Age of Empires Online: No problem Elephants can't solve

-SPI-

So this just launched. The online free to play* Age of Empires, with shades of farmville and world of warcraft shoved in a blender with the classic gameplay.

It's not quite as disjointed as that sounds.

You have your home city ala AOE3, where all the farmville and WoW type stuff happens. You level up, craft stuff, equip gear on your buildings and units, unlock new units, buildings and upgrades for use in the missions and take on quests.

Quests are the classic AOE gameplay, they are literally Age of Empires levels, with everything that entails.

Here's a Giant Bomb quick look that explains everything better than I can.

Now, what about the "free" to play part? Well there's where things go a little awry, Microsoft doesn't seem to be quite as savvy as say, the LoL guys or Valve. There's still the usual horse armour style vanity microtransactions, at ~$5 a pop to unlock a set of statues or shrubs for your home city. Then there's the premium civilisations, you can play as either Egypt or Greece currently, with more to come. But you can pay ~$20 to unlock the premium version of the civ. This allows the star technologies at the bottom of the tech tree, a bunch of buildings, ranked pvp, higher quality gear and so forth. There's a lot of stuff there playing for free, but expect to run into lots of locked icons.

Also, it's GFWL. So you'll need an account for that to play, and all the premium content is payed for in MS funbux.
http://www.ageofempiresonline.com/

Join Marathon Realm and then pennyarcade chat channel.

GFWL names:
SPIgaiden
princesssafe
ActionPrinnyGo
Hardtrget
Sirmalekk
epithem1us

Cadmus

Huh... interesting. Seems like a fairly novel idea, I think I'll have to check this out.

And here I was going to take a break from new games and play the old Hero Quest games and MOO

Darmak

I was in the beta with a friend and it was pretty fun, especially doing missions together.

Vic

I am having an odd problem. I am trying to start up the game with my old GfWL account I used to play Dawn of War 2 on, but they keep demanding that I enter a product key with no further explanation. I know I played DoW2 with this account so I have no idea how it could not be registered, but I bought it on Steam and Steam is now refusing to tell me what the product key is.

So either I am not allowed to play this "free" game without registering a game that has been linked to my account for years with a key I don't have, or I am misunderstanding this entirely. Either way I am not pleased.

zerg rush

Wow, that free* to play has a really, really big asterisk attached to it.

-SPI-

Vic wrote:

I am having an odd problem. I am trying to start up the game with my old GfWL account I used to play Dawn of War 2 on, but they keep demanding that I enter a product key with no further explanation. I know I played DoW2 with this account so I have no idea how it could not be registered, but I bought it on Steam and Steam is now refusing to tell me what the product key is.

So either I am not allowed to play this "free" game without registering a game that has been linked to my account for years with a key I don't have, or I am misunderstanding this entirely. Either way I am not pleased.

There's been some talk on the game's forums about keys and issues with them. The solution posted was:
1. Open the Games For Windows Client
2. Click the Downloads tab
3. Click the icon for Age of Empires Online
4. Click View Keys
5. You will see a numerical code under LIVE access code. Enter this code when prompted in-game.

Not sure if that's relevant to what you're experiencing though.

Vic

It is starting to seem like my account was dead or inaccessible, I am currently making another one. God I hate Windows Live, I really feel like I am selling my soul here. Time to update the spam filter...

Vic

So as to not rain on this games parade, the fact that I spent all this effort getting it to work really speaks of how much that "WTF is..." video impressed me. I just got it working, time to see how much fun this really is.

Echo

I have by divine mandate decided on the Marathon realm if we want to hook up.

edit : I dunno if it matters, but I'm Egyptian.

hamdingers

Did a little bit of this today. Pretty fun, especially the co-op quests. For those who are interested - its $20 to unlock the Premium version of either the Egyptians or the Greeks. You do have the option of playing a "city" of both. After about 2 hours or so I started unlocking gear that can only be used by premiums, fwiw.

-SPI-

The one thing I ran into that just seemed like a dick move was getting a quest that required building an Arena, which requires a premium civilisation. And then not being able to abandon that quest, so it will always be there and I'll have the blueprint in my inventory.

But overall it doesn't seem to be too restrictive playing free, the equipment part seems the most annoying but there's no dead stop wall where you have to pay to continue that I've encountered so far. One thing that seems like it could be an issue is not getting coin when other players buy things from your city, which just means you'll rely on quests for coins as a free player.

EvilMonkey

Do you have the ability to generate a map with some bot partners/enemies like in #2? (not sure if 3 had this, the better-half is the AoE fan.)

Echo

So uh, how the heck do you build that advisor hall? I picked up the premium Egypt civ.

taliosfalcon

The premium pricing seems a bit too ridiculous for me...20$ for one civ? lolwut?

Echo

Yep, it's an AoE game alright, with an AI mysteriously capable of pumping out units infinitely without needing resources.

-SPI-

I noticed that, but the intruiging part is every kill gives you a tiny bit of xp. I wonder what happens if you make an impenetrable wall of towers outside their base then walk away from the computer or leave it on overnight. Just have it running in the background like an RTS progress quest.

Echo

Yeah, I was thinking the same. The computer kindly sends guys in one at a time.

-SPI-

I managed to completely cheese one mission by accident. It was to destroy 16 farms, and I was making my usual overly powerful defence, but when I made the towers they just happened to be in range of an enemy farm. Which it destroyed, and each time they started to rebuild it the tower would take it out in one shot, each time counting towards the mission. So instead of scouring the map for all the farms I just sat back and won.

Anyway, transferred onto Marathon, I'll add peoples GFWL names to the OP so we can get some cross empire trade and whatnot going. Although I don't know about co-op, I'm not sure anyone would be able to stand my playstyle.

"ok we should attack the ene- why do you have 85 peasants? And 3 soldiers, and fifteen towers. I don't think you need to strip every resource off the map."

*20 minutes later*

"Ok seriously, you can do this mission with like 10 guys, you don't need to fill out the max unit cap."

Olivaw

Seeing this game in action, it kind of tickles that part of my brain that likes to level up and enjoys persistence

But I don't know

This whole "premium civ" bullshit is pretty lame

Klash

I'm no fan of the pricing scheme, and I don't expect I'll ever actually play this since I'm not much into MP. However, I'm glad AoE still exists, it's had a place in my heart since the first one came out. The game looks great, visually and mechanically, and that trailer is fantastic. If that sense of fun permeates the entire experience, I imagine it's a real kick to play co-op stuff.

Echo

-SPI- wrote:

Anyway, transferred onto Marathon, I'll add peoples GFWL names to the OP so we can get some cross empire trade and whatnot going. Although I don't know about co-op, I'm not sure anyone would be able to stand my playstyle.

"ok we should attack the ene- why do you have 85 peasants? And 3 soldiers, and fifteen towers. I don't think you need to strip every resource off the map."

*20 minutes later*

"Ok seriously, you can do this mission with like 10 guys, you don't need to fill out the max unit cap."

High five, fellow "advance two inches at a time" player!

taliosfalcon

Yeah i've tried a bit of it now and err... I could see myself playing it, and spending money if they had like, 20 civilizations and they were 5 bucks a pop, hell i'd probably buy 5 or 6, but at 20$ a pop I can't justify it, and it seems like i'm missing out on enough not having a premium civ that i'm at a real disadvantage. Which is a pity as I really like it otherwise.

Keamien

I'm totally playing this, though I'm not sure if I'll buy any of the civs.
Add me to the op I'm princesssafe.

Cadmus

UGH, I really really want to play this but I also really really want to boycott GFWL... it's such a piece of crap.

Echo

880 funbucks for a "defend the whatever" mode? Really?

Keamien

Or cheaper if you buy it together with both civs.

I like the game, but MAN is it hard to justify spending money on.

ultimakay

I know microsoft was trying to avoid doing the whole microtransaction stuff but I think it would have probably been more well received then lumping everything together and forcing me to buy all of it rather then the pieces of addition content that I actually want.

Linespider5

there's quite a lot to like here. I mean, it's Age of frickin' Empires. Calvary. Elephant Archers. Palm trees and barracks and gold mines! Shit just don't get old, man.

The implied infrastructure is kinda borked, let's be honest. But I'm not too worried. If they've got the guts to keep it running they'll get it running right.

Suriko

If this was a boxed game with everything included I'd be in like Flynn.

G4WL with (extremely overpriced) microtransactions? I'll miss it. A pity. I really, really like the art style though. Everything's very visually clear and distinct, but not so cartoony as to lose all importance.

-SPI-

I really should have thought out my home city better, my (rather limited) inventory is filling up with crafting materials I can't really use for much anything.

JediNight

Could always just sell the excess materials to the vendor for gold.

-SPI-

I was thinking about grabbing a premium civ, apparently though Australians get the privilege of paying an extra $5 for them so I might just hold off on that idea for the time being.

Suriko wrote:

If this was a boxed game with everything included I'd be in like Flynn.

G4WL with (extremely overpriced) microtransactions? I'll miss it. A pity. I really, really like the art style though. Everything's very visually clear and distinct, but not so cartoony as to lose all importance.

There is a retail box, although it's just the greek civ with some bonus items, exclusive shop for your city and tech tree poster etc. Also there's no disc or anything it's just codes, but it has the benefit of being potentially cheaper.

Arden Canelo

Okay, whenever I try to install the game I get a misleading error of something about needing to installing a hotfix for Windows XP?
I've looked everywhere for answers but have nothing. Every time I press okay to go get the update the damn thing sends me to a help and support page with no update in sight. Please help, anyone

EDIT: of course after posting in desperation of the problem the problem is now fixed.

-SPI-

Trying out greeks, as I've been egyptian up until now. I might switch over, partly due to greeks getting a tech that gives towers no minimum range and +25% damage that would aid my turtly playstyle.

Looking at the two tech trees the factions are more different than I thought initially.

-SPI-

Arden Canelo wrote:

Okay, whenever I try to install the game I get a misleading error of something about needing to installing a hotfix for Windows XP?
I've looked everywhere for answers but have nothing. Every time I press okay to go get the update the damn thing sends me to a help and support page with no update in sight. Please help, anyone

Is it something about KB938759 xp hotfix? That's the only thing I could find anything about in relation to XP and GFWL hotfix errors. Also related to whether your system is running on US english or not.

Anyway, this looks like it could be a solution maybe.

Arden Canelo

-SPI- wrote:

Arden Canelo wrote:

Okay, whenever I try to install the game I get a misleading error of something about needing to installing a hotfix for Windows XP?
I've looked everywhere for answers but have nothing. Every time I press okay to go get the update the damn thing sends me to a help and support page with no update in sight. Please help, anyone

Is it something about KB938759 xp hotfix? That's the only thing I could find anything about in relation to XP and GFWL hotfix errors. Also related to whether your system is running on US english or not.

Anyway, this looks like it could be a solution maybe.

Thanks SPI, its been resolved. (finally)

JediNight

Tried to do an elite mode for the daily crafting quest ... NOPE.jpg

Must need a lot of levels and equipment to be able to do those. Tons and tons of guys and the elites are like 5x or more harder than a normal one...

Kroyd_Krenson

Anyone knows if this is regional? Can I do a co op with anyone in the world?

-SPI-

Just need to be on the same server I believe. Although you can freely switch between them on the login screen (takes a few minutes to complete)

Aldo

So wait, it's 20$/€ to get enough content to access every feature in the game? Because that's very cheap compared to any regular P2P MMO and a lot nicer on my wallet than most F2P games I've bothered to check the cash shop for.

SyphonBlue

Aldo wrote:

So wait, it's 20$/€ to get enough content to access every feature in the game? Because that's very cheap compared to any regular P2P MMO and a lot nicer on my wallet than most F2P games I've bothered to check the cash shop for.

Correct, but only for 1 civ.