculation not personal bias or emotions, but this is beyond reasonable. Every excuse we can find for such treatment, we can find counter examples from the same company. I thought DE was a good chance of finally addressing the hostilities between the communities because now all games are on the same platform and even the smallest effort to treating the games as equal would help. It feels like instead of uniting players of the series, the management is actually more enthusiastic themselves in heating the fight.
From the company’s actions, insiders would use it as yet another proof of “the game is bad” and outsiders would wonder the game must have been bad if it gets excluded every time. I’ve seen both arguments lots of times already. And we’re not talking about a game that is the least popular or gets no official support. Look at how many efforts they’ve made to salvage AOE1DE. Would another one of your games getting a few more sales really make you sleepless at night?
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Sorry there were attempts to unite the series, like putting an AOE2/4 intro to AOE3.
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BTW I was happy (for 5min) that they finally said something like “yeah we have not forgot about AOE3” in the latest interview.
But later it strikes me as odd. Nobody from the company forgets about AOE3. It has received constant, big, content-rich, free updates over the years. It’s just that you let someone do the work and refused to acknowledge its existence.
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I just found myself not as excited about AOMR release as I should.
I’ve been playing all age games for decades. Time after time I was annoyed by players of different games hating and talking s**t about each other. I thought DE was a good chance to revive the whole series and it really was maybe for a few months. Then the company dumps 10x more hate on one of its games than it ever received from the players of other games in the past. And that hate is official, open and blatant and far more damaging.
I kept telling myself and people: “there should not be rivalries between games”. And now I got backstabbed by the game’s own company that straight up created a rivalry that could be avoided——one game gets all the love and 100% dedicated support and promotion bombard while another game with the exact same engine does not even receive one sentence of support for a whole six months. How difficult is it to pretend you care?
As I make more and more arguments and petitions and pleads that “maybe you should also spare a little attention to one of the games that is officially in your series as well?” and received zero response, I find myself more and more emotionally attached to that game and detached from the others. I start to naturally identify myself as an isolated group from your booming, lively, successful series ——which I shouldn’t. But you made it feel like this. Why would I consider myself as an “age game” player if I’m playing a game with that “age game” title but receives zero respect from the other “age game” players and negative from the “age game” company?
We have been mistreated to such a degree that one simple acknowledgement of our existence would make us happy——and even for that you don’t give us a single chance.
There is not even an “age game” streamer or influencer who speaks up for us because who wants to be the unpopular guy who talks about unfinished work at the party. The series is doing great what are you talking about. You have your 100k players who think you are the best company of all time. How would some unimportant 500 people disgusted matter?
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Same here! The lack of support for AoE3 has sucked a little joy out of AoMR for me.
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Same. And for once I’ll try to not “be the bigger person” and just admit that it stings. Despite me liking AoM.
1 Like