Gas Powered Games says the online RTS is moving into a “support phase,” and no new content will be created.
The times, they are a-changin’ for Age of Empires Online, the free-to-play RTS from Microsoft and Gas Powered Games. Despite not having every last feature the team wanted to include, the decision has been made to stop content development and focus instead on taking care of what’s already there.
The good news for players (which is of course the bad news too) is that nothing is actually going to change. “You can still play everything you own, earn EP, and purchase any content you do not currently own. We will still fully maintain and support the game and its players; no one is losing anything that you have earned or bought,” AOEO Trajan explained. “Our Community team will continue to support the game by way of Community Challenges, streams, contests, PvP tournaments and more.”
Bug fixes will continue but at a slower pace, and he admitted that some may go unfixed. He also emphasized that the game is not dying; the simple fact is that Gas Powered Games can no longer afford to keep making new content for it.
“While I wish that we had been able to add everything that we had wanted (especially a Roman civilization), I am very proud of the work that has been done to get to this point. Over the past year specifically we have made a significant amount of changes to the service, including highly complex changes like altering the business model entirely, while still adding a steady stream of high-quality content to the game itself,” Trajan wrote. “We have come a long way since August 2011. But now we have finished building the world of AOEO. We hope that you will join us in playing there for a long time to come.”
Source: Age of Empires Online
