The year 2023 was a strange year for aoe3, we had big updates and rumors of new civs, until July things were going well, after the July patch that came out in August things started to get weird, communications from the staff and of the devs with the community was greatly reduced as was the attention for the game itself.
Since the middle of the year, the treatment of the game has changed drastically, news about future updates is scarce or non-existent.
The feeling that players have is that the future of the game is completely uncertain.
It’s November already, and there’s no sign of a DLC or something just like that.
We didn’t have a birthday event, helloween or anything.
There are no more civ rotations for the free version.
What changed from the middle of the year to now?
Will this be Aoe3DE’s first year without a DLC?
If so, what led developers to make these decisions?
Yeah, putting it into the context of the whole year it’s pretty odd.
Most folks were impressed by the Devs going all out with the new skins and changes in the big update, then we get a Trial version then … nothing really.
Basically as soon as there was incoming news of DLC for AoE2 and 4 the third child got dropped.
I am still incredibly surprised they didn’t captilise on the Trial version by enticing news of a future DLC or even just a singular Civ.
The free trial announcement was pretty much the death of this game, last ditch attempt to squeeze as much money as possible out of it before abandoning it. Even without content though we will all keep playing it and it will remain alive as the original game did even though it was outdated and left alone for like 15 years.
I’ve never seen a game now turning to the model of encouraging players to play the free trial version and buy the purchasable contents getting zero promotion, let alone worse support. I honestly don’t understand what they want to achieve. Maybe they really HATE that one of their products could generate some more additional income.
There was a huge new player peak which ends up with doubled playerbase even till now and they let the momentum slide with much poorer support and communication than before.
I can’t believe the majority of the increased players have relied on the trial version for three months. So they must have generated some income and could be potential consumers for future contents. But what we see is the almost intentional drop of the ball.
BTW where is the improved communication?
The only thing I could pin the blame so to speak would be the Microsoft survey (which don’t which date was). Maybe many put “bad” things olabiut the game-devs, that higher ups decided something related to the actual situation.
Other than that I don’t or maybe it was planned for this year to fill with community skins for the rest of the year so they could use personnel in Mythology or something.
Pd: I put bad reviews for AOE 2/4 in the survey and they got more content…
I find it quite peculiar that 3DE is the only DE with the WE intro movie, which is mostly made up of AoEIV clips. Why is that? Why spend a bunch of resources for an intro only to stick it into the least played game? Admittedly, I don’t know if it’s in AoEIV it sure isn’t in 2DE.
Tinfoil Hat Warning: WE is trying to siphon the 3DE player base into IV. Perhaps a bit conspiratorial but I put nothing past them at this point.
Honestly I’m so scared of the idea that AoE3 gets dropped like a bad habit, but the fact that so many things point in this direction doesn’t make it easier to think differently.
Let’s just all hope that the latest we get sth is at the end of winter/beginning of spring when “hopefully” AoM retold is out and the AoE3 crew returns with “hopefully” more changes, because if AoE3 gets dropped now I don’t know what else to say.
When AOE4 was still effectively an open beta, and there was still some money to milk from AOE3, they could pretend they care about this game.
Now that the “true AOE” game seems to finally get on track, it’s time to horde people to it.
The whole purpose of AOE-not-2 DEs was to create hype for AOE4.
I can’t get why people think this is conspiracy. It has been SO blatantly intentional. Ever since the promotion of AOE3DE in 2020 where Adam Isgreen wore an AOE2 T shirt, talked about it for quite a while, and explicitly said “AOE3 is still popular, just not as popular as AOE2”.
When it starts to do much better than before.
So ironic.
If they wanted to do that they should focus on making AoE4 less trash instead of trying to sabotage AoE3. Instead they want to sabotage both with groundbreaking civs like “Feminist Zealot” and “Gilded Guys”.
The age has died; if nothing comes out in December, I consider it definitively dead.
No I fear December is too early, I would only start completely giving up if after the winter months nothing is coming 
I wouldn’t be so pessimistic. It’s very possible that AoE3 is just on ice while most of their resources are busy with AoM. Once that’s done they might come back and do a DLC. Especially since the release of AoM will likely boost AoE3 due to the huge amount of overlap in the games.
But that is what they’re doing; in their mind at least. Some of us see things differently than those in charge. All things being equal, apart from the names, the variants have been received positively.
Yes yes yes, right there, some one who is optimistic!
Really feels like the end of the world here right now
December is when they should release the most stuff due to the holidays. If they don’t release anything, it’s because it’s not even in their plans. I think Age of Mythology is also dead; they haven’t shown anything. Their community managers must be the same ones from 3, hahaha.
“They are working on AOM” is the last copium we have now.
We had the anniversary copium, the “after 2 and 4 get their contents…” copium, the “new DLC entry on steamdb” copium. Someone even invented the Napoleon movie copium out of nowhere. None seems to have worked.
Yep.
I reckon 3DE devs will also be working on post-launch support so I wouldn’t hold my breath that as soon as AoMR is out the devs will be coming back. And if the past is anything to go by AOMR is gonna need a lot of support since all the games have been released with no problems at all.
The neglect is likely going to continue until well after AoM is out. But since they are the same devs working on the same engine it’s very unlikely they will axe the game completely. The updates we’ve got so far have been made with passion, so I’d think there’s a desire by the devs to keep adding to AoE3. Whether or no WE supports that properly is another story. And when AoM is released it will likely make a lot of players more aware of and familiar with AoE3 gameplay.