By Kieron Gillen on August 28th, 2010 at 12:22 pm.
Well, not with me. I’m playing with Elemental. But GameRanger noted that the Conquerors expansion pack turned ten this week, and trying to organise people to come online and play it tomorrow. “GameRanger is inviting everyone to a day of online gaming on Sunday, August 29 from 9am PT / 12pm ET / 4pm GMT onwards” they say in their little press-release. If you don’t own the game, there’s still demos of both the original Age of Kings and Age of Empires II: The Conquerers which allow 4 player multiplayer, all via (and here’s where GameRanger’s self-interest comes in) the GameRanger client. An interesting thing to note was they had 1.1 million (Count ‘em!) games played in the last month, which is impressive for a decade old game and more explanation why Age of Empires Online is coming. Anyway – it’s a rare change to jump into a mature-community RTS without just being beaten up by people who’ve been playing for ten years. More details here.
28/08/2010 at 12:26 Heliocentric says:
I’ve been playing this infrequently for years. Among certain (small) circles my spanish villager surges are legend.
28/08/2010 at 21:33 dadioflex says:
My Spanish villager surges were legendary, before the enquiry. Afterwards, not so much. I may have choked my revenue stream.
28/08/2010 at 13:02 NOwaR says:
I like your first sentence… I play with Elemental as well.
28/08/2010 at 13:06 Carra says:
Ah, AoE2. The first online game I had, I played it online for about 9 months. First matches and then the masses of scenarios that were made.
Still stands as one of the best RTS games ever created. And I also remember a fun singleplayer game following the lives of the great generals of their time. I’ve been wanting to replay these singleplayer games for some time now. Seems like a good time to do so.
28/08/2010 at 13:11 ChaK_ says:
that screenshot made my eyes wet.
Good ‘ol time
28/08/2010 at 13:17 rocketman71 says:
Age of Empires is 11. It was released in late 99. Now, Age of Conquerors truly is 10 years old.
Yeah. Age of Empires Online is coming to piss all over true Agers. Fuck Robot Entertainment and especially FUCK MICROSOFT.
Sad 10th birthday, AOC.
28/08/2010 at 13:18 rocketman71 says:
Damn, I meant Age of Empires 2 is 11.
28/08/2010 at 13:18 Ysellian says:
Won’t be playing online, but it’s a good time to re-install it again :)
28/08/2010 at 13:32 Berzee says:
Good memories of this game.
Good memories of making this when I was a tiny child:
http://aok.heavengames.com/blacksmith/lister.php?category=&pauthor=Captain_N&title=&search=&rating_op=%3D&rating_value=
and having 1,000+ people download it :-P
I will think of this game and smile even though I cannot have time to play it on this centiversary.
28/08/2010 at 13:33 Berzee says:
It still looks good, too, doesn’t it?
28/08/2010 at 14:04 Fergus says:
The fact that I sucked so badly at playing it online means I won’t be joining this get-together.
Happy Birthday to an awesome game though.
29/08/2010 at 14:08 Scott Kevill says:
The community on GameRanger is likely to be very different to what you’ve experienced before. It’s intentionally un-rated, which means people tend to have casual, friendly games rather than obsessing about points and ladder positions.
Give it another try. :)
28/08/2010 at 14:22 Johnny says:
I honestly do not see what people like in Age of Empires. It’s one of the most hands-off real time “strategy” games I’ve ever played.
28/08/2010 at 14:45 Heliocentric says:
Not played much multiplayer have you?
28/08/2010 at 15:47 Malawi Frontier Guard says:
Hordes of Paladins are as hands-off as it gets.
28/08/2010 at 16:54 Carra says:
“Hands-off”.
It’s lacking the micro management you need in SC. No need to babysit your troops and use their stim packs, mines and micro manage the special units like defilers.
Since I don’t like the micro management part I preferred AOE.
28/08/2010 at 14:54 The Pink Ninja says:
Fear my Frankish Paladins!
28/08/2010 at 15:04 LionsPhil says:
WOL-LO-LO!
(Whoaaa! Whaaay! Whoaaa! Whaaay! START THE GAME ALREADY!)
(Best damn audio taunts in a multiplayer game ever. Moreso than Duke Nukem 3D.)
28/08/2010 at 15:24 Stijn says:
Give me your extra resources.
28/08/2010 at 15:46 Malawi Frontier Guard says:
More games need that feature.
28/08/2010 at 20:55 The Pink Ninja says:
You played three hours to die like that?
30/08/2010 at 08:32 Erik-the-Red says:
Reading the lines I could hear those taunts :)
28/08/2010 at 15:32 Heliocentric says:
Reagicide 8 way free for all. Or as i call it, “Last king standing on the hill, man”
28/08/2010 at 15:35 SirKicksalot says:
I wonder if we’re going to see such an event for Rise of Nations. Or is that series dead?
29/08/2010 at 14:00 Scott Kevill says:
Unfortunately, Rise of Nations wasn’t able to build a strong online community due to the terrible GameSpy service that it used. It does still get played a lot now on GameRanger, but that can depend on the time of day.
The situation is even worse for the sequel, Rise of Legends, which was basically dead from the beginning from an even more broken GameSpy service.
I’d definitely like to do events for more games, but I’m sure the news sites would tire of announcements for so many classic games, so I’ve really only been considering the most newsworthy.
29/08/2010 at 21:00 Biz says:
rise of nations is dead on gameranger
there are thousands of people who still play on gamespy
they don’t have ratings anymore, and gamespy is far from ideal but it works enough for people to play
28/08/2010 at 15:48 omicron says:
Gold please! Wood please! Food please! Stone please!
NO!
NONONNONNONONONO!
28/08/2010 at 18:55 Pew says:
Yes. Yes.Yes.Yes.Yes.Yes.Yes.Yes.Yes.Yes.Yes.
Wololoooo!
All hail, king of the losers!
Start the game already! Start the game already! Start the game already!
28/08/2010 at 17:36 Rhade says:
Thanks for reminding me about this. AoE2 was the first game I played on my families first PC back in the day. Oh the nostalgia. I think I’ll give a few games a bash.
Amazing game.
28/08/2010 at 18:07 Burningpet says:
Agreed, Elemental is kind of like a toy.
I play it and feel distanced.
Still having fun though.
28/08/2010 at 18:22 plasticsaint says:
beware: AoE2 has some graphical errors on Windows Vista and Windows 7. Specifically the grass is a horrendous neon color that will burn your eyes.
gameranger is a great service though.
28/08/2010 at 18:46 Andrew Dunn says:
The graphical error can be fixed, by the weirdest of methods: have a Windows Explorer window open when you start the game. For whatever reason, this makes the colour palette display correctly.
29/08/2010 at 13:39 Scott Kevill says:
Yeah, another solution is to use the Task Manager to terminate explorer.exe (it should relaunch by itself later, but you can always use Task Manager’s Run command to bring it back). The problem is something to do with Explorer steal colours from the palette. This affects a number of classic 256-colour games.
28/08/2010 at 18:42 EarthLaunch says:
Great idea! We have a small community that does monthly revivals of old games like this, so I posted your event there. Everyone who likes old games should join us there for future games:
http://reddit.com/r/Revival
The post I made
See you guys in-game!
28/08/2010 at 19:26 Smokingkipper says:
kieron, is elemental fun to play at the moment? Despite all the messing about and bugs etc?
28/08/2010 at 19:31 Kieron Gillen says:
Honestly dunno. Still making my mind up. Will have some impressions on Monday morning.
KG
28/08/2010 at 21:36 dadioflex says:
So…no…
It’d be shocking if anyone thought otherwise. We know they fucked up.
It’l be a good game eventually. Under six months, hopefully.
28/08/2010 at 20:46 anonymous17 says:
Or for that matter, Enemy Nations.
Before it was free.
28/08/2010 at 22:50 Biz says:
check out voobly.com for the real aoe2 action
aoe2 is still the best team strategy game you can finish in under an hour
if rise of nations was more balanced, it would be a strong contender. same with aom or aoe3
1v1 aoc doesn’t really have enough complexity or variety for the strategist to beat the guy who can micro the best, but that’s also the case for most RTS games
29/08/2010 at 05:53 panther says:
I have such a massive soft spot for this game
29/08/2010 at 08:02 LB says:
Oh my, AoE 2. Such nostalgia. You’re going to make me re-install it again …
30/08/2010 at 16:51 binni says:
Can you buy this from some DD service?