By October 27, 2004, combined sales of "Thrones and Patriots" and the base game "Rise of Nations" had passed one million copies worldwide. On October 28, 2004, "Rise of Nations: Gold Edition" was released for Microsoft Windows. The new product included both the original "Rise of Nations" and "Thrones and Patriots". In November 2004, a port of "Rise of Nations: Gold Edition" was released for Mac OS X. It was published by MacSoft and developed by both Big Huge Games and Westlake Interactive. In December 2012, official servers for "Thrones and Patriots" were shut down by GameSpy Technologies, which made it difficult for multiplayer matches to be played officially online. Programs like GameRanger could be used to continue playing multiplayer games online without the usage of official game servers. The rights to the assets and intellectual property of "Rise of Nations," "Thrones and Patriots," and "Rise of Legends" and the Big Huge Games trademark were sold in the bankruptcy auction of 38 Studios to Microsoft Studios on December 11, 2013. Gross proceeds of the auction totaled $320,000. "Rise of Nations: Extended Edition" is a re-release of the main game and the expansion on Steam that was released on June 12, 2014. Graphical changes to the game include updated textures, lighting and water. Other changes to the game include Steamworks integration which will add cloud saves, Steam Trading Cards, achievements, Twitch integration and multiplayer with Elo ranked matches to the game. "Extended Edition" is developed by SkyBox Labs. "Rise of Nations: Thrones and Patriots" received "generally favorable reviews", about two points shy of "universal acclaim", according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. In its review, IGN claimed that "Thrones and Patriots" is "a great game [which] gets better," in reference to its predecessor "Rise of Nations". "Computer Gaming World" stated that the game is what expansion packs should try to mimic. "Game Informer" declared that "Rise of Nations: Thrones and Patriots" is "one of the essential pieces of any strategy gamer’s collection." GameSpot commented that the game is a terrific experience and it not only provides exceptional content, but that it also improves an already good game. In the expansion pack, many insignificant changes were introduced to complement the existing game structure, rather than radically alter it, and critics considered the continuing of the original game format to be good.