After aoe3 lost dev support, hundreds of angry aoe3 players flood the forums everywhere.
This is partly because several players believe that canceling updates for AOE3DE could negatively affect other AOE games as well. For example, after the second AOMR expansion, they could also announce the end of its updates. Although I prefer not to discuss AOE3 in other forums, I share those concerns. I expected at least four new pantheons for AOM, but what happened with AOE3 is a very bad sign. Developers may want to stop focusing on the Age of Empires franchise and move on to other gamesā¦ and thatās why AOE3 is being talked about in other forumsā¦
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@pwaopwao No, thatās got nothing to do with it. If they wanted to put an end to the Age of Empires series, they wouldnāt have resurrected AOM. Whatās more, AOM is lucrative for them, there was a peak of 25,000 players on the first day, which bodes well for sales.
Whatās more, AOE2 and AOE4 are doing wonderfully well, so itās more a case of them wanting to get rid of the black sheep. It was like a thorn in their side.
In fact, the AOE3 developers have been relocated to work on the other games in the franchise, including AOM, which is excellent news for the future development of the game.
Letās not forget that AOM is a very recent game, so itās a safe bet that they wonāt be abandoning it any time soon like they did with AOE3 (RIP 
).
He did not mean to narrow the example to literally only remasters, because things like Age of Mythology Retold are technically remakes.
Itās specially irrelevant because not even the industry know what a remaster and what a remake is. Crash Bandcoot Nsane Trilogy is self called a remaster but its a remake by all metrics for example.
Cancelling you announce the thing is cancelled.
THIS GAME/THIS DLC IS CANCELLED, IT WILL NOT BE MADE.
Abandoning is like these games here:
The devs donāt talk about it and no one have any idea if the game is being worked on or not. Usually after a logn long time someone confirm the game is dead or it magically leave the limbo and is released (like Duke Nuken Forever)
Technically it can, like fan games that the devs abandon and open the code to however wants to continue it.
Yes, most games does this, its when the game is complete lol. Paradox does this for all their games.
Yeah, when a game have a planned DLC and planned future updates and say āEVERYTHING IS CANCELLED, THERE WILL NOT BE DLC OR UPDATES ANYMOREā I say the game had its development cancelled.
Take for example Dota Underlords, that game is the definition of an āabandonedā game. The last update was on 2020 and since then, nothing. When the battle pass would expire the date changed to expire on 2031 and everyone assumed the game is dead. Nothing since then. No ones know what Valve is doing about it.
No I will not. But Black Mesa they still update the game itself, iām not counting mods. At the end of last year they still posted an update to support the game.
They did updated it. Fixed some things for multiplayer but for the most part the game is still broken and did not delivered what was promised. And the campaign is still broken. By all means and purposes, if someone still have faith that they will deliver this game what was promisedā¦
They are. Starcraft 2 got a patch on 25 November 2024 and Heroes of the Storm on March 12, 2025.
But because of this we will not consider these games abandonedā¦?
I thought that AoE3 was cancelled because of bad sales but the fans of the game are all saying it sold well and it was cancelled by other reasons. Who am I do doubt them.
Oh, this they are doing. They donāt promote the game like the others. Just see how its always out from the events.
And they censored a ton of content from the game, they even butchered an entire Campaign. (by definition, this is hiding what AoE3 isā¦)
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I mean, hypothetically, they would make the decision to stop updates after the release of AOMR because fewer people are playing it than AOE3DE, but this is just a theory. I donāt have the exact numbers, but I think itās not like AOMR is that much more lucrative than AOE3DE has been. AOE 2 and 4 are experiencing the typical decline in players who own all the games after a few years, and itās normal for companies to start looking for things that would bring them more income, in this case, moving on to develop other games. But these are still possibilities, speculations. The goal of my post is to give a reasonable explanation as to why AOE3 is being talked about in other forums, not to give exact predictions.
I donāt understand this kind of mockery, discussions here should always be in an atmosphere of respect, if what you want is for people not to talk about AOE3 this kind of attitude has the opposite effect by making players furious, precisely the company in charge of making important decisions is criticized for the lack of respect they have had towards AOE3 compared to other games in the franchise, although those who criticize AOE3 refuse to understand it (If you are interested in knowing more there are many posts in the AOE3 forum that talk about the subject). It would be wiser to simply ignore everything related to AOE3.
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It makes senseā¦ on top of that they did it wrong and super cold and corporateā¦ when they delayed it in October of last year they should have said ādue to having a lot of hard work on Retold -and to revive it- we delayed the Baltic DLC until October 2025 and since it is the 20th anniversary of the original AoE 3 we asked CaptureAge to port the Pachacuti, Moctezuma and Almeida campaign from AoE 2 to AoE 3 so that it is a celebration between AoE 2 and 3 players alikeāā¦ then nobody would have complained and there would even be hyped people and the devs would at least have one more year to develop the aforementioned DLCā¦
Itās not like they would have done it now, but already since 2022, thatās why AoE 3 had nothing in 2023 or 2024 while AoE 2 and 4 continued to receive DLCā¦
For nowā¦ I wouldnāt relax too much, we still have to wait and see what they do after the second premium DLCā¦ 
Yes, with AoM they could still stop the updates after releasing the second DLC if it doesnāt manage to get more players than AoE 3 in the short termā¦ AoM still has a minimal chance of saving itself from WEās scythe, but time is ticking and itās a vital race against timeā¦
Yes, the mood is still heated, and the mockery only adds fuel to the fireā¦ it would be better to be more understanding and wait for the fire to subside and go outā¦
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Letās not forget the fact that AOE3 players have been gaslit for years (by the WE fans āvoluntarilyā, not directly by WE, maybe, but who knows) that the game receives near zero promotion, near zero credit, delayed patches with no explanation, non-existent communication, especially when they rightfully demand these, that it does not have enough players.
Now itās time to test the theory.
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This kind of smugness I see on this forum over 3DEās demise is pretty surprising to me. I guess it was foolish of me to think AoM players were above that.
As for the topic at hand, well, Iāve kept quiet on it and will continue to do so but the reasons are fairly obvious to me, and it took AoMR for me to realize what they were. I loved AoM back in the day, btw.
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A noticeable number of AoE III forum dwellers have a habit of bouncing around the place and dunking on the other games. That said, every gameās fanbase has a similar set of folks. This applies to II: DE, III: DE, Retold and IV. Which is unfortunate, because it lowers the tone for everyone involved. And it invites petty tit-for-tat, for all sides.
However, ultimately, we each have our favourite game in the franchise, and if it comes down to it, we all prefer our favourite game to be the last one standing. Harsh? Yes. Down to corporate decisionmaking at WE / Microsoft? Yes. But expected. If your favourite game is AoM (which is more likely here in the Retold subforum than it is in the other subforums) . . . are you seriously going to say āI wish they cut support for my game firstā?
I doubt that.
Iād rather support for none of the games was cut, but thatās not the world we live in.
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Some care about the entire franchise even though they have a preferred game while others care about their preferred game in the franchise and only that game. The latter are often blind to the bigger picture. Karma takes no prisoners.
In an alternative universe, I wouldnāt dance on AoE2 or IVs grave just because I hoped that would mean more support for my game. A disturbing precedent has been set, there is a pecking order in place, and guess who might be next.
But this is the internet where immaturity and short-term thinking often reign supreme.
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This is very true. And heck, Iāve never been that into III: DE (more into Retold and IV, historically was AoM and II), but itās still a shame that the franchise is being squeezed so much that they both ended support and cancelled work-in-progress on III: DE.
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Reminder: not work-in-progress
They admitted they have done almost NOTHING at the time of the announcement, the delay and the cancellation.
Iām not too worried about 2DE for obvious reasons. The civs and campaigns are relatively cheap to produce so the ROI is high. I hope IV has many more years worth of stories to tell. Iāll be taking a wait-and-see approach for AoMR after the 2nd expansion drops.
There has been a lot of in-house drama and doom posting over the years within the 3DE community over when support will end so itās not like the playerbase was delusional. But none of us thought it would go down like this. The abruptness freaked and angered many of us and only added fuel to the fire of our distrust of WE.
The good news for AoMR is that WE seemingly cares about AoMR and its playerbase more than it did for 3DE and it has nothing to do with profitability. For whatever reason, WE had no idea what to do with the game. The pre-release( and post-release) marketing was flat-out atrocious if not non-existent, and the F2P demo was lazily done. 3DE players were screaming into the clouds for improved communication but no one listened until it started to impact their game.
Iād recommend not using this kind of expression. It makes them sound innocent.
If I have no idea what to do with a job Iām assigned to, Iād scratch my head to figure out. While they donāt even care to try to reach out to any organizer from the community for the tournaments (and blame the latter for not reaching out to them). It does not take any rocket science knowledge to post some random screenshots, or use their handy AI tools (not alluding to anything) to generate some cheap advertising materials.
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The game team is trying hard to make the community lose interest in the game. Impressive.
@FiveWind6951746 No offence but yes, as you said, some people are only interested in one game in the franchise, and thatās my case, as it is for many others. My behaviour isnāt immaturity, itās just that talking about aoe3 on this forum is almost the same as talking about the death of a random game Iāve never played. I canāt empathise with a game I donāt know, so maybe thatās cruel for you, but all in all itās very logical.
Youāre talking about karma, and letās say your prediction comes true, like everyone else here with their crystal balls, that AOM will die within the next 2 years, that doesnāt mean Iāll go crying over its death on all the other game forums, in fact that would be childish behaviour.
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Or they just participate in the conversations. I donāt see much criticism of AOM from AOE-3 players here.
I think thatās fine, I have no problem with that.
Worldās Edge didnāt just abandon AOE-3; it deceived and humiliated its community. The point is, people are afraid it could happen again with other games.
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And well, itās easyā¦ if you donāt promote it, the game doesnāt do its magicā¦ I had to announce the new 3DE expansions in 2021 and 2022 in the AoE groups because otherwise it was AoE 2 all the timeā¦ and on top of that, I had to put up with the taunts that I was playing āa dead gameā because it wasnāt released in RBWā¦
Yes, considering the years that AoM was abandoned, living under the shadow of 2 and even 3, I thought that AoM players would be more understandingā¦ in fact, many AoE 3 players always asked for an AoM remaster, which we finally got with Retoldā¦
Yes, this wouldnāt happen if more people were hired for FE instead of scrapping games, which ultimately ends up generating division and resentment with the Age communitiesā¦
Yes, the Baltic DLC was vaporwareā¦it never existed in the first place, just the 2 PNGsā¦
Yes, Iāve already dueled for AoE 3 
ā¦what worries me now is what will happen to Retold after the 2nd pantheon comes out this year or nextā¦
Yes, and look, it wasnāt difficultā¦instead of redesigning/destroying the Shadow campaign to be politically correct, they could have put those resources into remaking the Pachacuti, Moctezuma, and Almeida campaigns from AoE 2 for AoE 3 at its launch in 2020ā¦and for KotM in 2022 instead of including so many multiplayer maps that are barely played, they could have made campaigns for Suleiman, Gustavus Adolphus, and Napoleon (the latter would arrive with Ridley Scottās movie in 2023) and with that you could easily add 1000-2000 players for AoE 3ā¦
Yes, itās completely understandableā¦ but this is a saga and we should all worry about all the games and have ācommunity thinkingā even if we donāt like all the games instead of closing ourselves in our bubbles, because otherwise we will all lose and WE will get away with āliving only on AoE 2 -or worse, Mobile- and screw the rest of the gamesāā¦ we fight and wait so long for the saga to be taken seriously again by MS, to now come and fight because we like X game more than Y gameā¦ or well, thatās how I see itā¦
The thing is, seen from the perspective of an AoE 3 player, AoM doesnāt have much to criticize: it has asymmetric civs (like AoE 3 or even more), unique gameplay and powers that dynamize the game (like the cards in AoE 3), it has one, if not the best campaign in the entire saga (compared to the fictional story of the Black family, the Fountain of Youth, the birth of the United States and Manifest Destiny and the short Asian stories of AoE 3) and itās also super fun and beautiful (reinforced even more with Retold since it uses the same version of the 3DE engine)ā¦ if it werenāt for the existence of AoE 2, AoM would easily dominate the entire saga (I donāt see AoE 2 players staying with AoE 1 but rather they would simply be AoM players and there would still be a fight with AoE 3 but it would be less extreme)ā¦ I love 3DE and yet I can easily put Retold in the top 3 of the series (the 3rd place could be occupied by AoEO or 2DE starting with the new patch that adds new unique skins for UUs, castles and monasteries)ā¦
Yes, and letās not forget that they already did it with 1 DE in 2020, but since it had few players, no one complainedā¦ now that theyāve touched one of the greats of the saga, it hurts usā¦
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Wow, I didnāt know about this situation. I really hope things get better for the whole AOE saga, RTS is a very underrated genre these days by the masses but that doesnāt mean it canāt be massified, I think a very captivating point and that games like all the AOE saga including Mythology have an advantage over any other genre is the LORE and (even if itās counterintuitive) being EDUCATIONAL CONTENT. If these two things are kept constantly updated it will be a success for the players and will attract a lot of attention to people who are used to play in a casual way.
we have been on positive player gain for a while now. I see the future bright. Im so curious about player numbers after the second dlc.
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