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To be clear, Microsoft DID try to kill our AoE community multiple times but talented individuals of the community made us our own platform to play on and balance the game. It wasn't until after we kept playing without them for 15 years that they came back.
AoE 3 was the problem I would say, it told Microsoft that RTS were failing..but the issue was that beside the single player campaign, the game wasnt much
This is a bit wrong. Microsoft tried to kill of Age of Empires 2 and it's community several times. The AoE2 community said "No, piss off." every time. Microsoft eventually realised that they were better off continuing and expanding on the game rather than trying to kill it. The Definitive Edition now is nothing like the original version even post-patching. It has been expanded by more than 10 folds. The reason the game is enduring is it's community that refuses to give in to Microsoft's demands over the years. Microsoft knows full and well that they have lost the fight against the AoE2 community and that they are not going to win a fight with them no matter what they do. It's just like the Red Alert 2 community that refuses to die off despite EA's best attempts to kill it off.
@@mattshu And what exactly are they doing to not allow Microsoft to just kill it off? Not buy the game that Microsoft wants to stop selling in the first place?
@@DKNguyen3.1415 create their own multiplayer platform (Voobly) that also allow pirated version that anyone can get with a few clicks. The platform still exists today.
Now, just thanks for passing the buck off to us in AoE III... very nice! Not that I've been there that long, but I actually KIND OF moved from II to III.
Agreed. The last part of the video is exactly why I've been saying for years that I WANT to pay $150+ dollars for good games that I know won't have any micro-transactions or loot boxes to ruin the fun. In my opinion the industry's insistence on sticking with the $60 price point for 3+ decades is exactly why modern video games have become such garbage designed to sell loot boxes and micro-transactions instead of just being a fun game.
Interestingly, there's a lot of talk that age of empires 2 has too much playable civilisations now and it's too overwhelming and complicated for new players. Instead of more dlcs, many people have suggested that regional skins are added to the game so that people can support that way and devs keep doing balance updates
It is why I almost exclusively play indie games. They don’t have loot boxes and try to make the best game they can with a small team. I found so much passion and eye for details in indie games which brought back my love for games.
Yeah, I played a lot of 2v2 back in the day when MSN Gaming Zone existed. Fun times. Unfortunately, too many sweaty tryhards kind of made the fun wane for me back then after a number of years, but I enjoyed it .
Mine was the first one. the demo specifically, where you start with one wololo boy and nothing else, gotta convert your starting villager to get started. good times. good memories. could only get too the 3rd age though. very good for a demo.
Age of Empires 2, in my opinion, is to strategy games what chess is to board games, not the most flashy or popular, but it's simple and easy to grasp ruleset make it universal, and timeless.
That end part just makes me think of all the hidden skins you had to do crazy things to unlock. I remember some fighting game skins being the equivalent of old myths because of how weird they were to unlock and you weren't sure the people were telling the truth.
AOE2 DE was a success because the players kept the game alive through voobly ( A free browser page used to run AOE2 ) for years. When Microsoft did nothing with it. Then people like T90 Official hosted AOE2 tournaments on Voobly. getting 50.000+ viewers. And AOE2 streams having a healthy viewership as well on average. First Microsoft tried with AOE2 HD. It sucked. And people still used voobly. Then came DE. And this is not an attack on Microsoft. They have done well ( despite the fact they still have not fixed matchmaking or game finding ) But seeing the fans keeping the game alive, and then choosing to step back in. Is good. However. Its all because of Voobly, and the players and caster who ran the game and tournaments, for many years. That is why Age of Empires 2 DE is a success.
Age 1 through 3 (including Myth) were my childhood. Having all these wonderful remasters is such a gift. Still play them with my brother and father, alternating games as we see fit.
Age of Empires II DE is one of the best remasters to date, hands down. I wanted the orginal AoE DE to be just as good, but it wasn't even close. They kept the overall UI and such a little too "true" to the actual original.
13:05 _“If something is free, it means YOU ARE THE PRODUCT.”_ This right here flawlessly captures the deep loathing of everything about the Live Service industry & gacha models worming their way into the games industry. I'm beyond utterly sick of them because it proves that the game is merely a psychologically exploitive monetization model to extract whatever money it can from its userbase, _rather than provide them with something of ACTUAL VALUE._ We're happy to pay for games that treat us and the game property with respect - not one that treat us & the IP as a commodity to be bled dry until our love for the product turns to ash in our mouths (see: Overwatch 2).
Yes! And the line about how post-launch resources in games used to go into improving the game, but all that goes to now are cosmetics. The kids these days have no idea. Before cosmetics became the focus, DLC had to stand on its own, it had to improve the over all experience otherwise it wasn't worth our money, in a time when all DLC itself felt innately scammy. Now the game itself sits there in a barely playable state, but you can spend a fortune for all the lipstick you could possibly imagine putting on that pig....
I just got into this game. There's incredible depth and there are so many unique challenges to overcome. When you play online it will be difficult in the beginning, but try to learn from your mistakes and don't give up! It's such an amazing and rewarding game.
That was really well put, ive never thought about it like that before: ""if you earn money buy selling people skins, then skins will be the thing you optimize around. If you earn money buy selling content, content will be the thing you optimize around."
1999 I played this, stopped when I moved and took a new job----- 15yrs ago, I didn't know they still had a community. RTS has always been one of my favorite gendres. I was ranked top 300 global in Red Alert II for awhile
'If you're my age you're foolish......' Chefs kiss. I've been playing StarCraft since it came out at the young age off 12. I have physical copies of SC:BW, WOL, HotS and LotV. I have never played Nova. If they released a hard copy it would be sitting on my self with the others.
Man, I heard that as "if you're my age, you're full of sh*t". I had to go back and listen again after I read your comment, but you were right, he definitely said "foolish" lol 😂
I've said for years that Starcraft 2 should do exactly this with many of it's community projects. There is a pretty decently large but scattered modding community that would benefit greatly from direction and funding imo.
So much memories playing multiplayer AOE on school computers network :) The school allowed us to use computer room when there will be no more classes in there. We used to memorize the hours when last class would finish and wait there to grab a computer and play :)
Yeah but a lot of mobile games are great. Halls of torment, vampire survivors, brotato ect. mobile games can be so much more than micro transaction riddled crap but they don’t care about that market to care enough. But there are mobile games that are amazing. Just hard to find
Its not that companies dont want to hire people passionate about their games its that they dont want to pay them. Everything is outsourced to studios full of unskilled employees pumped out on a conveyer belt who will work grueling hours for next to nothing.
Age 2 was my first game that wasn't a "kids game" (simple gameplay, basic story, often educational, etc.) and holds a special place in my heart. Microsoft's handling of it's Definitive Edition is the reason I stopped "doomsaying" about the Western games industry 5 years ago... And is the reason I was less concerned and not paranoid about their growing monopoly of Western AAA games with the acquisition of Bethesda and Activision. They showed a willingness to put the game and gamers first, and once they figure out that that's what works; they'll apply it to their other projects.
I absolutely agree, products should come with a pricetag instead of hidden subscription schemes, but those prices also have to be in line with the up front cost of the product. A $60-$80 game should not be getting story packs that add 5% more content for a quarter of the price of the base game and there should not be cash shops selling broken mods for the price of full games in those games. There also needs to be more transparency in monetization, the different currencies are awful and predatory. I think FTP titles should have to constantly display just how much you've spent on the game in their shops, really show the economic effect they're having.
This might interesting if you guys didn't see or read about it. Warcraft 3 received a closed PTR update to version 2.0 a couple of days ago. Considering that the change from old warcraft 3 to reforged changed the version number only by 0.01 or something similarly small they believe or at least want us to believe that the incoming changes will be quite massive. After people found that 2.0 version number in the logs and talked about it Blizzard then immediately pulled the update back from the closed PTR and reversed its state back to what it was before. Maybe something big is coming for warcraft 3 too. Though it's all speculative at this point.
Aoe2 still being big floors me. I love the game i just couldnt have dreamed that a community would crop up around a 25 year old game albeit a heavily updated/modified version of it.
Preach it, games are not what they used to be, look at Troika, absolute buffet of games, but Bloodlines and Arcanum have been kept alive by the community because they exude personalty and passion
The point about the late 1990's money vs today got me thinking about how game prices haven't really gone up that much compared to everything else... conversion rate says some of the games I bought in the late 90's would cost about $200 equivalent in todays money.
Its wild that in many ways AOE is doing exactly what Warcraft 3 did back with Frozen Throne. Big mod support and integration AND they're bringing new interesting campaigns with their own mechanics and the like. They're realizing that people really like AOE 2 and that its the preferred system that people want to play so they're making a bunch of fun new content for it. Honestly if I wasn't in uni rn I'd be getting the new AOE DLC when it drops.
voobly and game ranger and commuity innovation kept aoe 2 og alive until microsoft noticed that this game just wont die and that might gave them them the well deserved and amazingly made definitive edition which is an absolute masterpiece of real time strategy
I play AoE 2 2013, I play Koreans every time vs bots on maps where towers and castles are king. 1v3 and 3v7 etc. I have about 200 hours or something doing only this. If it's good don't break it.
Optimising around skins is why we will never have good games anymore because while there will be studios or independent game creators that want to do something good for the gaming community, powerhoues like EA and Ubisoft have the resources to work on graphics. I like to refer back to MGS1, by today's standard, the original graphics obviously aren't great but the game stands up based on gameplay and story even by today's standard.
*You're completely right.* When they know they can fool the majority of the consumers, they no longer care. You see it everywhere, from video games to designer bags and cars. They might make things more accessible, but then they also make it more expensive AND of lesser quality than it used to be. They're cutting corners, but if you weren't there to see the corners before they got cut, you'll think that's the norm. Yeah, my old PS2 games might have shit quality in comparison to what we have now, but at least they has quality storytelling and gameplay (for the mad part), and I have them on a physical disc. I paid to own and play a physical product of an expected quality, which is what the transaction used to be. No wonder I don't like buying new games anymore... _I'd rather buy a cartridge for my DS or something at this point._
I approve of companies working with the modding community. part of the reason why i love Indie Stone who make project zomboid. most of their expanded game devs, from their original 2 man team came from the Mod developers. I believe a whopping 3 were hired from outside sources. still relatively small at around 26 devs, but most of their hiring comes from the massive modding community. If only EA would get on board with mod community for their C&C franchise and C&C generals, specifically. I do not understand why larger companies DO NOT work with modders, they are the passion project workers. they are the ones who will make remakes and expansions great for the established fan base. they are the ones motivated to develop a fantastic project, instead of a bunch of whipped and beaten game devs who put in 14 hrs a day for a project they were assigned too, over one they actually care about, because they need a paycheck, and have stupid corporate deadlines.
I felt nostalgic for AoE II and just wanted to play it again, did not want to get too involved with MS (getting an account and whatnot), so I just went on to 0 A.D.
The AoEIII remake isn't too bad. It's free to play with a couple free empires rotating weekly. The framerate is bad last time I played a few months ago though.
Damn, bro! Spittin’ fire! Also, not sure how “Farming outrage” works when half the time you’re pointing at stuff that was really good, pleading for more of it.
It warms my heart to see that AoE 2 is still a popular RTS in 2024, it only shows that you don't need the best graphics to be successful and if you treat your legacy games with the respect they deserve **cough** Blizzard, people will notice and word of mouth will spread and it will get more people interested in it.
I genuinely think it would blow the younger generation of gamers' minds to see just how good DLC had to be, for us to considering getting it at all back in the day-- before the horse armor proved to the industry as a whole that people would spend ungodly amounts of real money on pixels. DLC *had* to actually prove it made the game more enjoyable, not just be a million different shades of pig lipstick. Christ it's depressing.
I don't know, most people don't want to pay SO MUCH for games that don't SEEM worth the price since we pay through the nose just to live, especially here in America. Nobody expects free games, but almost everybody expects to pay what something is worth, and since only the 1% are getting pay increases, $15.00 for an old game can seem a bit much.
The starcraft 1 story is remade in starcraft 2 in a mod. And yeah, that prolly would have sold pretty well if they contacted the modders and made them like a contractor team part of blizzard.
What I hope happens is that the aoe2DE team is able to get contact with disney and get green light to make Star Wars Galactic Battleground DE. Will be my dream come true... I do love AoE2DE though ❤
Age of Empires is one of those rare examples of a "dead" IP being kept alive by fans and suddenly getting popular again. It never went away because even today it's still pretty much the best game in its niche. Thankfully someone at Microsoft rediscovered the IP they'd shelved ages ago and decided to give it another shot. The rest is history.
AOE2 is one of the best game to have ever graced this earth. 17 years ago me and me friends had weekly Lan parties playing and even competing in AOE2 and to this very day i play AOE2 ranked, social and occasional Lan parties with the same old friends and we have an absolute blast and are looking forward what comes next to AOE2.
I know it’s been a few years. But I cannot forgive what happened to Red Dead Redemption 2’s online mode. All cause they couldn’t sell the premium currency cause it was easy to farm
I just want $10 DLC back. I don't mind paying, and like he said, spending money is good for a game (as long as we are "rewarding" the devs when they make GOOD DLC).
I think the success of this game has more to do with youtubers like T90 who kept it alive. And then Microsoft leaned into that and to their credit did a skilful remaster.
For Warcraft and Starcraft RTS games the only hope is for Microsoft to hire the moders like the people that are making Chronicles of the 2nd War, Re-Reforged, Clash of Clans etc into a whole team dedicated to making content or new games in the future for those IPs. They have the passion, fresh ideas etc. I have almost no faith in most of the people working at Blizz to do anything right. Blizz can only give engineers etc that are needed for the tech stuff etc. For the rest give it all to the moders and we can have a good War4/Sc3 down the line.
The old JRPGs. Final Fantasy 3(6), Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Legend of Gaia, Alundra. Those are classics. Alundra has one very evil jump that took me hours to get right.
When you have a huge studio so many people are only partly responsible for something that when it fails, you can't say "You, you're responsible. You're fired," because everyone who is fired will say they're being treated unfairly and blamed for everything, and it would be difficult to prove otherwise. Concord? Star Wars Outlaws? What was that other one? Oh yeah, Suicide Squad. Games of this _quality_ shouldn't take a team of smart moneys more than 5 or 6 months to slap together. For the money and time spent, they literally could have found some high school graduates, paid for them to study game design in university, waited for them to graduate, hired them, and they would have made better games, faster, for far less money. We are living in a clown world.
There already is a SC1 in SC2: Mass Recall, been a thing for a long time. Also, that's the reason I prefer WC/SC as my RTS fix as opposed to AoE (although I do love and play it): loads of custom content and tools to create a lot more. AoE modding scene, unfortunately, can't hold a candle to what people are doing with custom campaigns in SC or WC. And it's not the modders' fault, their tools are just less powerful.
Victors and Vanquished was only half bad. Some missions were gems, but too many were raid formats which doesn’t let you build farms or stuff you like to build. Not enough of them were good or up to modern standard.
@@louc.6735 Too reliant on the South Korean crowd WoWC, Diablo Immortal and 4, and Overwatch (via paid cosmetics) still make more money for the pub-dev than SC series, and Chris Metzen and other veterans had long resigned from Blizzard.
Japanese have been in the game since 1999, not 2024, and every civ has the same looking generic units for better and worse (Except for these new upcoming antiquity civs but then it is just antiquity looking generic units instead)
The Japanese have been in the game since the very first version of aoe2 in age of empires age of kings and literally every civ uses the samw swordsman unit
@@IDKisReal2401 Correct, I wrote it wrong, they added campaign content for the Japanese without bothering to bring them up to reasonable standard. I was shocked they haven't done it, it would have been awesome to replace swordsmen and pikemen with samurai and ashigaru.
@@rafinery576 no, that's a bad idea, there is a reason that every civ has the same generic units and then the castle units are named "unique units" and it's readability. The game has become harder and harder to read as they've added more civs with extra unique units, if every unit was a unique unit you wouldnt know what you're looking at in a fight. I can easily identify a halbardier, a champion, an arbalest etc just by looking at them, make them unique for every civ and now i cant tell if that crossbowman is a chokunu or some other civs crossbow line.
I think the recent DLC's would be more well recieved if it wasn't for the ludicrous price tags. I play ranked quite regularly and still haven't bought the Mountain Royals. 2 Civ's for $15 feels like highway robbery. The Rome DLC, i think people were expecting a lot more. All we really got was the ability to play AOE1 in the AOE2 browser and 1 civ, if you don't care about AOE1 (so like 90% of the community), not much reason to buy at that price. And then there's the Re-skined campaign DLC... should have been free or no more then $5.
Blizzard couldn't do a successful RTS in 24/25. I loved AOE, age of mythology was fun. I love playing multi computer on insane mode, build up layers of walls. defence, industry, Then after hours, begin relic raids and pressing out.
YES!! AOE2 forever! It's so nice to have a few lovingly crafted remasters like AOE2 and D2 resurrected to contrast with all the modern-day coporatized MTX slop passing as "games"
I miss Z and Majesty... I wish their was a bloody decent RTS on current gen consoles (excluding Iron Harvest) 'cause i can't even play C&C Red Alert anymore.
The modding teams for Cities Skyline 1 were hired and CS2 came out like shit. Same thing happen with the modders for NCAA Football 14 revamp only to suffer the same faith. It's not always great being a modding team and working for an evil publisher
In my mind, it's the same reason fans shouldn't be hired to work on their favorite tv shows-- having that much power can result in massive ego trips or to said fans being exploited for the "honor" of being able to work on it.
i assume why they hate the return of rome is some of them already bought AoE 1 DE and then suddenly you can get 2 games in 1 app rather than individual app
"if its free i am less interested" is a wild take lol. i cant agree with that. I'm much more likely to try a game that's free over a game that charges $120 for 4 day early access and a skin.
I hate the phrase, "well, they're not forcing you to buy it" because it's missing the point entirely. 1) It's about intent. They wouldn't be selling this stuff if they didn't intend for you to buy it. 2) They want you to buy it (because they want money), so they will manipulate you into buying it. 3) This is, in many cases, content that would've been in the game from the start 20-30 years ago.
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I remember when youtubers uploaded for love of humanity, but you just want money this is just a job to you.
To be clear, Microsoft DID try to kill our AoE community multiple times but talented individuals of the community made us our own platform to play on and balance the game. It wasn't until after we kept playing without them for 15 years that they came back.
tru tru
Vooblygang
AoE 3 was the problem I would say, it told Microsoft that RTS were failing..but the issue was that beside the single player campaign, the game wasnt much
To be fair, WC3 had its custom maps and campaigns made by the community that kept the game alive.
w3champions hopefully will lead wc3 down that road.
This is a bit wrong. Microsoft tried to kill of Age of Empires 2 and it's community several times.
The AoE2 community said "No, piss off." every time. Microsoft eventually realised that they were better off continuing and expanding on the game rather than trying to kill it.
The Definitive Edition now is nothing like the original version even post-patching. It has been expanded by more than 10 folds. The reason the game is enduring is it's community that refuses to give in to Microsoft's demands over the years. Microsoft knows full and well that they have lost the fight against the AoE2 community and that they are not going to win a fight with them no matter what they do.
It's just like the Red Alert 2 community that refuses to die off despite EA's best attempts to kill it off.
Now, if only EA would see the light and remaster RA2 like they did with C&C and RA1...
sorry i haven't been in the know but what are they doing to kill it off
@@mattshu And what exactly are they doing to not allow Microsoft to just kill it off? Not buy the game that Microsoft wants to stop selling in the first place?
@@DKNguyen3.1415 create their own multiplayer platform (Voobly) that also allow pirated version that anyone can get with a few clicks. The platform still exists today.
Now, just thanks for passing the buck off to us in AoE III... very nice! Not that I've been there that long, but I actually KIND OF moved from II to III.
That last bit really hits home.
We use to pay for games/content, now we pay for useless skins to maintain the lackluster games we play.
Agreed. The last part of the video is exactly why I've been saying for years that I WANT to pay $150+ dollars for good games that I know won't have any micro-transactions or loot boxes to ruin the fun. In my opinion the industry's insistence on sticking with the $60 price point for 3+ decades is exactly why modern video games have become such garbage designed to sell loot boxes and micro-transactions instead of just being a fun game.
Interestingly, there's a lot of talk that age of empires 2 has too much playable civilisations now and it's too overwhelming and complicated for new players. Instead of more dlcs, many people have suggested that regional skins are added to the game so that people can support that way and devs keep doing balance updates
It is why I almost exclusively play indie games. They don’t have loot boxes and try to make the best game they can with a small team. I found so much passion and eye for details in indie games which brought back my love for games.
This was my first RTS game all the way back in the 90s.
Great game...
not my first but i certainly played the hell out of it
Yeah, I played a lot of 2v2 back in the day when MSN Gaming Zone existed. Fun times. Unfortunately, too many sweaty tryhards kind of made the fun wane for me back then after a number of years, but I enjoyed it .
Mine was the first one. the demo specifically, where you start with one wololo boy and nothing else, gotta convert your starting villager to get started. good times. good memories. could only get too the 3rd age though. very good for a demo.
I go back to Dune and Warcraft.
Age of Empires 2, in my opinion, is to strategy games what chess is to board games, not the most flashy or popular, but it's simple and easy to grasp ruleset make it universal, and timeless.
I don't know how to chess lmao
That end part just makes me think of all the hidden skins you had to do crazy things to unlock. I remember some fighting game skins being the equivalent of old myths because of how weird they were to unlock and you weren't sure the people were telling the truth.
AOE2 DE was a success because the players kept the game alive through voobly ( A free browser page used to run AOE2 ) for years. When Microsoft did nothing with it.
Then people like T90 Official hosted AOE2 tournaments on Voobly. getting 50.000+ viewers. And AOE2 streams having a healthy viewership as well on average.
First Microsoft tried with AOE2 HD. It sucked. And people still used voobly.
Then came DE.
And this is not an attack on Microsoft. They have done well ( despite the fact they still have not fixed matchmaking or game finding )
But seeing the fans keeping the game alive, and then choosing to step back in. Is good.
However. Its all because of Voobly, and the players and caster who ran the game and tournaments, for many years.
That is why Age of Empires 2 DE is a success.
Amen to that!
Amen
Age 1 through 3 (including Myth) were my childhood. Having all these wonderful remasters is such a gift. Still play them with my brother and father, alternating games as we see fit.
Age of Empires II DE is one of the best remasters to date, hands down. I wanted the orginal AoE DE to be just as good, but it wasn't even close. They kept the overall UI and such a little too "true" to the actual original.
You should talk about Heroes of the Storm. Since the acquisition it has slowly started receiving balance updates again. After years of silence.
It's also still a masterpiece of innovative gameplay and creative ideas. Aged particularly well.
I've restarted playing it casually. The changes are pretty good.
damn. I thought it was just dead and stale
now you got me interested
is it really time for me to dust off my old heroes of the storm account?
Dang, I don't need much of an excuse to revisit HotS.
13:05 _“If something is free, it means YOU ARE THE PRODUCT.”_ This right here flawlessly captures the deep loathing of everything about the Live Service industry & gacha models worming their way into the games industry.
I'm beyond utterly sick of them because it proves that the game is merely a psychologically exploitive monetization model to extract whatever money it can from its userbase, _rather than provide them with something of ACTUAL VALUE._
We're happy to pay for games that treat us and the game property with respect - not one that treat us & the IP as a commodity to be bled dry until our love for the product turns to ash in our mouths (see: Overwatch 2).
Yes! And the line about how post-launch resources in games used to go into improving the game, but all that goes to now are cosmetics. The kids these days have no idea. Before cosmetics became the focus, DLC had to stand on its own, it had to improve the over all experience otherwise it wasn't worth our money, in a time when all DLC itself felt innately scammy. Now the game itself sits there in a barely playable state, but you can spend a fortune for all the lipstick you could possibly imagine putting on that pig....
The part at the end about paying for content is so true thank you !!
I just got into this game. There's incredible depth and there are so many unique challenges to overcome. When you play online it will be difficult in the beginning, but try to learn from your mistakes and don't give up! It's such an amazing and rewarding game.
That was really well put, ive never thought about it like that before:
""if you earn money buy selling people skins, then skins will be the thing you optimize around. If you earn money buy selling content, content will be the thing you optimize around."
1999 I played this, stopped when I moved and took a new job----- 15yrs ago, I didn't know they still had a community. RTS has always been one of my favorite gendres. I was ranked top 300 global in Red Alert II for awhile
RA2 is still active too.
'If you're my age you're foolish......' Chefs kiss. I've been playing StarCraft since it came out at the young age off 12. I have physical copies of SC:BW, WOL, HotS and LotV. I have never played Nova. If they released a hard copy it would be sitting on my self with the others.
Man, I heard that as "if you're my age, you're full of sh*t". I had to go back and listen again after I read your comment, but you were right, he definitely said "foolish" lol 😂
I can recommend Nova. It's a good 8 or so hours of traditional campaigning.
You gotta give Nova a try. For me it's how sc2 should have felt from the beginning. Really cool ideas in that wee campaign.
The viper!! He is alot of fun to watch as an e sport on RUclips
AoE3/DE is a gem that doesn't get the respect it deserves.
it's too unintuitive to really get into and also lacks a tutorial campaign that explains everything well
3 was garbagw
@@DuVtrell 3 is such a banger. I play the remaster often, fantastic game
@@TokurErdemany rts having more than 1 civ or set in the early modern era
agreed i really loved 3 xD
As someone who plays Persia mountain royals was pretty decent and gave Persians a good buff making them a good choice in certain game modes
I've said for years that Starcraft 2 should do exactly this with many of it's community projects. There is a pretty decently large but scattered modding community that would benefit greatly from direction and funding imo.
meanwhile I watched a Factorio Space Age trailer and boy oh boy, that's an expansion pack.
@@wrmusic8736 agree! Can’t wait for Space Age!
I'm usually a lurker, but the rant at least bit of this video is so fucking true. We really are the product in a f2p game. You cooked
So much memories playing multiplayer AOE on school computers network :) The school allowed us to use computer room when there will be no more classes in there. We used to memorize the hours when last class would finish and wait there to grab a computer and play :)
The mobile game that released a few days ago is a super disappointment
Aren’t all mobile games disappointing
That’s not a true Age of Empires game. It’s just a mobile excuse for milking money out of players.
Yeah but a lot of mobile games are great. Halls of torment, vampire survivors, brotato ect. mobile games can be so much more than micro transaction riddled crap but they don’t care about that market to care enough. But there are mobile games that are amazing. Just hard to find
I’m glad to see it’s getting bad ratings on the App Store
we don't talk about that "game"
The captions say Age of Vampires 😅
I'd want to play that too.
Imagine a poop-post expansion called that?
Lots of jokes and humour... "Sparkling Vampires" and "Buff Warewolves".
Its not that companies dont want to hire people passionate about their games its that they dont want to pay them. Everything is outsourced to studios full of unskilled employees pumped out on a conveyer belt who will work grueling hours for next to nothing.
Absolutely nailed it in the end. Supply v Demand, we should be Demanding Content.... but there is too much $ in people demanding "skins"
Age 2 was my first game that wasn't a "kids game" (simple gameplay, basic story, often educational, etc.) and holds a special place in my heart.
Microsoft's handling of it's Definitive Edition is the reason I stopped "doomsaying" about the Western games industry 5 years ago... And is the reason I was less concerned and not paranoid about their growing monopoly of Western AAA games with the acquisition of Bethesda and Activision. They showed a willingness to put the game and gamers first, and once they figure out that that's what works; they'll apply it to their other projects.
I absolutely agree, products should come with a pricetag instead of hidden subscription schemes, but those prices also have to be in line with the up front cost of the product. A $60-$80 game should not be getting story packs that add 5% more content for a quarter of the price of the base game and there should not be cash shops selling broken mods for the price of full games in those games. There also needs to be more transparency in monetization, the different currencies are awful and predatory. I think FTP titles should have to constantly display just how much you've spent on the game in their shops, really show the economic effect they're having.
This might interesting if you guys didn't see or read about it. Warcraft 3 received a closed PTR update to version 2.0 a couple of days ago. Considering that the change from old warcraft 3 to reforged changed the version number only by 0.01 or something similarly small they believe or at least want us to believe that the incoming changes will be quite massive. After people found that 2.0 version number in the logs and talked about it Blizzard then immediately pulled the update back from the closed PTR and reversed its state back to what it was before. Maybe something big is coming for warcraft 3 too. Though it's all speculative at this point.
Aoe2 still being big floors me. I love the game i just couldnt have dreamed that a community would crop up around a 25 year old game albeit a heavily updated/modified version of it.
And remember...they may have the moon people on their side, but we have LOVELY HATS!
The late 90s was a golden age for rts games
Preach it, games are not what they used to be, look at Troika, absolute buffet of games, but Bloodlines and Arcanum have been kept alive by the community because they exude personalty and passion
The point about the late 1990's money vs today got me thinking about how game prices haven't really gone up that much compared to everything else... conversion rate says some of the games I bought in the late 90's would cost about $200 equivalent in todays money.
Its wild that in many ways AOE is doing exactly what Warcraft 3 did back with Frozen Throne. Big mod support and integration AND they're bringing new interesting campaigns with their own mechanics and the like. They're realizing that people really like AOE 2 and that its the preferred system that people want to play so they're making a bunch of fun new content for it. Honestly if I wasn't in uni rn I'd be getting the new AOE DLC when it drops.
0:45 Of course, Age of Vampires 2, one of my favorites videogames since I played a demo all those years ago.
Edge of Vampires
There's also the fact that Age of Empires 2 DE runs on a potato i3 7th gen with 4gb of ram and an SSD.
When it's sprite based and not 3d, it makes sense!
You'd hope so.
voobly and game ranger and commuity innovation kept aoe 2 og alive until microsoft noticed that this game just wont die and that might gave them them the well deserved and amazingly made definitive edition which is an absolute masterpiece of real time strategy
Have to admit, the way people talk about Chronicles: BfG so far feels damn good.
Im surprised you guys are covering this rather than the Spacemarine 2 drama.
Without my cousin i would have never discorved AoE 2 and would have never played 3 and it's expansions. This series brings back great memories
I love how much you cover and the depth and effort you go to/into. But god damn I always leave them feeling worse.
I play AoE 2 2013, I play Koreans every time vs bots on maps where towers and castles are king. 1v3 and 3v7 etc. I have about 200 hours or something doing only this.
If it's good don't break it.
Optimising around skins is why we will never have good games anymore because while there will be studios or independent game creators that want to do something good for the gaming community, powerhoues like EA and Ubisoft have the resources to work on graphics.
I like to refer back to MGS1, by today's standard, the original graphics obviously aren't great but the game stands up based on gameplay and story even by today's standard.
*You're completely right.*
When they know they can fool the majority of the consumers, they no longer care.
You see it everywhere, from video games to designer bags and cars.
They might make things more accessible, but then they also make it more expensive AND of lesser quality than it used to be.
They're cutting corners, but if you weren't there to see the corners before they got cut, you'll think that's the norm.
Yeah, my old PS2 games might have shit quality in comparison to what we have now, but at least they has quality storytelling and gameplay (for the mad part), and I have them on a physical disc.
I paid to own and play a physical product of an expected quality, which is what the transaction used to be.
No wonder I don't like buying new games anymore...
_I'd rather buy a cartridge for my DS or something at this point._
Yeah back then we couldn't necessarily buy ALL the things, but the things we bought were incredible.
I approve of companies working with the modding community. part of the reason why i love Indie Stone who make project zomboid. most of their expanded game devs, from their original 2 man team came from the Mod developers. I believe a whopping 3 were hired from outside sources. still relatively small at around 26 devs, but most of their hiring comes from the massive modding community. If only EA would get on board with mod community for their C&C franchise and C&C generals, specifically.
I do not understand why larger companies DO NOT work with modders, they are the passion project workers. they are the ones who will make remakes and expansions great for the established fan base. they are the ones motivated to develop a fantastic project, instead of a bunch of whipped and beaten game devs who put in 14 hrs a day for a project they were assigned too, over one they actually care about, because they need a paycheck, and have stupid corporate deadlines.
I felt nostalgic for AoE II and just wanted to play it again, did not want to get too involved with MS (getting an account and whatnot), so I just went on to 0 A.D.
The AoEIII remake isn't too bad. It's free to play with a couple free empires rotating weekly. The framerate is bad last time I played a few months ago though.
You guys should check out the 1st person mod! It's practically a whole different game but the concept is amazing!
Damn, bro! Spittin’ fire!
Also, not sure how “Farming outrage” works when half the time you’re pointing at stuff that was really good, pleading for more of it.
It warms my heart to see that AoE 2 is still a popular RTS in 2024, it only shows that you don't need the best graphics to be successful and if you treat your legacy games with the respect they deserve **cough** Blizzard, people will notice and word of mouth will spread and it will get more people interested in it.
I genuinely think it would blow the younger generation of gamers' minds to see just how good DLC had to be, for us to considering getting it at all back in the day-- before the horse armor proved to the industry as a whole that people would spend ungodly amounts of real money on pixels. DLC *had* to actually prove it made the game more enjoyable, not just be a million different shades of pig lipstick. Christ it's depressing.
One of the best RTS games ever for me hands down. And remakes were amazing
I don't know, most people don't want to pay SO MUCH for games that don't SEEM worth the price since we pay through the nose just to live, especially here in America. Nobody expects free games, but almost everybody expects to pay what something is worth, and since only the 1% are getting pay increases, $15.00 for an old game can seem a bit much.
I love AOE4 so much! So excited for the new dlc in 2025.
Your ending is spot on.
The starcraft 1 story is remade in starcraft 2 in a mod. And yeah, that prolly would have sold pretty well if they contacted the modders and made them like a contractor team part of blizzard.
What I hope happens is that the aoe2DE team is able to get contact with disney and get green light to make Star Wars Galactic Battleground DE. Will be my dream come true... I do love AoE2DE though ❤
Age of Empires is one of those rare examples of a "dead" IP being kept alive by fans and suddenly getting popular again. It never went away because even today it's still pretty much the best game in its niche. Thankfully someone at Microsoft rediscovered the IP they'd shelved ages ago and decided to give it another shot. The rest is history.
AOE2 is one of the best game to have ever graced this earth. 17 years ago me and me friends had weekly Lan parties playing and even competing in AOE2 and to this very day i play AOE2 ranked, social and occasional Lan parties with the same old friends and we have an absolute blast and are looking forward what comes next to AOE2.
Blizzard dropping HotS was so so stupid. I miss it getting new content. IT was the best most accessible most fun moba.
I know it’s been a few years. But I cannot forgive what happened to Red Dead Redemption 2’s online mode.
All cause they couldn’t sell the premium currency cause it was easy to farm
I've lived long enough to see corporations be the sole purpose of a game's death and independent enthusiasts give it a new life.
I feel like we're one step closer to Chronicles: Galactic Battlegrounds. :D
We are tired of DLCs. We are tired of paying for DLCs that don't contain that much. There are no good surprises, like free content updates.
I just want $10 DLC back. I don't mind paying, and like he said, spending money is good for a game (as long as we are "rewarding" the devs when they make GOOD DLC).
I think the success of this game has more to do with youtubers like T90 who kept it alive.
And then Microsoft leaned into that and to their credit did a skilful remaster.
For Warcraft and Starcraft RTS games the only hope is for Microsoft to hire the moders like the people that are making Chronicles of the 2nd War, Re-Reforged, Clash of Clans etc into a whole team dedicated to making content or new games in the future for those IPs. They have the passion, fresh ideas etc. I have almost no faith in most of the people working at Blizz to do anything right. Blizz can only give engineers etc that are needed for the tech stuff etc. For the rest give it all to the moders and we can have a good War4/Sc3 down the line.
The old JRPGs. Final Fantasy 3(6), Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Legend of Gaia, Alundra. Those are classics. Alundra has one very evil jump that took me hours to get right.
Stronghold also a great rts with a recent remake.
I am happy to pay 25$ for an expansion, but 10$x74 expansions seems bit excessive.
When you have a huge studio so many people are only partly responsible for something that when it fails, you can't say "You, you're responsible. You're fired," because everyone who is fired will say they're being treated unfairly and blamed for everything, and it would be difficult to prove otherwise.
Concord? Star Wars Outlaws? What was that other one? Oh yeah, Suicide Squad.
Games of this _quality_ shouldn't take a team of smart moneys more than 5 or 6 months to slap together. For the money and time spent, they literally could have found some high school graduates, paid for them to study game design in university, waited for them to graduate, hired them, and they would have made better games, faster, for far less money.
We are living in a clown world.
There already is a SC1 in SC2: Mass Recall, been a thing for a long time.
Also, that's the reason I prefer WC/SC as my RTS fix as opposed to AoE (although I do love and play it): loads of custom content and tools to create a lot more.
AoE modding scene, unfortunately, can't hold a candle to what people are doing with custom campaigns in SC or WC. And it's not the modders' fault, their tools are just less powerful.
Victors and Vanquished was only half bad. Some missions were gems, but too many were raid formats which doesn’t let you build farms or stuff you like to build. Not enough of them were good or up to modern standard.
ive been asking for a 15$ reskin overhaul since 2008, this is what ive been waiting for
Doesn't Starcraft 2 still have like 100,000 daily active users despite having had no content for years?
Looks like 110k yes.
sounds like even more reason to question why blizzard does nothing for it :/
@@louc.6735 Too reliant on the South Korean crowd
WoWC, Diablo Immortal and 4, and Overwatch (via paid cosmetics) still make more money for the pub-dev than SC series, and Chris Metzen and other veterans had long resigned from Blizzard.
@@royasturias1784 metzen is back tho and working pretty much exclusively with Warcraft.
AoE2 was some of the best RTS gameplay of any game.
Victors and Vanquished added the Japaneese with no new artwork. Their "Swordsmen" have shields and wear chainmail, an absolute disaster :(
Japanese have been in the game since 1999, not 2024, and every civ has the same looking generic units for better and worse (Except for these new upcoming antiquity civs but then it is just antiquity looking generic units instead)
The Japanese have been in the game since the very first version of aoe2 in age of empires age of kings and literally every civ uses the samw swordsman unit
What are you talking about?
@@IDKisReal2401 Correct, I wrote it wrong, they added campaign content for the Japanese without bothering to bring them up to reasonable standard. I was shocked they haven't done it, it would have been awesome to replace swordsmen and pikemen with samurai and ashigaru.
@@rafinery576 no, that's a bad idea, there is a reason that every civ has the same generic units and then the castle units are named "unique units" and it's readability. The game has become harder and harder to read as they've added more civs with extra unique units, if every unit was a unique unit you wouldnt know what you're looking at in a fight. I can easily identify a halbardier, a champion, an arbalest etc just by looking at them, make them unique for every civ and now i cant tell if that crossbowman is a chokunu or some other civs crossbow line.
I think the recent DLC's would be more well recieved if it wasn't for the ludicrous price tags. I play ranked quite regularly and still haven't bought the Mountain Royals. 2 Civ's for $15 feels like highway robbery. The Rome DLC, i think people were expecting a lot more. All we really got was the ability to play AOE1 in the AOE2 browser and 1 civ, if you don't care about AOE1 (so like 90% of the community), not much reason to buy at that price. And then there's the Re-skined campaign DLC... should have been free or no more then $5.
Blizzard couldn't do a successful RTS in 24/25. I loved AOE, age of mythology was fun. I love playing multi computer on insane mode, build up layers of walls. defence, industry, Then after hours, begin relic raids and pressing out.
Imagine star craft "co op mode" in real mutiplayer it could have been a new C&C Generals: zero hour.
'Paying for content is good...we should be happy to pay for them' - a THOUSAND times this.
Spirit of the law sends his regards
YES!! AOE2 forever! It's so nice to have a few lovingly crafted remasters like AOE2 and D2 resurrected to contrast with all the modern-day coporatized MTX slop passing as "games"
Starcraft 1 remaked in SC2, same for WC3, but not by blizzard but by modders community
If only blizzard had hired developers like Microsoft did, League of Legends could’ve been a blizzard IP
I miss Z and Majesty... I wish their was a bloody decent RTS on current gen consoles (excluding Iron Harvest) 'cause i can't even play C&C Red Alert anymore.
The past simple of "cost" is "cost", not "costed". That's crazy.
You missed AOM Retold which just released. I’d argue over half that current player base is from AOE.
One of these days Microsoft will remember that they own Rise of Nations and it's scifi sequel
I have to say that TheViper will always be the GOAT of AoE2. That is all.
Age of Mythology mention!
The modding teams for Cities Skyline 1 were hired and CS2 came out like shit.
Same thing happen with the modders for NCAA Football 14 revamp only to suffer the same faith.
It's not always great being a modding team and working for an evil publisher
In my mind, it's the same reason fans shouldn't be hired to work on their favorite tv shows-- having that much power can result in massive ego trips or to said fans being exploited for the "honor" of being able to work on it.
@@MoonLitChild it's the second one for the two examples I mentioned
i assume why they hate the return of rome is
some of them already bought AoE 1 DE and then suddenly you can get 2 games in 1 app rather than individual app
"if its free i am less interested" is a wild take lol. i cant agree with that. I'm much more likely to try a game that's free over a game that charges $120 for 4 day early access and a skin.
I hate the phrase, "well, they're not forcing you to buy it" because it's missing the point entirely.
1) It's about intent. They wouldn't be selling this stuff if they didn't intend for you to buy it.
2) They want you to buy it (because they want money), so they will manipulate you into buying it.
3) This is, in many cases, content that would've been in the game from the start 20-30 years ago.
So it is a mod, and now becoming DLC??
They are taking notes. On monetization.