Games

Experiencing Age of Empires Online Part 02

By Sean Booker
September 18, 2011 - 10:56

Welcome back to my semi-regular entry into this madness I’m calling Experiencing Age of Empires Online (both original and catchy). At this point in my experience I’ve gotten pretty deeply invested into my account; having both put a ton of hours into the game and switching over the the premium account almost exclusively.

While I’m having a great deal of fun, this whole involvement is really opening my eyes to the massively-multiplayer online game mentality and kind of what makes that all tick. I had a similar feeling when Borderlands came out. The idea of granting me access to so many random quests while having this general base level tied to myself makes everything seem worth the time and effort, no matter how trivial the task may be. And if the payout if good enough, the more trivial quests might be some of the better ones to take on. To put it a little easier, I’m finding myself constantly wanting to play just one more quest before stopping...over and over and over.

As of where I’m at, I can say that my previous issue of not having a lot of quests to choose from at once is completely gone. At any given time I have around ten or so that I can do. This is great since now I can try out different missions if I find one may be a bit hard for me. The game also varies the quests in terms of goals quite a bit. Some will have me required to destroy an enemy in a certain way, some get me to build twelve farms in under five minutes, while others just want me to survive against waves of enemies for a set time period. The game also gives me a bunch of repeatable quests that I can do over and over again. The reward each time does go down but it allows me to replay some missions I found fun. I’m quite enjoying having so many quest options going at once.

So I started up the premium account to see what that was all about in comparison to my first standard account. This second account was a Greek account (as opposed to my earlier Egyptian one) which I found out quickly plays differently. Apart from the aesthetics of the two (which are extremely different), the two factions’ skill trees are much different and grant you access to different characters at much different times. Where I obtained a healing unit within the first five levels in Egypt, I haven’t even seen a healer yet with my level 13 Greek account. On the other hand, I’m getting access to different unit that the Egyptians did yet have either.

This makes sure everything is balanced out and the fact that you can have two accounts going at once is nice in order to let you try out either and see which you’d rather stick with. That might be something to think about before purchasing either factions’ premium version if you were trying to decide. Age of Empires Online even lets you upgrade your account at any point which helps facilitate that.

The reason I started up the premium account after only getting about five levels into the standard one was that I was already seeing the barred gates of what I was limited to. In several quests I would find the reward an object or ability that wasn’t accessible without payment. There are even several cases of specific quests giving me access to unique character classes, but only to try out for this mission alone; a premium account was necessary if I wanted to own and use this unit later down the road. Along with this, I’ll point out that the majority of the Xbox Live Achievements are locked away behind a premium account. There are only around six that can be collected with a standard account while the rest are either greek-premium, egypt-premium, or additional downloadable content specific.

I’ll point out that at this time I haven’t tried any of the player versus player (PVP) modes that are in the game. From my understanding, I gain access to ranked PVP matches with my premium service. However, I did try out some of the co-op quests in the game. At a certain point I found that almost every quest I was getting had the option of playing through it with another player. It’s quite simple to get someone in. If they’re on the real time chat room in the corner of the screen, you can right click any user name and invite the person into your town. Here they can access your shops to buy and sell items. You can then fire up a quest that allows co-op. I will point out that if you’re trying to play with someone from your friend’s list, you need to make sure you’re both on the same server or else the game will tell you that they “don’t exist”. I ran into this issue when trying to play with a friend but the server moving process was actually very easy and straightforward.

One issue I do have with the co-op play though is that the joining player doesn’t receive any experience for completing the quest. You can still accumulate experience by killing enemies and finding treasure, but as for the rewards upon completion, only the host gets that. This was a huge let down since bringing someone else in definitely added to the fun. Being able to create huge armies along with a friend to take on the enemy not only sped up some of the quests but can make things a bit easier if you ever find yourself stuck. However, the incentive to help someone is deeply lessened if you know you won’t be getting much out of it.

I’ve also begun to learn some new hot keys from other players. The game still hasn’t really tried to teach me any of them, and at this point I don’t think it’s planning to. I will say though that if you’re wanting to play the game, you need to look up some keyboard commands. It makes the game run faster and you’ll improve significantly in terms of productivity. Still, it’s kind of a bummer that the game didn’t come out and say that for me.

With that I’ll sign off on this second entry into this ongoing article. I’m having a ton of fun with the game and would recommend it to anyone. I can’t say one way or another whether getting a premium account is all that necessary to truly enjoy this game, but I’m not done testing it out. Some of my issues from before, like not having enough access to different quests, have been resolved; while new ones, like no significant rewards from co-op, have come to head. Expect my next article in the coming weeks.

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12