Age of Empires
Age of Empires is a series of historical real-time strategy video games, originally developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft Studios. The first title of the series was "Age of Empires", released in 1997. Seven titles and three spin-offs have been released.
Age of Empires Online
During early production, "Age of Empires Online" was originally called "Age of Empires IV". The development team had noticed that many other RTS game developers had moved away from the "economic game". The team felt that "" had blended the economic and military aspects of the game perfectly, so they decided to play test it with hindsight. They noticed that many features had been lost or changed over time. It was during this time the team decided to do an ""Age of Kings" style gameplay in an "Age of Empires" setting". The designers were surprised that fans of the series were most fond of the simpler aspects of the previous titles. Former "Age of Empires II" lead designer Ian M. Fischer stated, "When we started floating some of the early [AoEO] out to people other pieces fell into place – I cannot tell you how many times I have had someone email me or talk to me at a show and mention how much they loved the villagers carrying big hunks of meat in the original Age or the priest "wololo"". From that point on, one of the goals was to invoke nostalgia from fans of the series when playing the game, despite the newer and updated features.