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quentin
Микрософт не только АоЕ продавал. Но АоЕ - первый удачный Микрософтовский проект, как издателя, у него вообще удачных проектов мало...
Вот кстати, процитирую бочку мёда, излитую на АоЕ геймспаем:
Back in 1997, 47 real-time strategy (RTS) games were announced. Out of the myriad of choices arose one game that would captivate strategy players of all calibers and that many claim revolutionized the genre, as well as spawned dozens of copycat titles.
Age of Empires (AoE) surprised a lot of people, including Microsoft, by selling over a million copies in the first six months. Many believe that AoE helped kick-start Microsoft's rise from a wanna-be games publisher (anyone remember MS Basketball or Hellbender?) to one of the top 5 publishers in the business today. Age developer, Ensemble Studios, was just getting started and lured Bruce Shelley, a top designer who worked on the famed Civilization series with the legendary Sid Meier, to work on the title.
I remember, back in the summer of 1997, hearing about this little game from one of the gaming magazine previews. I thought it sounded interesting since I cut my teeth on RTS games with Dune II a number of years previous. I visited Microsoft's official site and found that they would be allowing people to sign up to be beta testers for the game. Nowadays, this marketing tactic is commonplace in the games industry, but in 1997, regular fans getting a chance to play a game before it hit the store shelves was almost unheard of.
The kicker with this promotion was that the sign-up form would go live at an unspecified time on a specific day. I, and I'm sure many others, sat at work all day constantly refreshing the contest page, hoping to be among the first couple of hundred to sign up for the chance to play the beta. Needless to say I didn't win this opportunity, but did buy a copy as soon as it hit the store shelves.
I can honestly say that it was this game that invoked my passion for computer games and eventually led me to a career in this business!
But what made this game stand out from the other 46 in the field that year? I'd have to say it was the reality-based, real-time warfare that kept players coming back for more. There were no Orcs or Dragons and no Raptor attack cycles, just ancient civilizations vying for dominance on the battlefield.
Age of Empires is an epic real-time strategy game spanning 10,000 years. Players start with minimal resources and are challenged to build their Stone Age tribes into great civilizations. Most RTS games of this time came with 3-6 different teams to play, but AoE shipped with 12 diverse civilizations, which were amazingly well balanced considering the wide variety of units and technologies available. This in itself made for an interesting mix, but what made this game stay on many players hard drive for a very long time, was the re-playability of the title.
The strong, historically based single-player campaigns were complimented with an amazing array of multiplayer options. Even if you played through all the campaigns you could choose to fight the computer in multiplayer battles on randomly generated maps. The random maps are what helped spark a vast community of AoE fan sites dedicated to strategies and tactics in the multiplayer arena.
Up to eight players could play at once, with the host determining a variety of game settings, like location (small islands, hill country, etc.), population limit, starting age, number of resources and more. While many games allowed you and your friends to embark upon a free-for-all style of play where the last man standing was the winner, AoE allowed you to team up with other players and engage in what I feel was the most addictive style of play of any game in existence. Sure, now we have games like EverCrack (Everquest) and Asheron's Call that are extremely addictive, but many an Ager (term coined for the illness that many players succumbed to) would play for hours on end engaging in multiple 1-3 hour marathon games with their friends. Whether it was on the Zone or via direct IP, multiplayer action was where the game shined.
The difference between AoE and a title like Starcraft was that, aside from the predetermined maps where you knew where every mound of gold and every berry bush were located, AoE could generate random maps on the fly. Until you had time to explore your surroundings with troops and find the required resources and a good defensive spots to build your walls and buildings, everyone was equal. There was no extra advantage of knowing the map ahead of time.
In AoE you commanded many units, including such favorites as Chariot Archers, War Elephants, Catapults, and Triremes. Strategies for the various civs developed over time and the fan site message board threads were filled with subjects such as "Assyrian Archer rush rules!" and "Shang boom will dominate!" I remember when I perfected the Archer rush. My buddies were always crying when I slaughtered them, but then a counter to that was discovered and I had to develop a new strategy. This seemed to be a regular occurrence with this game, and one of the many reasons why it was so well received and maintained its longevity.
Aside from the usual "drag-click 15 catapults then click on building" type of battles, managing your economy and trading effectively was what separated the average players from the pros. Teammates could trade resources and set up trade routes with their ships to accumulate gold once the land's supply was exhausted.
A huge 100-node technology tree was set up to allow civilizations to advance throughout the ages. A player might start off with a weak stone wall, but while researching technologies throughout the ages, evolve it into a fortified stone structure. There was never a single technological route to victory, but rather a combination of advancing technology, units, and economy to outwit and outlast your opponent.
Age of Empires spawned an expansion pack, Rise of Rome, which added new units, campaigns and technologies. A sequel, Age of Empires II: Age of Kings was published in 1999 along with its own expansion, The Conquerors, in 2000. Then in holiday 2000, Microsoft compiled all four of these titles into the Age Collectors Edition, a limited edition, numbered box that also included collector cards and a compilation soundtrack. If you've been living in a cave these last four years and never played any of the Age series of games, pick up the Collectors Edition while you can still find it on store shelves.
Age of Empires helped put Ensemble Studios and Microsoft on the map and the series helped re-define the real-time strategy genre for many years to come. With over five million units sold between the four titles, it's with little surprise that we add Age of Empires to the Gamespy Hall of Fame.
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, и прочие ветераны (это я почтительно), НО там АоЕ на 16 месте.
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