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And this is the second of Microsoft’s PC games, confirming the very Age-of-Empires-looking leak of “Spartan” is actually Age of Empires Online. It promises Co-op and player-versus-player multiplayer, plus persistent online empires, a jolly new look and will be due for 2011. The closed beta is already running, and you can sign up for future Beta stuff already. There’s quite a lot of stuff on the site, so worth nosing, but one thing on the FAQ did catch my eye. “Will there be a retail product, or will Age of Empires Online be available as a download only?” “It will be digitally distributed.” Which strictly speaking doesn’t say it won’t be in shops, but by omission implies it’s download only. There’s a trailer on the site which doesn’t appear to be embeddable anywhere else.

Source: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/08/17...announced-beta/

What have they done? D:

I miss the AOE2 days and i will always consider it the almost RTSever , you can literally go on garena or game ranger and find half the lobby just AOE2 gamers xD ( oh and dota )

I call Master of Olympus: Zeus on this, with more military and less town management.

I mean graphically, it is actually very nice. I would probably have even tried this if it was in fact Spartan or whatever, but the fact that they're trying to market something so obviously the stylistic polar opposite of Age of Empires is what really annoys me, similar to what happened with RA3. I don't get all this MMORTS rubbish though. RTS games have had multiplayer as it should be for the last 15 years.

WHAT the FUCK is THIS!! Seriously, what have they done to the look and feel of the game?! It looks absolutely HORRIBLE man.

it looks like a free sim online flash game

^ Yeh.

OOOH GOD! THE COLOURS! THE BRIGHTNESS! MY EYES!

It's so bright, so vivid...

What does this mean?

At this point i'm so pissed off i'm trying to write something that won't start with @!uk Microsoft and @$#% su!@ @#lls Microsoft, but i keep wondering wtf is wrong with gameproducers today. Does everyone think that games want only online shit. Have we really lost our real life so much that they have to transform every frekin franchise into online shit ? Age of Empires was by far 1 of the best strategy franchises and most loved. Then Microsoft killed Ensemble Studios. Everyone thought that that is the end. And i do wish it was like that. But now they created another mmo rts by destroying a game people loved so much. Seriosly ... it feels like their is a conspiracy out there. Something like ... let's do all sort of online only shit so everyone would just fuck up their life doing nothing but onlineing. Where is that spirit of gaming where you could just do a nice skirmish after you had a few beers with your friends, or just playing against the ai when ever you want however you want. Now everything is online, you gotta find friends online as well, you gotta program everything if you dont want to end up fighting with the kazillion morons that infect every online game etc. It's just ... pathetic. My biggest dream was to work in the game industry. But to be honest it's not anymore. In fact i find it rejecting. The industry has become this huge money milking cow with no soul and no more fun. Just hundreds of less than average products with huge hype and low to no quality. RIP gaming and at this point RIP Age of Empires.

http://www.gametrail...0-age-of/703026
http://www.gametrail...0-age-of/703025
Edited by Anubis, 18 August 2010 - 08:49.

http://forum.fallout...showtopic=36325

I've seen flash games that look like this around five years ago. Maybe even better. Then there's the 'ONLEIN ONLAY'/'MMORTS' thing, whatever the hell that is. How is that even possible? Is a 'MMORTS' a normal RTS with no singleplayer mode? Have the makers of AOE gone totally mad?

What is up with the cartoony style graphics.... much like everyone else has said it somewhat resembles a flash game

What have they done
Edited by Grey_Vengeance, 18 August 2010 - 09:20.

Good god no :(

Mike

It's sorta ironic for me; I was planning on buying AOEII Gold recently.

am i been jinxed D:

Conforms with the trend to stick ''Online'' behind a famous title in order to make money.

This project probably started off as Spartan but saw the publisher stick one of its owned franchise names to it in order to give it weight.

What is interesting about this, is that suddenly as soon as it becomes known as part of a certain universe, massive HATE starts to erupt. If it did not bear the name of said universe, we would probably be either more interested or if not, be just ignorant about it.

In this case though the hate is probably justified. I don't understand how publishers are handling their brand names so...so... lawlessly.
Edited by Shirou, 18 August 2010 - 11:36.

now i'm sad.

I think I'm the only person who thought "Any Age of Empires is better than no Age of Empires".

The studio that creates AOE is dead and AOE 3 wasn't particularly that good compared to AOE2. This new one hasn't got particularly AOEish graphics, nor has it got a single player feel of the original (Also, when signing up for the beta, they asked me if i had played Farmville or Mafia Wars D:) but any AOE means that it's not a completely dead series and that we may still get an another awesome AOE game in the future. Remember, it's not called AOE4, its AOE Online. For all we know it could just be another branch on the AOE series and maybe, just maybe, it could be actually quite fun.

In short, judge it more when it comes out, but for now, enjoy the idea of any more AOE games.

The thing is, it is NOT Awesome. I preffer no AoE over this huge pile of crap.

And even if they were to release an AoE 4 after this, I suspect they'd keep those shitty graphics...

Personally I don't see what's wrong with the graphics. I actually like the colors. If the gameplay is good, I wouldn't mind trying this.

scope, on 19 Aug 2010, 16:56, said:

Guardian Casts: Deadly Vibes!

Then suddenly, the gameplay is for UBER-Casuals only, causing it to be utterly lame and gameplay is for kids...who knows, it's an AoE....THAT's G-RATED!!.

And the style is too simple.


Yes, I do this in real life too(casting vibes), but really, it's as if it's like TF2-cartoonism on AoE.

Again, no offense.

I expect the worst.
Edited by GuardianTempest, 19 August 2010 - 09:10.

Dear God... do you ever not make your posts such a struggle to read?

scope, on 19 Aug 2010, 18:56, said:

As I said earlier, this is mostly my view as well. In terms of how it looks, it looks nice. But it certainly doesn't look like an Age of Empires game. That's my problem. People marketing things as what they are not is stupid.