Age of Empires Online

Age of Empires Online is a multiplayer online real-time strategy game developed by Robot Entertainment and Gas Powered Games, 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 the production. The game was published by Microsoft. The game was free-to-play, meaning that it could be played for free. However, premium content could be purchased, such as access to special items and blueprints, as well as more quests and features. On March 27, 2012, the game premiered on Steam after a major revision patch fixed complaints about the "MMO-like grind" and many other features, along with the debut of Celtic Civilization. On June 15, 2012, the premium content system was changed to offer the possibility of purchasing all past and future content through "realm points" earned in-game or by buying the points directly with real money. On January 3, 2013, Microsoft stopped further development of the game. A Microsoft representative later announced on the forums that the Games for Windows - Live Marketplace would be closed on August 22, 2013, leaving the game accessible only 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 it was too expensive to maintain the content. In 2017, Age of Empires Online was restored using Microsoft's published developer kit for the game and is now hosted on a server emulator called Project Celeste. The game can be played for free 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