some facts that I do not like about age of empire online

[SEmeryjon]

I grew up with Age of Empires. It is one of those few franchises out there that truly symbolizes gaming for me. When I have friends over, we still jump onto all of my home computers (I have two desktops and two laptops in the house) and play AoK: Conquerors and/or AoE 3. We can't get enough of those games and will probably continue playing them for years to come. Then the concept of 'premium content' reached towards me. I knew right away that this would likely cripple the game for my friends and family and it turns out I was right (so far).

[Amy_i3]

Premium content is tied to an account. That means if we all wanted to play together we all need an account, and any of us who want premium content (a HUGE game changer because of advisors and advanced gear), we'd need to pay $20 per civ * the number of accounts we have. With the previous games, my cd allowed me to put it on as many computers as I wanted, so long as they weren't all pvping at the same time.

[Cain]

Premium content should give us a code, which can then be transfered to as many accounts as we want. PvP would not be available if more than one account is currently online using the same code. This solution can be exploited and wouldn't EVER be implemented by microsoft, but it's the only option I can see. I could see them releasing a 'family pack' or something, which costs a little more for multiuple computers, but that wouldn't be a satisfactory solution at all.

[JErastus]

The start of the game is far too slow. You have to play for a few hours just to be able to PvP or co-op (which is fine as AoE PvP has always been secondary to my friends and I), but you have to play for far too many hours to actually be competitive. Once skirmish is released, finding a nice difficulty setting for everybody to find playable is going to be a nightmare. As an example, my parents aren't likely to spend X hours to be able to reach the fourth age, so they can play a half-hour game with me.

[Hadriel]

AI should be the average of every player's city level (like in AoE 3). On top of this, they could add 'default builds' for Skirmish alone (not transferable to PvP) where you could just grab a level 20 civ with randomly selected upgrades. Or they could allow for 'skirmish cities' which work more or less like the cities in AoE3 did. The fact that this game wasn't released with skirmish is just bizarre. Skirmish is the life-blood of the AoE franchise (nearly every RTS franchise, really).

[Carita Carlos]

My point was that you couldn't play them all at the same time, even skirmish or single player. That copy of the game was only permitted to be run on one PC at a time, even if it could be installed on many. Your opening post made it sound like you were sharing it under the guise that if other people only used the single player content it was alright. Perhaps that's just the way I read it, it's getting late in Australia. I'm trying to play the game without spending any dosh, the only real problem i've come up against is storage and gear.

[Anahera]

The cities are a moot point, as only one person can physically be on a computer at a time. But the LAN with the same CD key is against the EULA, they simply had no way of policing it, until now, which is what they're doing. From their point of view nothing has changed, you were never allowed to do it(even though you, and me, and everyone else, did do it). That's why companies are moving to Steam and Origin, or developing their own solutions like Uplay or Windows live.

[BethanyI]

They definitely had ways of policing LAN. How long has the windows OS had validation keys? It would require an internet connection, but then, so did the standard patch. Plus anybody who has LAN capabilities probably would have internet as well. So long as you own your copy of the game and you're putting it on computers that you own, I don't believe it counts as 'redistributing' it. But yes, we are getting off topic. Does anybody know of any family friendly features in the works? I find it ironic that this time around.