(Yes, I was still using dial-up internet, fight me). My friends ringing my home phone and disconnecting me from the game as soon as I was about to win my first match.These are a few stories that come to mind. MUCH to my surprise, MSN Zone had died (bah-bow) and we began using GameRanger to connect.Īs soon as we loaded in, fond memories from past games started to come back to me, and I couldn’t help but laugh at the fun we had. I jumped on MSN and Steam, told my nerdlinger friends to re-install and play with me. I looked at the discs, laughed for a second and began to re-install the ten year old game onto my laptop. ~`6 YeArS LaTeR`~Ī few months ago I found my Age of Empires discs sitting in my CD rack. Sadly, I shelved AoE II a few months later, growing tired of playing against international players, most of whom came from non-english speaking countries. I later developed my own Mongol Castle Age/Imperial strategy as you can see: These strategies were very difficult to master at first, but they surely led to a quick and dirty victory. I played some matches with international players, all of whom had mastered the Mongol AK-47 rush, 20 Knights in 20 minutes rush and the standard Scout rush and slowly increased my skill level. Who needs a social life when you’ve got shiny pixels by your side? I said au revoir to my stinky school friends, and welcomed the MSN Zone into my life. By this time, a few of my friends were getting tired of AoE II and decided to get a ‘life’ (whatever that means). It took me a few months to catch up to my school friends and I eventually started winning a few games. By the time I reached Feudal Age, my school friends were in Castle/Imperial and storming my base with paladins and trebuchets en masse. I don’t remember the exact details of our first game, but I remember getting smashed. We played our first AoE II game that very afternoon and after an hour of patching the same version, attempting to connect via MSN Zone and TCP/IP via the net, we got into a lobby and started up. Marc: What the hell, Mayans? Who the hell plays Mayans? Lol, noob. Marc, you can play Spanish and we’ll smash those idiots. I defeated the Britons with the help of William Wallace and his cavalier, what’s stopping me from destroying my friends and claiming victory in the online universe? Building a civilisation, managing four different resources AND building an army? Heck yes!Ī few days later, I discovered that my school friends were all over AoE II like a rash and my life soon became complete, as complete as it could be for a 13 year old kid anyway.
After playing through the free trial campaign as Celts, I knew this game would soon consume a lot of my time. I remember picking up Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings & Conquerors a little over six years ago from my local Dick Smith store for a modest sum of $49.95.