Age of Empires has been around since 1997, but it first debuted online only three years ago. Tuesday, the online version of the game was taken down.
"We were ambitious and risky with AOEO in a number of respects; some of these experiments worked, and some did not. As the saying goes, I do think that we ended up among the stars, most of the time," executive producer Kevin Perry said in a blog post announcing the closure of "Age of Empires Online."
"Age of Empires Online" was launched in August of 2011. The gameplay headed back to the classic days of the "Age of Empires" games. Players could choose to play as the Greeks and the Egyptians and then later the Persians, the Celts and the Norse were available.
The game was free to play as the Greeks and Egyptians but there were annoying extra fees that prevented full game play from being free. A money paying player got more advantages and access to items, quests and other features of the game. A non-paying player probably wouldn't be able to get very far in the game.
Since the game is now offline, any money an "Age of Empires Online" player has spent up until now is no good.
But even with these annoying charges, "Age of Empires Online" players enjoyed their time on the game. There were over 524 million single-player quests completed. Cooperatively, over 13 million multiplayer quests were completed as well.
The older "Age of Empires" games scored much higher by game critics than the latest releases. GameRankings gave the 1997 "Age of Empires" game a 87 percent rating. The 2013 "Age of Empires II: HD Edition only scored a 71 percent rating from GameRankings.
Even with the success of massively multiplayer online (MMO) games, "Age of Empires Online" couldn't replicate the success of World of Warcraft and others.
"Age of Empires: World Domination" will come out sometime later this year for mobile devices. Rumors for an Xbox debut of "Age of Empires" have also surfaced by Microsoft.
