Age of Empires Online Beta Impressions - More MMO Than RTS

Ah the free to play PC game market. The new battle ground for triple AAA publishers on the PC platform. With Age of Empires Online, Microsoft is attempting to resurrect an old(and classic) IP with a new guise. As free to play MMORTS. The game was first developed by former Ensemble Studios folks at Robot Entertainment and is now being polished up by Gas Powered Games(of Supreme Commander fame). Does it work? Read on...



The Mechanics


First for the good news, this is essentially Age of Empires 3. I didn’t notice any major changes from Age of Empires 3 other than the graphical style. Its controls, the buildings, aging up, and even the cost of aging up all seem similar to AoE 3(200 food and 200 wood to go to Age 2). It even has a more expanded home city concept(called a capital city in AoE Online). The bad news is that they chopped off bits of the game to make it like an MMO. They only give you very limited access to units, buildings and even game types in the beginning and you work your way towards unlocking everything.

TADAA! Level 3!

Currently in closed beta, you are only given access to the Greeks(the final release should have the Egyptians and potentially other civilisations as well). Once you’ve picked your civilisation, you name your capital city, which is basically your online persistent avatar. The capital city acts as a hub of sorts. It’s actually part a pretty looking interface to their in game stores and PvP features and part a basic city builder(very, very basic city builder).

You build structures by buying or gaining blueprints(which you pay using the in game currency and costs resources like pine planks, fur etc) and a lot of the buildings are basically fronts to vanity items like decorative structures to beautify your city. Some however, like the town centre and gear hall have siginifanct gameplay functions.

Lots of buildings that sell you stuff that in turn sell you more stuff

The town centre acts as a hub for research. You open the research tree and research new units, ages, buildings and various stat improvements. The gear hall opens up an interface that allows you to improve your units or civilisation by equipping items(loot) you find throughout your questing.


The RTS Bits

Age of Empires Online has quests that are given by quest givers that populate your capital city. These quest bits are where the RTS portion of the game comes in. And it’s not as watered down as I thought it would be. This is straight up, Age of Empires. Despite the silly and exaggerated animations and graphics, the game controls very well and veteran AoE player will feel right at home.

As you level up, you gain points to spend in the research tree to unlock new stuff. basically stuff that were in previous Age of Empires games.

Except for one small detail I have left out, unit unlocks. Age of Empires Online chops the game off depending on your capital city level. You’ll have to grind for experience points(which obviously you get from quests) and go up the research tree to get news units, buildings and even the ability to age up.

Their approach to alleviate the tedium of grind is to offer varying types of quests. And yes, there is a very large variety of them, from rescuing stranded trade merchants to timed base defense missions. It’s not completely revolutionary or anything we haven’t seen before(these missions are all types we have seen before in other RTS games in single player) which is a tad disappointing especially when has Blizzard managed to get so creative with their mission design for StarCraft II.

You accept quests which in turn put you into a regular RTS missions

But the main problem I found with Age of Empires Online is that it’s just not that fun to grind through the missions when you are stuck with a small set of units, a very limited scope of strategy and build order in the early stages of your capital city. I often just found myself just relying on Aging up to Age 2 and building Hypaspists from Barracks… time and time again.

Age of Empires Online suffers from the same issues Command & Conquer 4 had. Granted, I did not play C&C 4 but based on what the critics have said about it, it sounds very similar to my experience with AoE Online. In order to keep people playing the MMO game, they lock units up and force you to play through the game to unlock them. This is not how a strategy game should be made(and do we really need leveling up in a strategy game).

The game is main single player(with coop supported) but you can PvP once you've built The Arena

But... but it’s completely free!

Age of Empires Online is free to play where Command & Conquer 4 was a retail game that you paid for and had units locked out from you(I think this certainly led to some of the frustrations players had with it). But the issue is in my opinion more pertinent here, as a free to play game, people would have less motivation to continue grinding away and playing though the tedium. A free to play game has to capture the attention of the player in the beginning stages and AoE online does that to a certain extent, but it quickly plummets when you realise you’re playing through with the same strategy and build order for the infinite time.

RTS developers! Stop trying to make your game an MMO by cutting up pieces of your game and forcing players to grind! In my opinion, the model of a game like World in Conflict(I love that game) or even StarCraft II works a lot better(with leader boards and player ranking not based on some arbitrary experience point but real skill). Or even League of Legends which does micro transactions that sell vanity items but doesn’t lock stuff away from you based on a leveling system.

Destroying the enemies economy still remains a staple of RTS games

There is a another game which does this a lot better though and you might not expect me to say this. But Total War: Shogun 2 has a mode called the Avatar Conquest mode which is similar to this but a lot better(I don’t want to make this a Shogun 2 review so I’ll make this brief). You conquer regions around a map of Japan and unlock new  units while doing so. Where I think it works in Shogun 2 is that the battles, even if you are limited by the unit roster, are more of a test of tactical acumen rather than the RTS style of strategy. So it doesn't suffer from the 'oh not this again syndrome'(unless of course you come up against a hill camper).

Age of Empires Online makes me nervous for all the other MMORTS in development. If this is the style of MMORTS all of them are going for, I have to say, they have lost the plot. This is not why I play RTS games. The loot mechanic(you get rewards for completing quests and the RTS map has creeps that guard treasure chests that you can get) is not that interesting or compelling to motivate me to play through this drudgery.

Age of Empires online is currently in closed beta and is not due out until later this year. They are planning on adding new factions and quest packs as a way of incentivising people to stick to the game. However, I highly doubt many people would stick through the tedium of levelling up to get all the basic Age of Empires units unlocked for them. Thanks, but no thanks.

Looking Forward to: Playing quests coop with friends(even this isn’t that interesting though)

Not Looking Forward to: Grinding quests to unlock units and playing through the tedious missions



Note: Like all beta products, this is unfinished work. Things are bound to change, so don’t take this as a review.