Rumors of Trojan in Age Related Hack: Our community team is investigating rumors that downloadable software that supposedly allows you to cheat in Age games has a little bonus inside. We are trying to confirm rumors that at least one of these hacking programs places a Trojan on your PC and then steals your account information. The hack gives a losing player a chance to take a losing game and turn it into a win. Apparently enough people are looking for a fraudulent edge that a market exists for this software, but the price might be unexpectedly high.
Age III Ladder Reset: At the end of April we are reset all of our ladders. Players collected any medals for which they qualify and the ladders have been restarted. The civilization ladders are being dropped and being replaced by a new set of Treaty ladders. Treaty games, which set a time period at the start during which there can be no attacks, have become very popular, but they were lumped together in our rankings with Supremacy games. Supremacy players, especially, disliked this. As for both Supremacy and Death Match, the Treaty ladders rank total wins, wins in each of 1v1, 2v2, and 3v3 games, and power rating. We believe the new ladders will make Treaty games even more fun and attractive to play, and we believe the Supremacy players will like their undiluted rankings.
Play Age III like an Expert: Top Age III player Parfait has posted some video strategy tips on the web site RTSProfessional.com that may help you raise your skill level a notch or two. Parfait took second place in the World Cyber Games last year so he is one of the best and most experienced Age players in the world. There are currently three video guides available on the site- Attack Move, The Art of Espionage, and Crossbow Contain (how Germany can contain the Dutch). You watch a video of a game in action while Parfait himself describes the strategy as it unfolds on screen. These are very cool and a great example of how players can invest in a game and make it a better value, far beyond what a developer can ever anticipate. It will be interesting to see if more guides appear. Check them out here.
http://www.rtsprofessional.com/guides/aoe3/
Halo Wars Update: This game makes progress every day as testing and revising proceed, and new content goes in. I saw archive build #620 go by today. There are some rumors about this project floating around but we can’t comment on them at this time. We believe we have a great game in the works and hope to be able to tell you more about it soon.
ES Family Picnic: Our studio held a spring picnic at a Renaissance Festival near Dallas on a recent Saturday. The company arranged our own picnic area with food and tickets to the jousting event. Watching the mock battles and seeing so many people in period costumes brought back some Age of Kings memories. There was a large turnout of families and at least one ES alumni stopped by to visit. Here are a couple of photos thanks to Paul Bettner. The first shows the jousting at the festival. The second shows Dusty Monk on the left (wearing his Age of Empires III t-shirt) with his family and Ian Fischer on the right. You can see all of Paul’s photos here.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulbettner/sets/72157604784490808/
Office Design Input: Studio head Tony Goodman solicited feedback from the entire studio on some aspects of the new office space we are considering. He was interested in themes for individual office areas and a cool art piece for our foyer. Art piece ideas included actual historic aircraft suspended from the ceiling and dinosaur models. The theme thread was one of the longest I’ve seen at ES, and that is saying something, but I know Tony loves doing stuff like this when it gets so many people involved.
Theme ideas were all over the place, including the wild west, modern minimalist design, swamps, historic periods from our games, natural landscapes, open skies, video game favorites (PITFALL with the coffee machine on the far end), industrial/institutional looks (pig farm, landfill, seat shop, meat packing, prison), underwater, tree house, mountain lodge, Tuscan villa, favorite cities (Tokyo), and other company spaces (Pixar was popular). I believe some of these choices have a better chance than others and it will be interesting to see what Tony decides.
What ES’ers Are Playing: We’re in a crunch period right now for Halo Wars, but that didn’t keep people from buying GTA IV. It is being played during lunch or other break periods, and drawing interested bystanders, and I’m sure many of those new games will get playing time over the weekend. Early opinions are that it is amazingly content rich. An email thread about the games pros and cons went over 25 messages very quickly. Meanwhile WoW is getting some new life as several people who gave it up for a while have gone back for more.
Muffin Bandit Mystery: Our studio has provided snacks and drinks since our earliest days, and each week we get delivery of sodas, energy drinks, beef jerky, fresh fruit, vegetable trays, nuts, candy, yogurt, cookies, etc. A popular item is packages of muffins, with one package usually delivered to each of our three floors. Several months ago someone started ripping off the tops of muffins, leaving the rest behind. The depredations of the muffin bandit have continued intermittently ever since, providing a lot of amusement. We don’t know if we are dealing with one muffin bandit, or several imitators of the original. So far no one has been caught, or at least publicly exposed.
Bruce Shelley