Well what did it for me was the
Giantbomb quicklook. I had totally forgotten about AoE, but then I watched this and my nostalgia buckled underneath the pressure of reason. "I have a ton of backlogged games, lets play something new anyway!" And it's not something really that is new. It's Age of Empires, at least, its AoE2 at its core which I was really into for a short period, and again a little bit more with the release of Star Wars Battlegrounds which was AoE2 with a Star Wars skin. This is pretty much more of the same of that with MMORPG elements thrown in. Like the Dawn of War 2 games, every unit type is customizable with gear, which you get from loot, which is scattered throughout the maps in the quests you play. Quests you get from NPCs with exclamation points over their heads. Not only that, but there's a crafting system in there too. It's an MMORPGRTS and it is going under the free to play/microtransactions model.
I read the responses to the game on metacritic, user reviews have a lower score than the press has, but its all relatively mixed. I do agree with both the pros and cons. The microtransaction pricing is debatable since they are trying to fit somewhere into a happy medium with other free to play games and MMOs. There is no lifetime subscription, instead you can pay $100 for 6 months and get everything. Right now you can get both civilizations that are available for $40, which is ALMOST everything, there is some small cosmetic stuff that costs additionally. From my perspective, I find the $40 expense worthy as I am enjoying what I am getting. There's a pretty big world and lots of quests you keep you occupied for a while. Another possible drawback is the PvP which I don't know a lot about. The reason why I say this is because you can use loot in PvP which seems to me that it would make things unbalanced. Anyone with better gear equipped to their units is going to have the advantage. It just doesn't sound like it would be fun, but I have no interest in that. You can do most quests cooperatively with a friend, which I havent done yet since I dont know anybody else that plays the game, but so far as playing this sort of thing by myself, I am fairly addicted.
As an MMO you do need to have a constant connection and I recently found out that there is server maintenance which brings the game down for a handful of hours once a week. Keeping this sort of MMO experience in mind, you can still get a lot from playing without paying. From what I have read, you can level up to 40 without paying anything which is a shit ton of content. You still have access to tons of quests. I know you are limited to the rarity of gear you can equip but I don't find some of that stuff super important to the actual core game. If you want to check it out, let me know. I would like the play with someone else. It uses GFWL, so you'll use your Live ID. Mine is PyroMenace if you haven't added me yet. Let me know what you think.
