Look at those red numbers, what a pity, it’s a game with a lot of potential…
Yes, the issue is that I bought the HD at Christmas 2018 and then it came out on 2 DE and I didn’t pay attention to Voobly anymore… but I know of people who are still playing on Voobly because they don’t have the PC to play 2 DE… I play 2 DE, 3 DE, AoM EE (Retold when it comes out), AoEO and AoE 4 (pirate xd)…
That’s a nice way to put it. It’s such a weird entry in the series. It would be similar to half the Beatles coming back from the dead so they could reunite, write new music and go on tour again, while at the same time 4 new guys make a Beatles cover band and try do the same thing, but wonder why no one is coming to their concerts.
I wouldn’t be that harsh… but yeah, aoe online was a fail too.
You mean when microsoft started getting back into development? It was fine during the HD days, man. DE kinda messed things up. Major mechanics creep… which is not too bad… then, a word filter… and now, this.
Yes
BOTH are true in my case.
I know, I know. I get that all the time. It happened even in aoe 3. It once censored “gg” when Hera typed it but didn’t censor “your mom is gg”.
Yes that’s how it is…
Yes, that is, the period 2011-2016 (AoEO-AoE 2 HD plus the dlcs -AoM EE- AoE Castle Siege and AoE World Domination)…
As someone who hasn’t played AoEO, I’m quite confused about this comment. Does AoEO have a subscription already, and you’re saying (presumably sarcastically) that it’s ahead of the other AoE games in that sense?
No, it was (is with Project Celeste patch) a WoW-like MMO, but free… you had 2 free civs at launch (Greeks and Egyptians) and then every 3 months they released new civs:
The Celtic and Persian civilizations were officially announced on July 20th, 2011[2]. The Celts already existed in the game files by the end of the beta testing phase.[3]. The Persians were released on October 18, 2011 as a Pro civilization, which meant that the civilization had to be purchased to play (more details about Pro civilization : see Civilization). The Celts were delayed and eventually released on March 26, 2012 with the launch of the game in Steam.
The Babylonian civilization was officially announced on August 10th, 2012 through Euro.
The Norse civilization was officially announced on October 23rd, 2012 through Euro.
The Roman civilization was hinted and was in creation from the start of 2011, but was not finished by the 2014 shutdown. The Project Celeste team finalized and released it on March 14th, 2021.
The Indian civilization was officially announced on May 2th, 2021 through Project Celeste Forum post. No release date yet (maybe May,14 2025)…Announced as the next Pro Civ from Project Celeste developers…
The Neanderthals was announced on April’s Fools (April 1st, 2012) as a joke.
There are two classes of civilization: Basic (formerly Free-to-Play) and Pro (formerly requiring a purchase to play – or “Premium”) (in Project Celeste obviously all civs are free).
The Basic civs have a campaign that guided the player through the gameplay mechanics of AoE games in the particularities of the Online ecosystem. These civs have as well their own dedicated stories revolving around the civs in question.
The Premium civilizations; Starting at level 20 they lack a unique main campaign, however, due to being level 20 they start with access to the Argos Campaign, Northern Invasion, Fertile Crescent (the two expansions of AoE Online), and the Celeste-developed Cyrus the Great Quest Pack.
You can currently play Champion Mode ranked PvP matches in the Sparta Region. To unlock Sparta, accept the “Visit Sparta” quest from your City Ambassador. The quest is available for players who are level 3 or higher. You can also click the spartan shield on the quest map to access Sparta, or use the PLAY-ui at the top of the screen (to the right of the Empire Point counter). Both casual (unranked) and competitive play are played through the Arena, at the Arena Promoter.
Champion Mode is an option for Arena and Sparta PvP where gear and level are nullified. All units and technologies will be unlocked for players. Advisors and Consumables are also disabled.
Stat values which are different in champion mode are in brackets () next to the normal stats.
In Champion Mode with the default starting resources settings, Persians, Celts, Greeks, Egyptians start with 200
200
150
0
, while Romans, Norse and Babylonians start with 250[ 150 0. Early game unique technology units such as the Engineer, Ox cart and Priestess of Ra will spawn for their appropriate civ, while other unique technologies and benefits not seen in PvE/Non Champion are available, such as a free priest on temple construction for the Egyptians, or the Dog Mastery Upgrade for the Norse.
Champion Mode is also used for specific Quests, which will state as much.
The Arena is a Capital City building used to create custom matches by inviting other players into a party and setting the PvP parameters yourself.
It includes Champion Mode PvP and the ability to observe. If you play using the Arena you will also be able to select your map. To initiate a custom PVP game you must use the Arena.
To get the building you need to be level 3, and talk to the spartan commander in the Sparta region. He will give you the blueprint with which you can place the Arena in your home city. Use the chat as your lobby and add people of your skill level to get matches faster and to allow you to improve the best way.
The new interface of the arena lets you choose from the next variants to suit the different needs:
Free For All
Announced in both the server maintenance and developer update blogs, Free For All came as a part of the Arena 2.0 rework. It allows for 3-5 player games on a new map pool of existing maps reworked to handle the change in teams (and deal with a 5th player). The Free for all map pool is as follows:
Free for all also features it’s own FFA Random Map option.
New Random Map Modes (for 1v1 and 2v2):
Random
The original Random Map option. Randomly picks a map from all Arena maps.
Ranked Map Pool
Randomly picks a map from all maps in the current Sparta season. These 8 maps vary from season to season based upon player demand and new additions to the Competitive Map Pool.
Competitive Random
Randomly picks a map from the Competitive Map Pool. As of the time of the Arena 2.0 Update, these maps were
You can currently play Champion Mode ranked PvP matches in the Sparta Region. To unlock Sparta, accept the “Visit Sparta” quest from your City Ambassador. The quest is available for players who are level 3 or higher. You can also click the spartan shield on the quest map to access Sparta, or use the PLAY-ui at the top of the screen (to the right of the Empire Point counter). Both casual (unranked) and competitive play are played through the Arena, at the Arena Promoter.
User Interface of Sparta Arena
Sparta PvP seasons run for 45 day periods in sync with the Crete leaderboard/seasons. All players that play a minimum of 5 games and have a minimum of 1 win qualify to get rewards, starting out at 7500 gold and 125 empire points plus a level 40 epic-or-legendary rewards chest. There are higher reward tiers at 66%, 33%, top 50, top 25, top 10, top 5 and 1st. Each with better gold, EP and chest rewards.
You can qualify for rewards in both 1v1 and 2v2, meaning that even less-experienced players can get quite reasonable rewards every season turnover provided they play at least 5 games and win at least 1 (per mode).
Didn’t AoEO have terrible monetization from the start? Why would we be praising that?
Fortunately it doesn’t now with Project Celeste. But it’s pretty much an indie game now with like what, a couple hundred people playing it maybe?
Yes, they charged you for each civ and it had premium coins (empire points), although that was later corrected by being able to earn them by playing the game… now in Project Celeste you have about two coins (the empire ones and the Celeste ones to get customizations created by the Celeste team)…
Up until the Summer 2012 Update, both free to play and premium players were able to earn them (through quests), however only premium players were able to spend them at various EP stores. After the Summer Update, these old EP were converted to coin at a ratio of 1:10.
Everyone now starts the game with 100 EP (for accounts created after the update) and 500 if your account predated the update. Empire Points served to unlock premium content, such as Booster Packs or Premium Civilizations, thus allowing the game to become truly Free to Play.
@MatM1996, thanks for your reply. You obviously put a lot of time and effort into it – but I think you really need to be more selective. There were only a couple of relevant parts:
Even the last part of that, I don’t really know enough about the game to know exactly what it means. The rest of your post is mostly information that I think would only interest someone who actually plays AoEO. I feel kind of bad for having accidentally caused you to expend so much effort…
Anyway, it sounds to me like AoEO was actually very much of its time. If I recall correctly, 2011 was towards the end of the trend for making every game an MMO regardless of whether it’s appropriate, and near the beginning of the trend for very granular monetisation.
Yes, the last part is more focused on pvp and how it works in the game in case anyone was interested in trying it…if you want, you can ignore it…the most important thing would be the first part, just xd…don’t be fooled no problem, because I still took it from Wikipedia, it didn’t take me more than 10 mins xd…
Yeah, it’s like a game from that time when WoW and Facebook games like Farmville were super popular and the dlcs weren’t as standardized outside of FPS…imagine that SC2 hadn’t been released for even a year at that time and still had not received its first expansion…
aoeo is important and was the reaosn why the aoe franchis stopped to produce new game and become dead for a long period where aoe hd and remaster only were sold to keep up the loses. Also the best example why ms cant manage well aoe franchise for new games
Yeah, the excessive copy-pasting, whether it be of quotes from other forumers or gratuitous drags of wiki text has always been the most prominent aspect of your posts. Really unnecessary. It’s one thing to read an excessively long post, but it’s another when the bulk of your posts is not even in your own words.
none of this disqualifies it from being the most worthwhile addition to your game library in the series now though
That’s true… you have the period 1997-2002 which was the birth of the saga, the period 2002-2007 which was the climax of the saga and then the period 2007-2012 which was the fall of the saga to ostracism, but the 2012-2017 period for the saga was a bit like hitting the water blindly… you had the AoEO that many didn’t play, the remasters (AoE 2 HD and AoM EE) that were out there and then the mobile games that they played it less…finally you have the 2017-2022 period, which is the second revival and climax of the saga, the DE editions together with the release of AoE 4 and now we would be entering the 2022-2027 period, which would be the future of the saga (AoM Retold, AoEO DE? AoE 5?)…
Yes, it’s just that sometimes it doesn’t occur to me what to answer and I turn to Wikipedia as if it treated me like an AI… for a reason many call me Wikimat xd…
Yeah, it’s an amazing game…
please for the love of god I hope this is not real
Just wanted to bump this thread as Viper and Masmorra talked about this issue in the latest episode of the GL podcast (@ 52:26)
They also seem to share the majority opinion on this thread. That is, it’s good if microsoft can make money off of it, but we don’t want to deal with it. Don’t make the game pay to win, we still want the units to readable at a glance, and everything else is cool.
I wonder, what do the people here think about making the game free to play?
My personal take is, that in of itself is not a problem, but I still don’t want that. Making the game free will lead it down a bad pathway.
This comes hand in hand with micro transactions which will eventually lead to a dead game.
It can make it full of many hackers…
