Age of Empires (AOE) fans can now join in the closed beta test for playing Age of Empires game online for free. What is special in the online version is that you can download and play AOE from anywhere and cooperative multiplayer quests and trading are combined with familiar empire creation and resource management.
The game now invites players to
create a living, growing online world that’s shared with friends around the world through Games for Windows LIVE, an online gaming network related to Xbox LIVE. Anyone with a LIVE account can see their friends online and send and receive voice messages, text messages, and game invites. In Age of Empires Online, players can use the service to invite friends for a cooperative quest or a friendly challenge in the local arena, trade goods and weapons, and visit each other’s capital cities.
System requirements are steep.
- A Windows Experience Index score of 3.0 or higher or…
- At least 2 gigahertz CPU, 128 MB video card, 3GB Hard Disc
- Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7
- 1 gigabyte (GB) total system RAM (2 GB recommended)
Age of Empires Online will release exclusively on Games for Windows – LIVE in 2011 and currently is running in Closed Beta. AOE III is one of the best games I have ever played.
About Age of Empires Online Guide
Age of Empires Online is one of a kind. It is the only online high-budget real-time strategy (RTS) and RPG (role-playing game) hybrid. If you are not familiar with the game, I have put together a brief Age of Empires Online guide to orient you to AoE Online gameplay.
Age of Empires Online is technically free to play. While there are no micro-transactions in the game, you will have to purchase content packs in order to get access to all areas of the game, such as optional quest areas, advisors, and the best equipment. You can however install the game and at least try it out for free.
Players start the game as a particular race (such as the Greeks or Egyptians), and are given a tiny capital city. You then are given “Quests” by your advisor, which task you to complete some various objective. By completing each quest, you get experience points, gold, currency, and item rewards. This is a typical of the MMORPG genre.
However, each time you do a quest, you are end up playing a real-time strategy match, much like a slower-paced Starcraft 2. You start off with a small base, on a random map, with varying resource nodes. You then build up your base and army and attack the enemy in large-scale combat.
As you complete quests in the game, you will unlock items and blueprints to build up a big city. Inside your city, you can “equip” your items to your actual units of your army. For example, you might equip an item to your Cavalry which makes them faster, or a weapon for your infantry which makes them do more damage. Items have varying effects, so often in PvP, even if the enemy has the same units as you, they may be different.
As you get more levels, you will unlock better gear and even new units. You have a “talent tree” in your city, so you can assign points to unlock new units and technologies. You can also add in “Advisors” which give your units special abilities and even give you the ability to train new and rare types of units.
The end result is that as your city gets stronger, you get better items, which you can then use to beat tougher missions and do better in PvP. Many repeatable missions offer an “elite” mode, which I can tell you first hand some are very hard to do unless you are playing in co-op mode.
Aspects of online play include being able to trade items amongst players and playing 1v1 and 2v2 match-ups PvP match-ups. You can also co-op (cooperative; i.e. play as a team) certain missions, allowing you to take down elite missions or just play for fun with a friend.
Over time, I will be building out this Age of Empires Online guide, so be sure to bookmark this site and check back regularly
CREED COMPUSHOP
Posted in: 
