Age of Empires Online Goes Free-To-Play

[News Portal]

Previously only free-to-try, Age of Empires Online has gone fully-fledged free-to-play. “We probably turned off a lot of players who would’ve kept playing had they been given the option to earn a Premium Civilization,” Eric Williamson, systems design lead at Gas Powered Games told PC Gamer.

But that's not the only change the developers are implementing. A new mode of play, called 'Alliance Wars' will introduce a team-based multiplayer mode for players of level 40 and up. "We wanted to make sure we rewarded our most active players, because keeping them around is best for the game. A large player base is positive for the game in a number of ways: it results in more people to trade with, play PvP against, and strategize with. We’d rather have someone play and not spend any money than not play at all, and the old system didn’t really support that," Williamson added.

Source: PC Gamer

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[DarKnode]

Now I feel sorry for people who spend $20 on unlocking 'Greece' etc.

[Krogan]

For me it was the grindy nature of the game to get unlocks that turned me away.

[akira675]

Well I'm gonna give it a shot..

[charliebrownau]

I bought and really enjoyed the first two AOE games .
I tired this game recently . Wasnt impressed.

[Minkelz]

Apparently it's pretty good now, some hard end game stuff, skirmish mode, pvp etc. Probably won't try it again though unless they get rid of GFWL.

[Syncourt]

Now I feel sorry for people who spend $20 on unlocking 'Greece' etc.

That depends I guess on how much effort it takes to unlock them for free.

But does anybody know if the units actually maintain intelligent formations yet?

I wasn't very impressed coming from the previous games and finding that the units only keep in formation with units of the same type, while constantly putting things like ranged unit formations in front of your melee ones. Or the way that a slower formation of units would stop on the spot just because your fastest formation reached the designated point before they did.

Apart from that and the 'call-in free unit cards' playing such a large role at the start of maps, I didn't mind the rest of it.

[Marcus Dunn]

But does anybody know if the units actually maintain intelligent formations yet?
.

Yeah i liked the game but this bothered me too. Having big clumps of units just felt primative. The only way to get them in any form of order was attack move them as a group, but then your faster units would get slowed down to the speed of the slowest etc.

It IS fun, the graphic style DOES work due to the really smooth animations, but as an RTS it doesn't seem to match many of the other modern RTS options out there.

[Deserteagle1266]

wont update my last 2mb needed to patch the game since last update.. :/

[frigidhell]

I downloaded AoEO just to see what it's like. GfWL had other ideas though, I can't sign into my GfWL account even after doing the steps MS think are obvious to everyone - I opened the right ports on my router, I made sure UPnP was on, I let it through the windows firewall, I made sure I was able to log in to the GfWL marketplace and I spent an hour crawling through their labryrinthian 'support' pages which haven't been updated since Vista and still get confused and think you're having problems with your xbox.

Eventually I gave up. I'm surprised that the GfWL team haven't all been fired and replaced with a million monkeys, I'm sure they can do a better job.