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Games

Age of Empires 2, a 21-Year-Old Game, is Having an Incredible Year (pcgamer.com) 32

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Age of Empires 2, a 21-year-old game, could well be having its best year ever. From a report: Since its HD re-release in 2013 the game has had a steady growth in average player count, but with the release of Age of Empires 2: Definitive edition last year and COVID-19 lockdowns inflating player counts across the industry, Age of Empires 2 is boasting totals that beat some very big-name games. It's now by far Steam's most popular RTS, with both the Definitive Edition and the 2013 HD Edition having higher player counts than closest competitor Company of Heroes 2. This year's big tournament boasted the largest Age of Empires 1v1 prize pool since 2002.

Last month, in April, the games' combined average player count was over 50,000 players. April 12 was the definitive edition's all-time player peak, and the combined total of the games was 59,995 players. That's well into the top 150 all-time peak player counts on Steam... for a 21-year-old game. The two games generally average higher player counts than popular free-to-play game War Thunder or industry darling Stardew Valley. They're on-par with the popular action RPG Path of Exile. Their average is nearly as many as perennially popular premium games like Civilization VI or Terraria. Both versions of Age of Empires 2 sit in the top 100 games on Steam, with the Definitive Edition sitting at #25. Combined, however, the Age of Empires community on average pushes up to the #15 spot -- or higher, on peak player count days.
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Age of Empires 2, a 21-Year-Old Game, is Having an Incredible Year More

Age of Empires 2, a 21-Year-Old Game, is Having an Incredible Year

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  • Reading the headline I thought maybe someone hacked Windows making it possible to use a gameport equipped sound card for old joysticks or 5 pin din midi plugs. OT: Anyone know what the windows registry hack was/is to enable a selected PCI slot able to allow such a sound card. i.e. Soundblaster Audigy 2 zs?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Reading the headline I thought maybe someone hacked Windows making it possible to use a gameport equipped sound card for old joysticks or 5 pin din midi plugs. OT: Anyone know what the windows registry hack was/is to enable a selected PCI slot able to allow such a sound card. i.e. Soundblaster Audigy 2 zs?

      Most likely it's a driver thing. as far as I can tell MPU401 interfaces are still supported (which is what practically all internal MIDI cards emulate in "dumb" UART mode).

      Old drivers won't work because Wi

  • In related news ... (Score:3)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Tuesday May 12, 2020 @04:20PM (#60053256)

    Two companion games are being released:

    -- "Aging Empires" for older players.
    -- "Ageist Empires" for younger players.

    [... man, I'm bored ...]

  • The community kept it alive (Score:5, Informative)

    by UnknownSoldier ( 67820 ) on Tuesday May 12, 2020 @04:20PM (#60053258)

    A good chunk of why AoE2 is even still around is due to:

    * Voobly -- where players can see their and their opponents ELO ratings,
    * T90 [youtube.com] -- a great AoE2 streamer. He introduced the world to the noob Fatslob [youtube.com] who has been able to beat some of the world's best AoE2 players,
    * SpiritOfTheLaw [youtube.com] who goes into detail on how mechanics work,
    * Mods such as Forest Nothing, etc.
    * Plus its a great game. It didn't rely on out-dated 3D graphics but its beautiful 2D graphics still look great today.

    Unfortunately the HD remake still sucks for two reasons:

    * Requires Windows 10 spyware
    * Capture Age doesn't work for it. This is an overlay for replays that shows stats summary.

    • > A good chunk of why AoE2 is even still around is due to:

      There's a whole lot more to the story than will ever be told... (I ought to know)

      • Are you able to share details on the backstory?

        ---
        wololo :-)

        • Re:The community kept it alive (Score:5, Interesting)

          by The Optimizer ( 14168 ) on Tuesday May 12, 2020 @05:32PM (#60053460)

          > Are you able to share details on the backstory?

          An awful lot of it, probably not without incurring the wrath of the IP holders. And it's always worth remembering that everyone has a different perspective on any given thing.

          I suppose I can say that in the beginning, it took years of trying to find someone at Microsoft interested in a digital re-release. For the HD edition, no one at Microsoft really thought there would be much demand for it - a 2D game from the 1990s. This was before remasters and 'HD editions' of older games was a common thing, and the traditional RTS genre had fallen out of favor with MOBA, etc being the new hotness. Once it was clear there was an audience and demand for it, well.. remember the old proverb: "Success has a thousand fathers" and all that involvement led to Age 4 being on the way among other things.

          • Seems like there is a lot of room right now for an RTS that doesn't have the micro-heaviness of Starcraft. MOBA is really limited in scope.

          • Understood there are always at least 3 sides to a story. Thanks for sharing what you can!

            MS seems utterly clueless at times. They dropped Flight Simulator not once but twice! "Suddenly" they are bringing it back this year.

            Yes, MOBA (DOTA & LoL) pretty much killed RTS games. It is ironic that in the age of multi-displays RTSs still suck in the UI department -- i.e. 1990. Let me have MULTIPLE VIEWS into the battlefield, but nope, you get ONE and only one window. Really???

            Even StarCraft 2 didn't beco

    • So don't play the sucky HD remake (Score:5, Informative)

      by Deep Esophagus ( 686515 ) on Tuesday May 12, 2020 @10:27PM (#60054336)

      Doesn't require Windows 10 at all. You can play it just fine on a VM running Windows 98 and an .ISO image of the original CD. I have been playing it that way for at least 10 years.

      That probably won't get me into an online PvP game, but it's great for playing the old random maps against the original AI. It's literally the only reason I keep a Windows environment on my home PC.

      • Whoops I referred to the DE version and didn't clarify I was.

        The Definitive Edition [steampowered.com] requires Windows 10.

        The High Definition [steampowered.com] version works with Windows 7, etc. IIRC they upped the unit cap from 200 to 500 unit -- which if you are hitting then the game is probably already over.

        And yes the original version works with Win98.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by WallyL ( 4154209 )
          AoE2DE works well with ProtonPlay on GNU/Linux. I play it daily on my Fedora 31 system with Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB. Age of Empires 2: The Conquerors (CD version) works just fine in Wine after Voobly patches it with UserPatch 1.5 (which includes the high-res display fixes) and maybe some voobly-specific patches. You can even install the mod version of The Forgotten Empires (discontinued in favor of the HD version's official expansion of The Forgotten) working.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by WallyL ( 4154209 )
            Oh, and using WololoKingdoms (https://github.com/SiegeEngineers/WololoKingdoms/releases) you can play with the HD civilizations and balance (that's everything except the newest expansion which was DE only) as well. That's everybody but the Bulgarians, Lithuanians, Cumans, and Tatars.

          • Thanks for the info on ProtonPlay on GNU/Linux along with the Wine / Voobly patch!

            More games to play under Linux is always a good thing. That's cool that you can search for Linux games [steampowered.com] on the Steam store page now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dohzer ( 867770 )

      I haven't played AOE since the first game, and back then I didn't even understand that it was a strategy. It was free on computers at school, and I thought it was some kind of single-player hunting/exploration simulator.
      And yet... I find it very interesting to watch the AOE2 games on Twitch. The tournaments and personalities are great!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Arlias ( 3978369 )

      * Requires Windows 10 spyware

      Not at all. I'm actively playing it on Linux under Steam/Proton. Works like a charm. You have to tweak a dll in the virtual system32 though. Its pretty trivial and the instructions are in the proton database. (https://www.protondb.com/app/813780)

      The only constraint is that you need a graphics card that supports vulkan AFAIK. In my case a Vega integrated into the Ryzen 2400G CPU.

      No performance issues, after the tweak no desync of online games or crashes in the mod downloader either.

  • I would kill or die to get a good version of AoE for my phone. I bought a Windows Mobile phone years ago because the ported AoE to it. There were promises of an iPhone port years ago, but it devolved into bad pay-to-play knockoff.

  • "Start the game already!"

  • age of empires one and two definitive edition are available on xbox game pass for pc

  • Also a kickass remake just released, and by far better than the current crop of FF games (don't get your parties in a wad, Mana is a FF-spinoff by Square as well!).

    It's just so, so nice, hits all the right notes, has smooth and satisfying combat, the AI does what you want it to do, when you want it to do it, and everything clicks perfectly.

  • Please someone make an HD/remaster of Alpha Centaturi, that was one of the best games ever made.

    • Have you tried Beyond Earth? I know it's not _exactly_ the same thing, but from someone that's also an Alpha Centauri fan, I can tell you that I have greatly enjoyed Beyond Earth. You can get it for 15 dollars (with the expansion, too!) pretty regularly if you set a watch on isthereanydeal

  • I loved AOE but haven't had a Window machine in ages.

    Is there a Mac version that's just as good?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by RossGGG ( 963029 )
      The original AOE 2 was released for Mac. It still works great on my old clamshell iBook. You might be able to find and play this version via a PPC mac emulator such as SheepShaver or QEMU.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ezdiy ( 2717051 )
      AoE2 works very well with wine. Not sure what the state of wine is on OSX, does it even run wine?

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