You did your announcement in most negative way you possibly could. When fans were waiting for DLC release you cancelled it together with any future support. Like a knife in a heart.
Broken promise, no “farewell” patch, with stupid bugs introducted in last rushed patch. And I’m not even mentioning all those mistreatment AOE3DE had in last years. There were tons of it.
You probably are aware of community reaction after your announcement. We are extremly angry. The best illustration for it is your YouTube post:
Top 26 comments (!) are all about AOE3 DLC cancellation while post itself is about whole Age franchise and there is not a single word about AOE3DE inside.
We are big community, very loyal to our beloved game. According to SteamDB we own 1,4 - 4,4 mln copies. A lot of people here already decided to never support any other Age of Empires game nor any other product where WE is involed. Some of them even asked for refund for other Age games.
Guys, don’t turn loyal community against you. We don’t ask for much - just do what you promised, prepare our DLC, make a few solid patches and then leave the game in good condition and with good relationship with our community.
You still can change your decision. Nothing irreversible happened. Later you can even promote yourself as a company who listens to community voice and gain some PR. I don’t care. We just want to be treated with respect. Community and this great game deserves it. Other studios would kill to have a game like this under management.
Best regards,
mkaras92
PS @aocashleylynn Sorry for pinging you directly. You never replies to any posts here so I don’t know if you read our posts or not. It’s a one time thing.
honestly I wouldn’t have been mad if they just cancelled the DLC, just disappointed, but they “killed” (don’t worry we’ll continue anyhow), without fixing the most glaring issues with the game including things they broke with their last patch and without adding the QOL features they promised with their last patch…
I hadn’t seen the ad on YouTube. There were over 100 comments and almost all of them expressed their dissatisfaction with this situation.
Sorry, but I’m ambitious. After the Poland and Denmark DLC, I want more Asian and African civilizations, a Napoleonic Wars campaign, and bring me more natives and new maps of Oceania, America and more royal houses.
AoE3 should be sold to Paradox under a new name. They would start a new small team with Europa Universalis veterans and brought-over AoE devs, everything would be great. Microsoft would be ridden of the ‘colonialist’ game burden.
Lol i thought the same. Paradox is a company with no morals and they are greedy as sh*t, but at least they keep their promises.
I hold no sympathy towards paradox as a company, but i respect their bluntness and no BS attitude. I dont want to be “friends” with a game studio and hear stuff like “we wanted you to feel included in the aoe family, so we lied to you”… i just want to buy a game.
Edit: and whenever Paradox f*cks up, they stick to it and fix it, even if nobody buys the game. Imperator Rome was a desaster, but they fixed it over the years and now its in a good state. Hell, Stellaris was the same and now its one of their best products
Hell they even have helped/pushed smaller games (with their meddling also causing issues tho) like surviving mars and millennia. Aoe3 might thrive or get an extended lease in a similar scenario.
Paradox can be many bad things, but they at least are not liars and they don’t hide from their customers when they betray them. And to be honest, at this point can they really be considered greedier than World’s Edge/Microsoft?
And in the last update for that game they even made steam achievements compatible with mods. Basically to tell us that despite abandoning that game, the community could freely take over the development of the game.
They also made it clear when and why they abandoned Imperator Rome, they didn’t deceive the community for years before making the official announcement nor cancelling any promised expansion…
Not to say that i would do that, but… semi legal keyshops can be a usefull tool to get EU4 from 500$ down to 25$. “My friends” would be totally broke if there werent those keyshops protecting them from paradox’s greed…
Tbh i wish WE would be greedier and sell us more stuff
Could it be a remake sequel, like Sins of a Solar Empire II did, being practically identical to the original, rescuing the mechanics, soundtrack, etc., but in a new engine and improving its formula?
World’s Edge has literally sold mods. I don’t recall Paradox ever going that far.
Lack of sales and the number of players dropped. There were some questionable design choices at release (that were fortunately fixed before abandoning the game). It’s kind of tragic that the game was abandoned right when the game was in good state and the playerbase was starting to recover.
I also think (and this is merely my personal opinion) that the time frame of that game (Hellenistic period) is quite unpopular in general (other than the rise of Rome). And no matter how good of a game you make, it’s always going to sell less than any game set in the Medieval times, which is a shame, as I think the Hellenistic period had far more interesting battles than the Middle Ages (the scale of those armies and empires was just impressive). But I guess the power of pop culture is too strong.
Yeah, I know it is unlikely but we never know for sure…
Maybe Bill Gates will see our complaints and say to WE “WTF are you doing, give those men a DLC!”
Man , we can wish that , but its easier to see a pig fly than having a billionaire check something related to this , also from my knowledge the new CEO is Satya Narayana Nadella
