Hi, everyone. Ian Vogel here … Design Lead on Age of Empires Online. Now that we have a few weeks of real data to back up the feedback from our player base, we can confidently push forward on a number of our near-term planned updates.
The great news is that we didn’t see any nasty surprises during launch, and are also enjoying an extremely high adoption rate. We’re going to be a lot louder concerning upcoming fixes and additions, so read on and enjoy.
1. Legendary mode is coming
This is the first time we’ve announced this, but there’s a new mode on the way. Legendary mode will be here soon … and it’s free for everyone playing AOEO.
What’s that mean to you? It means new level 40 quests, new level 40 gear, and new challenges. In this first round of Legendary mode, we’ve created the first wave of Legendary quests with dozens of brand new pieces of Legendary gear.
If you’ve reached level 40, you can try your hand at the new Legendary quests for no extra cost, and if you are a Premium player, you have access to even more, cooler level 40 gear in the quests and in Cyprus stores.
Click for a sneak peak at gear!
Note, these quests are HARD. (I still can’t beat most of them). We have some sick playtesters, so be ready for a challenge.
Our goal is to continue creating and expanding on the end game in Age of Empires Online. This is just the first step toward more end-game content.
We hope to have this for you sometime in September.
[img]https://blufiles.storage.live.com/y1pN-0MlHpMlRp6GXhfy2IwWtp3o2vmbEvYagPCrHSCuTXa6oklLZjxT2kNL63vkueQuCC5AIX1hbc/legendary.jpg?psid=1[/img]
2. Crete rewards improvements!
We’ve been listening to you all, and we’re happy to announce some new improvements to the Defense of Crete rewards. We think you’ll agree this is a big improvement.
• Fixed some bugs in the way rewards were being calculated for Co-op players who did not already have the associated quest.
• Added 1 loot chest from the standard quest pool (not the custom Crete Loot Table) to all Crete quests (even “Elite Meet in Crete”)
• Made sure the weekly quest, "Elite Meet in Crete," yields level-40 rewards
• The Challenge difficulty setting now yields level 39 and 40 rewards for players of at least level 38 and higher (to get level-40 chests, select 20 or 30 waves in addition to Challenge or Impossible)
• Increased XP for all standard invasion quests by 20-30%
• Increased Coin reward for 20 waves by 20-30% on average
• Increased Coin reward for 30 waves by 30-50% on average
• Boosted Coin reward for "Elite Meet in Crete," from 300 to 5,000 Coin
These changes should be coming out at mid-end September or thereabouts.
3. Persians
We are putting final touches on this new Pro Civ, and we are really happy with the results. GPG did a great job for this new civ.
• You go straight to the action by starting at level 20
• By purchasing the Pro Civ, you have immediate access to top leveling gear, Advisors, and quests. People looking to hit PvP at a higher level sooner will also really like this type of civ
• This civ acts as a great addition and complement your current Greek and Egyptian civilizations. By owning more than 1 civ, you will also receive an extra unit, the Golden Hippikon.
The art is gorgeous, and we love the Immortal units and the Cataphracts/armored cavalry. You will soon be able to check out the free demo and judge for yourselves.
Keep in mind, the Persians have all custom units, a new tech tree, and all unique architecture, so they require a very different approach to play. We’ve also been playtesting them hard against Egyptians and Greeks in PvP.
Hopefully, we will be releasing this new civ in October.
4. Skirmish Hall
We’ve been playing Skirmish Hall every day for weeks.
• Huge new maps
• Configurable AI strategies
• Customized starting resources and AI difficulty
Skirmish is a blast already. (I could play it for months). We’re still working on this booster, because we want this to be great.
5. Additional ongoing work
We have moved into post-launch mode, and our goal is to continue improving the game, while balancing that with new content and features.
• Making lots of Co-op and PvP improvements (the feedback has been great). Some of these will appear in the upcoming patch. Some are taking longer and will appear in the following patch. Our team is focused on making both Co-Op and PVP better.
• Improving trade channel and fixing hotlinks
• Improving Co-op rewards—specifically, what rewards people get when helping someone else Co-op. We’re still working on the right answer to this.
• We also have fixes in the near future for the following:
o Exploits in certain quests
o PVP leaderboard problems
o PVP matchmaking (we know level 40s are sometimes matching with level 5s)
o Trade scamming
OK, we just wanted to reach out and let you all know what’s coming from us in the short term. We have some very cool new things planned, and we’ll keep updating you all with specifics as we go.
Thanks,
Ian
http://forums.ageofempiresonline.com/for…ShowThread.aspx
Hmmm finde das wird immer Dubioser, das mit den Legendary Items schön und gut, das man Sie für Gold kaufen kann und keines Quest dafür braucht, dafür läuft es dann auf Gold Farming heraus?
Wenn ich mal zusammenrechne dann kostet es nen Hopliten "komplett Legendär" auszustatten 81k Gold... Wenn aber Hopliten, Toxoten, Hyspasisten, Peltasten, Speermänner, Prodomos, Hippikon, Sarrisopoi komplett Legendär ausstatten will muss ich 8 x ~ 80k Gold ausausgeben = 648 k Gold.... Also doch Gold bei Ebay verkaufen...
Irgendwie nehmen sie doch über die Tour die jetzigen Items ausm Spiel, im Endeffekt kann ich jetzt alles Epische was ich finde verkaufen damit ich genug Kohle für den Legendären Mist habe...