Age Of Empire is regarded as one of the finest RTS ever created. It was released by Microsoft in October 16,1997 under the banner of Ensemble studios. Its first edition was an overnight success which paves the way for Age Of Kings, which was made to be focused on medieval battles stretching all across from Europe to Middle East, It allows player to pick from thirteen different civilization and also allow player to customize match settings for online PVP. Later On August 24, 2000, Microsoft published the expansion, The Conquerors. It added new units and five new civilizations, including two American civilizations; the Mayans and the Aztecs. The Conquerors was a huge hit, selling over 2 million copies worldwide and was also honored with the 2001 "Best strategy game of the year". Following that success Microsoft launches Age of Empire III which did good but received a lot of bad criticism from all over the community and so nearly after a decade Microsoft decided to put thier focus on AOE II back by pulling out Age of Empire's 2, "HD edition" The HD Edition included both the original game and the expansion The Conquerors, as well as updated graphics for high-resolution displays. In November 2013, a second expansion entitled The Forgotten was released by Microsoft exclusively for the HD Edition. A third expansion named The African Kingdoms was released by Microsoft in November 2015, also exclusively for the HD Edition. A fourth expansion entitled Rise of the Rajas was released on 19 December 2016. On August 21, 2017, Microsoft announced Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition.
THE MICROSOFT EFFECT.
Now to this day Microsoft didn't produce any sort of expansion or DLCs for Age of Empire 2 even though they really didn't sponsor any tournament in nearly a decade with massive amount and advertisement like they did in 2000 for 100K. But now things are changing and it seems that after observing massive growth in the AOE community, all of a sudden Microsoft decided to sponsor staggering 60000 USD tournament.
Although most of the people are still curious that why Microsoft is willing to sponsor a game which originally date backs to 20th century?, why not its original third edition which was released in 2005?, Well the answer is tricky but also pretty simple to understand, By having better graphics, game mechanics, animations and what else could make a game easily more attractive but not necessarily more competitive to play. On the other hand AOE II players are generally different from other gamers like compare it to fortnite? AOE players are generally categorized as the most hyper active, broad thinker mature gamers (because they have to make strategies in every other minute in the game) they generally like to be competitive and by competitiveness I mean that by having more elegant precise functions and commands in the game, why?, simple to have the full game control like having control of every unit, villager, resource to optimize their in-game performance to the Maximum level that's why you see so many kind of build guides,
army compositions, counter units and what not in AOC forums.
TOURNAMENT BACKGROUND.
Age of Empire has a good enough, but very small community in comparison of other RTS multiplayer games like Warhammer and Starcraft but the community is pretty mature, they are like a family and always support each other whether is of supporting streamers on twitch or directly supporting expert player by organizing events with some respectable Prize pools. The most recent tournament that took place in 2018 catch the hype & attention from all over the internet in which Tyrant's beaten the unbeaten Aftermath by 4-0 in a 7 match final to seal their victory. The BOA final was telecast on Memb Tv and T90 officials twitch channels in which it broke record of more than 10k viewers combine since two of the world best player of the community "clearly" The Viper & non other than Lierry were leading their sides.
INSIGHTS OF HAPPENING
After that massive success of Battle of Africa, Caster and AOE tournament organizer Zack aka Zero Empire plead Microsoft to sponsor another but "big" tournament after that 2000 World League...he quoted as,
"I as a ambassador of community tried to convince Microsoft and cleared to them, that we are now capable to organize and execute something bigger and so, gladly they accepted our request"
In a question he was asked by AOE event organizer and caster Nillie Aoe that what were Microsoft was looking for, on what terms they agreed on to sponsor such a staggering amount" he replied,
"they really wanted to see audience response, the only motive I find behind that approval was to see the popularity in the market of AOE franchise throughout the world not only in Europe but in China, middle east and farther place as well"
This is the official trailer of Escape Championship League AOE II.Which will be live telecast on Escape Aoe YouTube channel
Courtesy Zero Empire YouTube Channel.