So my brother Matt and I got into the Age of Empires Online beta. There are probably still beta keys available if anyone else wants to try it. You can have a look here. Rather than your usual MMORPG, however, Age of Empires Online seems to be trying to be a MMORTS, that is, a Massively Multiplayer Real Time Strategy game. And certainly I think that there can be large scale games that break from the World of Warcraft mode and all, but I'm not sure I'm sold on AoEO quite yet.
The big problems for me so far are a distinct lack of the "MM" so far. Granted, we've only played maybe three hours of the game, but the first two hours were stuck in mandatory tutorial quests that could only be played single player. And by the time we could actually play together, we had virtually identical setups, and it was kind of boring. Granted, beta. I understand that. Out of what appears to be maybe five factions (Greece, Troy, Egypt, Nubia, Libya) only the Greeks were playable, so that led to much of the unit overlap.
But still, the way that units and buildings are rationed out to you as you go along and earn them with gold and other currencies means that what you can do changes only gradually. All but the last two missions I played had only two ground combat units, a Scout, and Spearmen. And since you can't recruit a Scout yet, that meant that everything was just endless Spearmen. It got pretty repetitive very quickly.
Even worse there's hints in the game that you can pay to win. Heros that you can use to boost your army can only be hired in the Advisor's Hall, which in turn is only available to Premium Users. Which sounds like extra cash to me. Not great.
So far, then, Age of Empires Online has not really impressed me. I expect I'll dabble through out the beta, but unless they really wow me, I don't plan to spend any money on the game when the time comes.
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