Games
Experiencing Age of Empires Online Part 02
By Sean Booker
September 18, 2011 - 10:56
Studios: Robot Entertainment and Gas Powered Games
Publisher(s): Microsoft Game Studios
Genre: Real-Time Strategy
Platform: Digital Distribution on PC
Players: 1-4
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.
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