Age of Empires Online (free from MS)

[hamin_aus]

http://ageofempiresonline.com

It uses Games For Windows Live (yes yes, I know) and boasts:

• A persistent online capital city that lives and grows even when you’re offline
• Cooperative multiplayer quests, trading and a level-based system that lets you progress at your own pace
• Fun, approachable style and storylines
• Free-to-play experiences via Games for Windows – LIVE

Is anyone playing?
Want to?
I'm going to start tonight and will be looking for buddies to co-op with.
It's about a year old now and from what I have heard it's matured to a point where playing it is enjoyable - so I figure why not.

[senile]

Good luck to those downloading it on adsl. It takes ages to download (see what i did there?) and after 20 minutes of installation time it bombs out with a library error. When you click Retry you'd think it retries installation. Wrong! It starts downloading again! Yes, downloads the entire installation from 0% !!! Windows Live FTW

[capanno]

Its taking forever to download, but I'm keen! What time will you be playing?

[Anakha56]

Whats the install size?

[hamin_aus]

Okay, so it took about 3 hours to download on my machine because it only went along at about 200KB/s, but finished just fine.

No idea what the install size is, I'm guessing about 2GB

Played last night from about 9PM - 10:30PM

Fun game, it's still got that old AoE feel to it, even if the graphics are a bit cartoonish, can see myself spending a few hours a week playing this. Not sure about times tho, since we are about 6 hours ahead of you guys I'll probably be playing in your early afternoon.

If you get it installed hit me up and we can maybe schedule some time on the weekend for co-op

[Anakha56]

Right... 2GB on a 384k line... This is going to be fun... Will start th download today and maybe I might be playing Saturday evening.

[Bladerunner]

Any possibility of getting an offline install file? (Games for Windows Live? Is that like Steam? DRM galore?)

[senile]

Any possibility of getting an offline install file? (Games for Windows Live? Is that like Steam? DRM galore?)

Much worse than steam in my opinion. The king of DRM.

If you get it installed hit me up and we can maybe schedule some time on the weekend for co-op

How will it handle latency?

[Hman]

I'd like an offline install as well so I could dl from work and take it home. But there's none available.

Is it possible to install GFWL at work, dl it and copy the files then take it home? Previous experience with it suggests that GFWL will ignore any and all data on drive and dl from scratch unlike Steam?

[senile]

Previous experience with it suggests that GFWL will ignore any and all data on drive and dl from scratch unlike Steam?

That is correct.

[Hman]

Carp!

[capanno]

Im going to break something. WTF is up with windows live? My account "has an error 80154002" so I can't sign in to get a product key, and, the xbox live site keeps conking out so I cant register a new account, or check wtf is wrong with my old one. UUURRGGGHH!

[senile]

When I tried the first time I got an error that the game is not available to South Africans. Has it changed since then?

[Ghostspock]

When I tried the first time I got an error that the game is not available to South Africans. Has it changed since then?

You can play the free game, but can't upgrade if your in SA. Someone I know registered an overseas windows Live ID and did something with his IP and he managed to upgrade.

[StarBound]

So it seems the game nearly died under the GFWL tag. An truly epic and, lets face it, "I TOLD YOU SO!" revival comes under the steam games list.

AoE is now front page of Steam. Since I already had to get a gfwl because of the other titles that still uses this retarded system I gave it a shot. I got to say I like it.

Still free, has dlc purchasable through steam BUT you need to have an oversees xbox account! Same issue with Batman Arkham City. If your not in EU or US then fake your details and get access to content. Or settle for the free version but be prepared for the constant "premium purchase" rewards from quests.

[StarBound]

Oh the install size is sitting at 4GB now and downloads additional content after launching the game.

[StarBound]

Seems that the additional content activates on steam. So if you missed out from the GFWL store than simply redownload from steam and buy and get your content activated.