Not just did they just cancel a DLC that they first promised and then even delayed, they also did not tell us why nor did they mention anything about the promised DLC for the games in the series.
Are they not aware that such news will make every fan of AoE2DE/AoMR/AoE4 afraid that they could cancel those DLC at any time too?
Over all is the communication with the community very minimal. Yes they reply to bug reports but that’s pretty much it.
The community is constantly afraid that their games are not getting new content anymore. A lot of AoE2DE fans believe that the game will never get a traditional DLC anymore because if you don’t read every paragraph of every news article you can easily miss the fact that they confirmed working on new DLC for AoE2.
The confirmation for the AoE4 DLC was also just hidden at the bottom of a patch log. Most people don’t read every single patch log all the way to the end.
We have also not heard anything about the upcoming Immortal Pillars DLC for AoMR since the trailer dropped like half a year ago.
Can’t they make those announcements more public?
Can’t they keep up more updated on the progress of the DLC?
Other publishers give us weekly/monthly dev diaries years before the game release that keep us updated and also keep the game in the conversation for months.
Even Relic, the developer of AoE4, made regular dev diaries for Company of Heroes long before release and even had a open alpha over a year before release!
Meanwhile for AoE4 there was nothing until a few months before release and then a close beta just a few weeks before release.
Why does Microsoft/WorldsEdge forbid the developers to talk about their game more? Or why is there almost no communication?
15 Likes
What is worse: they still do not explain why they cancel the DLC.
We can speculate. Very likely it’s because most developers were moved to AOMR. We can accept that. We saw it coming. Every game will have its end of support. No problem.
Or they are short of funds or manpower. Fine.
Even the hard pill that kills most people’s copium here: “we see it as unprofitable”, is still a reason anyhow.
But their reason is: we made a fake promise last year just to include you. But now (after a whole year, including one delay) we suddenly (sarcasm intended) realized we cannot finish it.
My 5 year old makes a better excuse than that.
If that is the reason, why not delay it even further? We can wait. Why also drop all future support? That’s not a premature announcement is it?
It is still as opaque as ever despite their efforts to act like they communicated. More likely they wrote this s**t for the shareholders not the customers. And that does not help regaining trust.
6 Likes
I think AOE4 is the only game with DLC planned right now iirc and without a doubt that is also in question after this
AOM iirc is effectively already sold cause its supposed to be a free expansion. They might get into real trouble if they decide to cancel those cause that would constitute fraud I think
They promised more AoE2 DLC, both more classical ones and more Chronicles DLC.
But it’s hidden in the announcement of Chronicles.
I expect some news about that relatively soon.
1 Like
Then that is also in question tbh, like anything that is just “we have plans for further expansions in the future”
What this announcement kinda signals whether they want it to or not is that DLCs (optional purchases) for AOE games are on shakier foundations. If its not effectively already purchased it has a chance of being canceled.
Whether they want to say why is their prerogative
That is why I made this post. They indirectly confirmed that they are planning on making traditional and Chronicles DLC for AoE2 in the future but they never made an official announcement for it.
Now all the AoE2 fans are sitting their in suspense until they really announce the DLC.
1 Like
Or let me provide another perspective:
I hope they break their promises for their bugger games next time and crash.
Yeah I think this announcement partly signals that anything that is not the AOM stuff that is locked to the base game are probably not happening unless they say explicitly otherwise
There is no point to try to hold on to suspense on this
Considering that they still have 2 DLC to release I don’t think they have made a decision about the future of AoMR yet.
If the DLC are successful they will likely continue supporting the game, if not then probably not.
Sadly the biggest lesson they learned from this mess may be “never promise in advance”. In other words, less communication.
1 Like
Their communication is bad in both ways I guess.
They announced something before they started working on it but then when they work on things they never tell us until it’s almost done and they can’t really change much.
AoMR did manage to get substantially changed between the Betas and the release version though but maybe an earlier beta would have helped with a lot of the post release issues.
Also the Arena of the Gods things was all pretty bad. Delayed and under delivered.
No. This AOE3 DLC is an exception.
They announced it as a filler to make it look like an event for the whole series.
Most other times they don’t say anything about what they are working on.
Well they announced AoE1DE, AoE2DE, AoE3DE and AoE4 on the same day an released them years apart.
They also announced an AoE4 DLC for this year at the end of last year which will likely release at the end of the year. So even longer in advance and for similar reasons. To keep the AoE4 players happy.
So they have done similar things and are still doing similar things. Just they never announced specific content (like 2 civs) that long in advance.