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The following is the translation of the OP in an AOE2 forum. Note: Keep in mind that these are rumours/leaks only! Nothing has been confirmed or backed by any solid evidence
[spoiler=spoiler]Original post by A (posted on the 19th of September at 2.56pm GMT):

Although I feel like such design will result in losing support from the veterans, this might actually be a line of thought. The micro-management of traditional RTS games is much more demanding than that of the MOBA genre, hence giving a very difficult time to new players to learn the basics. It might be essential to lower the need for micro-management.

The replies as follows:

A: Alright. Just another few hours and I could play the closed alpha/beta of Age of Empires 4, and I am looking forward to seeing how it looks like.

B: Replying to A: AOE4? Shouldn’t it be Age of Empires 1 Definitive Edition instead?

C : Replying to A: Shouldn’t Age of Empires 4 still be in pre-alpha planning? What you are playing now might be Age of Empires 1 Definitive Edition.

A: Replying to B: Yes, it is Age of Empires 4. Haven’t played much Age of Empires 1…

A: Replying to C : I don’t know since I don’t play much Age of Empires 1

C : Replying to A: Has Age of Empires 4 reached the stage of closed alpha/beta already? How could it be so soon?

A: (random emote)

A: Replying to C : But it might take another while before it is released.

C : Replying to A: I understand now. Thanks man (literally ‘boss’). Would you mind (or be able to) telling us which era would the game be in?

A: Replying to C : Almost all people made the wrong guess.[/spoiler]
[spoiler=spoiler]Another post made by someone on the same day at 11.25pm GMT:

Some of those (‘decisions on features/mechanics’, I guess) are largely based on the balance between realism and playability.

The replies as follows:

D: Nice to meet you. I watched the trailer of (Age of Empires 1) Definitive Edition, and there was a scene where the camera zoomed out from up close to far away (as shown in the screenshot by the first comment), showing that the screen could fit in more units in HD graphics! Extremely spectacular! I hope the fourth generation (Age of Empires 4) is going to have a larger scale for camera zoom, not only will it give people a grander experience, it will also allow the ratios of ranges of different types of unit to be overall closer to real-world values. The first and second generation (Age of Empires 1 and 2) did not have to take such thing into consideration as the era of cold weapons was dominated by close combat.

A: Reply: After trying out the alpha/beta version of Age of Empires 4 today, a few of us, including E and F, would like to point out that the game features which many of you have been worrying about are not going to happen (be in the game). Everyone was very satisfied with (today’s) experience. Then we went to a bar/pub and have been drinking until now, which is already after midnight.[/spoiler]
Let us continue our discussion!

Edit: The OP in this thread has been removed as per request by the original author, and is now replaced with a translated version with names hidden as per request.

Eh... this doesn't even make sense. Is it normal to wait until they almost finished beta to even announce the game?

We thought that MS just started making AOE4, and it'll be 1-2 years before we see it. But they already finished it and are testing it now. Isn't it a good news?

I would expect them to release DE long before IV. This all seems so weird. I am not convinced.

Lol I saw the title and expected it to be a troll/clickbait thread. Awesome if this is true.

Wow, this is incredible!

[redacted]

We had some leaks in the AoE2 community too, but we weren't sure that it was going to be AoE4.

[redacted]

they shouldn't only invite AOE2 top players to test this. So I guess H2O/mitoe/someone else may have played AOE4 too?

*heavy breathing*

As far as i know there were only a handful (10) of guests and like 90% of them is from AoE2 (1 or 2 from AoEO). Sounds a bit unfair, yeah, but i just hope the game will be good.

If the aoe2 players encountered no "bad designs" from their perspective then that makes me worried.

Idk about the veracity of this aoe4 beta claim anymore.

I dont buy it frankly. Game is like 3 years away from release. There are all the DE to complete and playtest (just look at how long it took for aoe1:DE from the announcement date).
There is probably nothing at all ready to play yet.

[redacted]

It is a fact though that a lot of AoE2 players are in Vancouver these days at Relic's. If [redacted] is making up this story right now i don't know, but at this point it is not really hard to believe what he is saying.

[redacted]

Also nothing has been done about the leaks that there were in the AoE2 community.

Sounds pretty farfetched to me.

ye. THey announced aoe 2 and 3 DE and aoe 4. Logic tells me that they will be released in chronological order...

AoE 2 players like AoE4 design. It's doomed!

Nice fucking watermark.

I cant see any logic in releasing aoe4 before or even to close to aoe2 and aoe3 DE, it would pretty much guarantee that those games are fails.. I cant say if those leaks are or arent true, but it is so much ilogical that I still believe aoe4 is 2+ years away.

(maybe even they have a "playable concept" that they are using to test mechanics to see what works and what doesnt, before comiting too much res in the wrong direction.. I suppose thats a possibility)

The fact that AoE4 will probably come in ~2 years doesn't imply that there can't be a playtest version now. The game might have been in the works for 2 years already for all we know.

Maybe DEs are ready too, so in a year they release all of them.

HUMMAN wrote:Maybe DEs are ready too, so in a year they release all of them.

They haven't even started work on AoE2:DE and aren't yet sure who will develop the 2 & 3 DEs, according to this announcement: https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/ ... nd_aoe2de/

gamevideo113 wrote:It is a fact though that a lot of AoE2 players are in Vancouver these days at Relic's. If [redacted] is making up this story right now i don't know, but at this point it is not really hard to believe what he is saying.

[redacted]

Also nothing has been done about the leaks that there were in the AoE2 community.

Well if that's the case they might be doing some sort of briefing for general feedback/brainstorming. They maybe reached out some aoe3 guys as well.
There is simply no way they have something to play test at this stage, unless they actually started to make the game like 2-3 years ago, in which case it is in play testing stage and will likely be released next year. This obviously sounds very odd.

I heard guys like daut, viper, zac were flying out to relic vancouver over a week ago and then I saw this post and put two and two together. I assumed since FE are managing aoe2 DE it was something different idk? Could all just be a bunch of rumours I guess?

I have easily been misled in the past.

any reason why they would take AOE2 guys rather than AOE3, or at least a mix of both? I don't get it

cuz AoE2 is more popular I guess