Rogan Knight reaches Hurst Castle!
Rogan Knight, the figurine which is on its way to fans around the world to be finally sent to Robot Entertainment when the game launches has reached his second destination – The United Kingdom, home to all sorts of things including Remember ES and Hurst Castle. Indeed, the famous knight has been helping out the defenses at Hurst Castle on the South Coast of England. Without his valiant assistance things may have gone differently! Here he is preparing to enter the castle’s defenses…
Age of Empires Online development blog – “The #1 Thing You Need to Know About Age of Empires Online”
Ian Vogel the design lead at Microsoft Games Studios has posted a blog on the Ageofempiresonline.com website. The blog post goes into detail about the business model behind the game explaining the content which will be available in both the free and premium versions of the game. The blog post also explains some of the extra add on “booster packs” like the “Vanity packs” which allow users to get access to more tools to develop interesting and exciting looking home cities. Below is an example of a maze created by beta tester Solartide: Read more
Rogan on route to Remember ES!
RadioKenny of the Age of Empires Online forums recently came up with a genuis idea to send a small action figure around the world and at each stop members of the AOE-O community will sign their names into passport book before posting it off to the next fan. The action figure is a perfect testament to Age of Empires, a knight called Rogan. Here is Rogan at his first stop in Dallas, Texas with Radio Kenny: Read more
Graeme Devine describes the past and present game industry
Graeme Devine has recently given a presentation to the Baskin Engineering School in Santa Cruz, where he now resides talking about the past and present state of the gaming industry. Graeme describes the previous generation of the gaming industry as “dead” and that the industry is moving forward into new business models. Stepping away from the “four year dev cycles, massive teams and publisher budgets” and moving towards smaller teams, indie development and “creation games”. Graeme kicked off his presentation with a mention to his time at Ensemble Studios working on Halo Wars. Ensemble had a 120 strong team working on the Halo Wars project (although there were other projects in development along side). Graeme made note that 120 is alot of people to work on a game and questions whether such a team size is sustainable. Read more
Age of Empires Online – Egyptians revealed plus pricing model details
Alot of news has been floating around the internet today on various gaming websites such as IGN, Gamasutra and Joystiq reporting on the news that Microsoft has announced the Egyptians as a playable civilization in Age of Empires Online! This means that the Greeks and the Egyptians are the two civilisations announced so far for inclusion in Age of Empires Online. With this news comes a new trailer with a.. interesting ending plus a new graphic for AOE-O picturing the Greeks vs the Egyptians as below: Read more
“Rather large” Age of Empires Online announcement coming tonight!
Microsoft has announced on its Facebook and Twitter accounts that there is going to be a “rather large” announcement going out tonight about Age of Empires Online. Make sure you are in the loop about whats happening by following Age of Empires Online on Twitter and Facebook. The full facebook and twitter post reads as follows:
We’ll have a rather large announcement coming tonight! Keep your eyes peeled!
Microsoft brings good tidings to 2011 with another wave of AOE-O beta invites
Good news if you are still in need of a beta invite for Age of Empires Online – CosyGOODkNIGHT on the Age of Empires Online forums has revealed that Microsoft plans to send out a new wave of invites over the next 24hrs. So keep an eye on your inbox’s you may strike lucky and get a chance to check out what your favorite Robot’s have been upto!
Robot Entertainment signs off from Age Community
January 3rd 2011 marks the day when Robot Entertainment officially retires from Age Community both the forum support and the support for ESO. Robot took over the support for Age Community and ESO shortly after Ensemble closed its doors In February 2009, the support in place at Robot was similar to the support offered at Ensemble. Microsoft has decided to take operations of Age 3 in house and will be lead by some of the same Community team behind Age of Empires Online plus a dedicated community administrator for Age Community. Read more
Microsoft to take over Age Community
Unfortunately, the time as come for Robot Entertainment so sign off on Age Community and hand over day to day support for community operations to Microsoft Games Studios. The transition starts today, with Ryz0n 
taking the reins as community support moderator. Ryzon commented:
The folks here at MGS are transitioning into supporting the AOE community. Along those lines, I’ll be working on forum administration, account support, and generally keeping everything running as well as possible. Our goal, as we move through the transition period, is to make the user experience change very little and have the service chug along without any issues into the foreseeable future. I’ll be coming up to speed and working with Robot on the community, server issues, and support for the titles. Read more
Robot’s heading East!
Robot Entertainment have recently announced that they will have their very own presence at next years PAX East in Boston from March 9th to March 12th 2011. PAX East is a festival where video game developers from all over come together for exhibitions and to show off some of their latest work. With a bunch of Robot’s heading up to the festival we could see some brand new work from inside the Robot factory. Based on the contents of Robot’s latest blog it would seem Robot may have its own independent stall and not part of Microsoft Game Studios which means they may be free to potentially talk about projects other than Age of Empires Online – in other words there could well be some news about Game 2.0! Read more
