Age of Empires Online Released! Free to play

Loved Age of Empires III so I would quite happily pay for this. But hell no at those prices. Will give it a try though.
 
Swi1ch said:
Can someone comment on the extent of the F2P-ness? Is not buying content within the game going to totally gimp you? Or is it like Bloodline Champions where nearly all ingame content can be accessed by a F2Per eventually.
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You cannot play more than about 40 hours without buying something apparently to progress. All the main content is something you need to buy & £74.99 is the asking price for season1 (god only knows how many seasons they are plannning at this price they can keep it & shove it where the sun does not shine £19.99 is about right IMO).

MS are obviously planning this to be a major ongoing project & it most likely will be as there are so many suckers who are casual gamers & will think nothing of paying for this :eek:
 
AWPC said:
MS are obviously planning this to be a major ongoing project & it most likely will be as there are so many suckers who are casual gamers & will think nothing of paying for this :eek:
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I seriously, seriously doubt *any* gamer will think nothing of paying £75 quid for this.
 
this was posted over on the AoEonline forums for those unsure about the pricing

So - I've seen lots of rage threads in the forums about how "ridiculously expensive" this game is. The confusion is incredibly frustrating.

First off: FOR FREE you get access to multiple civilizations and their ENTIRE campaign - each civilization has 40+ hours of content. All FOR FREE. Plus, you get UNLIMITED PVP.

Now, pricing system:
Season Pass: $99.99
Premium Civilizations: $19.99
Booster Pack: $9.99
Vanity Packs: $4.99

Ok - so what do you get for your money?

Season Pass

For $99.99, you get ALL CONTENT released for 6 months. That means you get all Premium Civilizations, Booster Packs, and Vanity Packs. You get everything. After the 6-month period is over, YOU KEEP ALL OF IT. It's simple, for $99.99, you get EVERYTHING released over a 6 month period, which is already planned to be 2 more civilizations and AT LEAST one more Booster Pack. And when the 6 months is over, IT'S YOURS PERMANENTLY.

Premium Civilization

This is what you get with a Premium Civilization:
Access to rare and epic gear. Common and Uncommon gear is available to ALL.
More inventory space.
The ability to use advisers.
The ability to spend empire points.
Access to star techs.
Free players have access to all units and buildings in PvP and the campaign. Until you reach level 30+, the difference in gear available to Free players and Premium players is NOT significant enough to trump skill. Granted, many of us would prefer there to be a completely level PvP option, but this is the way it is now. And frankly, asking $19.99 from you so that you can play the MANY hours necessary to be a level 40 PvPer with epic gear is NOT TOO MUCH TO ASK.

Booster Pack

This usually adds new game modes and equivalent content. They are not integral to the story, nor are they required for a full PvP experience. They are PURELY OPTIONAL.

Vanity Pack

This simply provides stores that you can buy (with the in-game currency -- no additional $$ required) decorative items for your home city. Once again, it is purely optional and does not impact PvP or the campaign in ANY way.

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Is this overpriced compared to other games? No. The most commonly used comparisons are other AOE games and Starcraft 2.

Starcraft 2

Starcraft 2: $60 (3 civilizations) vs. AOE:O: $60 (3 civilizations). So, for the full multiplayer experience, the price is the same.

What about singleplayer? Starcraft 2 has one full length campaign for $60. AEO:O has EVERY full length campaign (which is longer than Starcraft's) for FREE.

Other Age of Empires

Older entries in the series saw multiple generic civilizations for $50. There were a few differences between each civ.

In AEO:O, each civilization is a self-contained game. You get a campaign that is easily 25+ hours long. You get repeatable quests which easily boost that to 40+. You play the released civilizations for FREE.

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In sum - AOE:O offers a VAST amount of entirely free content. If you do choose to buy, you are actually getting a better deal than the biggest current competitor on the market (Starcraft 2). So, please, stop making pointless rage threads about the pricing. To complain so much about the pricing of this game simply makes you sound like an entitled brat.
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Is it just me or does V Sync make the game very choppy? I have all settings at max with 130+ constant fps, but as soon as I turn V Sync on the game caps at 60 as usual which is fine, but it gets very choppy when scrolling around the map :confused:
 
Komedy said:
this was posted over on the AoEonline forums for those unsure about the pricing
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That makes it even better on current exchange rates!!!

$99=£60.29 not £74.99!!!
$19.99=£12.17 not £14.99!!!

Way to dig the hole bigger..............MS must think all PC gamers are as dumb as their target audience :eek: I know several players who were on the Beta & they all tell me unless you buy the Premium content you will hit a wall with no-where left to go sooner or later (unless you like doing the same things for 40 hours) as most of the best Content is what you obviously do need to pay for !!! They should just quit now trying to justify the rip-off pricing model..........
 
I played a good few hours last night, and I'm quite impressed! I'm hoping the quests start to get a little more difficult soon, as I'm at level 8 and it's been a cake walk so far.

Does anyone know if you can play with people on different servers?

If anyone wants to add me, I'm SpadUK on Live on the Athens server.
 
Just noticed Play has the retail Greek pack @ £12.99 and it comes with a few extra retail goodies:

  • Windy's Wild Widgets Store to give your civilization an edge with the ability to buy and sell special items (available exclusively in retail)
  • Hotkey quick reference card
  • Limited-edition poster and Advisor cards
 
Spad said:
I'm hoping the quests start to get a little more difficult soon, as I'm at level 8 and it's been a cake walk so far.
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There is an (Elite) mode in the quest log thing that makes things harder, but its greyed out and not sure when you can use it.
 
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I'd done all that. It's working now, I guess the cd-key servers were probably overloaded when I tried, much like their aoe3 give away.
 
This seems to be taking an absolute age to download... 20 mins so far for the 'Art.bar' file and it's only at 60%

For such cartoony graphics I was expecting smaller file sizes. Can't wait to get stuck in though, I'm hoping for an AOE2 throwback. AOE3 was a big disappointment for me
 
gazzab said:
This seems to be taking an absolute age to download... 20 mins so far for the 'Art.bar' file and it's only at 60%

For such cartoony graphics I was expecting smaller file sizes. Can't wait to get stuck in though, I'm hoping for an AOE2 throwback. AOE3 was a big disappointment for me
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2.46gb in size the game is.
 
platypus said:
I'd done all that. It's working now, I guess the cd-key servers were probably overloaded when I tried, much like their aoe3 give away.
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What I did is click create a new windows live I.D in game but instead of making new one, enter your current Windows Live I.D seemed to work.
 
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