They are also shutting down the servers on October 30, 2024.
You can check the announcement below
End of an era. Godspeed, Legacy Age3
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Scared me for a minute there, I thought this included DE.
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It’s overdue. AOMEE was delisted the day AOMR released. New players to AOE3 have been buying Legacy thinking it’s the supported version. I’ll still have it in my steam library, and even in the event of the nuclear apocalypse I still have the legacy collection on CD, but it’s long past time to put legacy to bed. The barren wastelands of cavboxes are finally being shuttered.
The king is dead. Long live the king!
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It is now mater of time till AOM EE and AOE 2 HD get removed as well
RIP.
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I am very sad because it is the legacy version. It doesn’t make sense because it’s the original version of the game. Please listen to us.
Just when I wanted to live the experience that brought with it the great success of what we know as the definitive edition.
This same thing happened to Warcraft 3.
We will gradually lose valuable resources like this version of the game.
Greetings from Colombia, I have been playing Age of Empires since 2006.
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In addition, on October 30, 2024 at 10am PT
multiplayer services for the game will cease to run. This is due to the technology no longer being supported.
If you own the game, you will still be able to play campaign and skirmish content. Online multiplayer is the only area of the game that will no longer be available.
Is LAN and Direct IP connect multiplayer games going to continue to work?
What technology is no longer being supported, I wonder.
All good. AoE3 already ceased to run on my PC when I uninstalled it years ago. That was due to the game no longer being worth my time. If they overhauled the audio, I’d be more apt to play it.
The past AoE3 CD and AoE3 classic purchases helped fund DE and the franchise, woukd be greqt to get a discount on DE
PS: It’s AoE2’s 25th anniversary. Odd time to de-list and decommission AoE3, imo
PPS: The AoE3 Steam Store page links to this old 2021 page, to be able to download an MP patch to play the legacy title online: Age of Empires III: CC ESO Patch - Age of Empires - World's Edge Studio. With the wording on that page, it seems pretty likely that MS just decided to now flat-out stop supporting MP on their own and under their own pretenses. That old website says this (remember, this is an old 2021 web page):
Effective September 1, 2021,
the multiplayer service for the 2007 version of Age of Empires III: Complete Collection currently on Steam requires a patch to connect. The critical factor for this is that the ESO domain on which this multiplayer service previously resided is no longer under Microsoft’s control and has been repurposed by its new owners.
To continue accessing the multiplayer services, we created an AgeIIIESOPatch_Full patch that points to a new backend owned by Microsoft.
Due to the age of the title, we have no way to automatically apply the patch for you and you will have to come to our website download linked below to apply the patch manually. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
The AgeIIIESOPatch_Full will allow you to access multiplayer services without routing through the deprecated ESO service. It is important to install the patch for additional stability and reliability in the multiplayer environment and avoid issues accessing multiplayer matches. Download and install the patch manually using the steps below:
Q: Is the patch required to play the game?
While the patch is not required at this time, it is strongly encouraged to download in order to ensure smooth gameplay if
eso.comis unavailable. In the future,eso.commay be permanently removed, at which point the patch will be required to continue accessing the game’s multiplayer services.Additionally players who have not downloaded the patch will be unable to play multiplayer matches with those who have.
Oh yeah, and what about the AoE3 classic MP leaderboards? Are those being taken down, too? (if they even exist)
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The great game has accompanied me through the whole six years of middle school and four years of university. To this day, I still think that the days when I was in university and with my roommates against AI were the best.
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This makes me sad. I still have been playing it online at times even after AoEIII DE came out.
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Legacy AoE3 already has that, it always did…
Yeah, sounds like they just don’t want to support it anymore. To be fair, they maintained the servers for ~19 years which is quite a while, longer than any other AoE multiplayer service.
The official ones have been taken down a while ago, but MS continued to provide a way for community to maintain our own, which we did: https://eso-community.net/ladder.php?patch=RE&mode=1v1&type=supremacy
Obviously they will stop updating when the servers shut down and nobody can play on them anymore.
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Hopefully those Legacy player will shift to AOE3:DE - which would be beneficial for our community!
In other news, I do have physical versions of the original base game, TWC and AD that may be for sale with a price to reflect the availability… 
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They are for aoe3 Legacy players turn around aoe3de this is means that aoe3 Complete Collection is dead now
Lan and direct IP has been used for legacy for a long time. Legacy does not mean DE
Oh, sweet. So some semblance of MP will still be available after Oct 30th for the old Steam version? They could have said that then, imo. They made it sound like all MP would be gone/ removed
I guess he is asking that features for DE
People can still play LAN and use alternate 3rd party platforms such as Gameranger, which utilize LAN for online play.
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WoL has been using a LAN based server for the better part of 2 years now too
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Nice! And direct IP will still be usable, too, over the internet it sounds like?
I’m really sad 
Rest in peace best RTS game rest in peace
I will love you forever
AOE III (2005 - 2024) 
⚘ 
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