One could say that Ensemble was Age of Empires, since the series was their greatest hit their last game forced the company to close, that being Halo Wars. AoEO's production was started by a company containing some of Ensemble's members but then it was switched to another one, unrelated to the series. It should be mentioned that Ensemble studios, the original makers of the game, participated in a collaboration with Big Huge Games to produce the last AoE3 expansion and did not work on AoEO. Those did not fit what most RTS gamers would want, a balanced game of strategy (issues mentioned were mostly taken care of however but bad rep hurts).
#Reddit age of empires free#
That was when MMO was a fad so the idea was to produce MMORTS along with everything that comes with it, as such what followed was fears and stereotypes about pay to win, free to play, equipment drops etc. Come 2011, 6 years after AoE3's realease, AoE4 was announced and the new graphics style received a lot of criticism from players, along with the need to level up in quests in MMO style. It must be said that the game was good in many other ways but needs a seperate focus and thus a post for another thread. The beforementioned I hold as explanations of AoE3's decline, which was only checked by the expansions' release. Finally, the biggest problem was that router ports had to be forwarded in order to connect to people, and that's something not many were willing or able to do, therefore limiting their connectability to other players, leaving them unable to find a game quickly with other compatible connections. The strategic system was also changed as an rts game included a card system where the home city of each nation would send aid in the form of resources, units, improvements or boosts. The game's balance was imperfect, not considered balanced until later on in the game's life, as some strategies were quite difficult to beat unless utilizing specific, risky and few counters. Map hacks were also in circulation but thankfully they were usually caught. At the same time, the hardcore voices who established the rating system early on, got half of the deal, since it was a new peculiar system introduced, not the old and requested AoE2 ELO. While it sounds as not promoting competition, if one was to judge from how the players searched for getting into games and their attitude, especially in deathmatch where people were fewer, it didn't help found a nice enough community. Compare to the appeal of normal and ranked games in today's terms, that didn't exist, you couldn't play a standard game without impact on ranking.
The games would turn out of sync either by bugs or maliciously (wasn't even fixed for a while), there existed a type of hack called droptrick where people would feign disconnect to avoid losing ranking, as all games were ranked, except scenarios. Despite that, they also suffered from two major flaws which has killed online for a lot of people. AoE3 and expansions were played through ESO2 servers, which in the early days were sometimes overloaded. Old AoE2 was offered through MSN Gaming Zone up to 2006 which coincided with the year of AoE3's first expansion release. The narrative focused on fictional events with a paranormal story placed around historic eras instead of what used to be following a historical person's path to victory. Single player was interesting, however in a different vain, compared to AoE2 which lead to old player alienation.
#Reddit age of empires plus#
It was when the new AoE3 which disappointed some AoE2 fans came out (it sold overall less), however a part got into it, plus the game attracted new players. There were 2 phases of Age of Empires dying out, I can comment first hand about the latter and touch on the earlier phase.
I've been lurking for a year, this is finally a thread where I feel I can give a proper top tier reply.
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