Age of Empires: Online

Age of Empires Online is a multiplayer online real-time strategy game developed by Robot Entertainment and Gas Powered Games and released on August 16, 2011. It is based on the gameplay of the Age of Empires series and was originally developed by Robot Entertainment, but on February 24, 2011 Gas Powered Games took over production. The game was published by Microsoft. The game was free-to-play, i.e. it could be played for free. However, premium content could be purchased, such as access to special items and blueprints as well as additional quests and features. On March 27, 2012, the game premiered on Steam after a major overhaul patch fixed the complaints about the "MMO-like grind" and many other features, along with the debut of the Celtic civilization. On June 15, 2012, the premium content system was changed to offer the ability to purchase all past and future content through "realm points" earned in-game or to purchase the points directly with real money. On January 3, 2013, Microsoft discontinued further development of the game. A Microsoft representative later announced in the forums that the Games for Windows - Live Marketplace would be closed on August 22, 2013, so that the game would only be accessible to current or former players. In September 2013, it was announced that the game would remain functional until July 1, 2014, when the service would be shut down. The reason given for the closure was that the content was too expensive to maintain. In 2017, Age of Empires Online was restored with the help of the developer kit released by Microsoft for the game and is now hosted on a server emulator called "Project Celeste". The game is free to play in single-player and multiplayer modes, with all online features fully enabled. In May 2019, the team announced that it was developing Microsoft's unreleased Roman civilization for the game, based on all known data of the civilization before the official servers were closed. It was completed and released on March 14, 2021