Whether we like it or not, MS has made a decision not to support Voobly, and it was clear from beginning, that they won't be able to unite the community without a cross-play scenario or even completely reviving the Zone using the Voobly or their own client. And let's be honest, the decision was 100% a political decision, else they would have to admit, that their (XBox) decision to retire the Zone was a huge mistake, since the community still wants it back, after more than 13 years, after classic Zone was shut down.
The second political decision was retiring Aoe2HD with the expectation, that everyone would buy the game for the third (or even fourth time, if you include Age of Empires II Gold Edition) and that everyone would move from HD to DE, which also didn't happen. Instead of uniting the community, we now have three communities.
I am following the discussions on AoeZone for quiet a while, and I really don't understand, when people say, that they didn't expect Voobly to do this or that along with comments that the client is outdated or wasn't touched for years. Voobly is a community project, if you want to contribute, especially if you have something to contribute, just get in touch with me and we will try to get it implemented. Also understand that there isn't an organization or a group of people called "Voobly", everyone on Voobly, including myself are volunteers keeping this place alive. We are contributing as much we want and as little we can, and we do it in our free time, that means we also have to work from 8 to 5 every day, we also got a family and other hobbies.
I know, the Voobly web site is now ten years old and has not changed much, but do you have any idea, how many months of work (full time of course) you would have to spent, before you can even release a newly designed and modern web site? Regarding the client, how is it outdated? It is 100% compatible with Windows 10, and there are no requests that would require immediate updates. We have a stable platform that works, and it takes many hours and lots of work to keep it in its current state. With every sever update, we have to keep our code up to date, even though nothing noticeably has changed for people playing on the client, we talk about up to 50 hrs every year. Just to keep up the status quo.
And then of course my favorite "blame", Voobly has done nothing, while Scripter and WK have done all the work. Oh come on, I don't know how many hours I have worked with Scripter and Elusive, until everything was working as it should, so everyone could enjoy UP 1.5 with Wololo Kingdoms on Voobly. Without Scripter and the WK team we would not have been able to do this, because we simply don't have the time resources to achieve this. Do me at least the favor and thank Scripter and the WK team for contributing to Voobly, if you don't want to give me or Elusive any recognition. It's really pissing me off to read this crap over and over again.
For me it matters, that the game I play is stable with good performance, and I certainly don't care about fancy graphics or a company like MS, who wants to print money on their Mixer platform. A platform that does not even offer a Twitch integration and just wants to promote their own platform and completely removes the ability to communicate on their multiplayer platform, nicely shows, what they are after and what they want us to do on Mixer. And then of course that Age of Empires IV video which reminds me of Age of Empires Online with its comic-like graphics. I guess it will only be a matter of time, until we even see microtransactions in game. Just like EA they are milking their customers by releasing the same products over and over again. Let's hope, that at least Blizzard goes back to its roots and releases a game like D2 again.
The second political decision was retiring Aoe2HD with the expectation, that everyone would buy the game for the third (or even fourth time, if you include Age of Empires II Gold Edition) and that everyone would move from HD to DE, which also didn't happen. Instead of uniting the community, we now have three communities.
- The old Zone community, that (for the most part) plays on Voobly,.
- We have many, really many players on Steam that plays HD and probably never played or even remembers the Zone (and it is unclear how many players on HD were just playing on single player mode).
- ... and we have now a newly growing DE community on a cross-platform on Steam / Windows Store.
I am following the discussions on AoeZone for quiet a while, and I really don't understand, when people say, that they didn't expect Voobly to do this or that along with comments that the client is outdated or wasn't touched for years. Voobly is a community project, if you want to contribute, especially if you have something to contribute, just get in touch with me and we will try to get it implemented. Also understand that there isn't an organization or a group of people called "Voobly", everyone on Voobly, including myself are volunteers keeping this place alive. We are contributing as much we want and as little we can, and we do it in our free time, that means we also have to work from 8 to 5 every day, we also got a family and other hobbies.
I know, the Voobly web site is now ten years old and has not changed much, but do you have any idea, how many months of work (full time of course) you would have to spent, before you can even release a newly designed and modern web site? Regarding the client, how is it outdated? It is 100% compatible with Windows 10, and there are no requests that would require immediate updates. We have a stable platform that works, and it takes many hours and lots of work to keep it in its current state. With every sever update, we have to keep our code up to date, even though nothing noticeably has changed for people playing on the client, we talk about up to 50 hrs every year. Just to keep up the status quo.
And then of course my favorite "blame", Voobly has done nothing, while Scripter and WK have done all the work. Oh come on, I don't know how many hours I have worked with Scripter and Elusive, until everything was working as it should, so everyone could enjoy UP 1.5 with Wololo Kingdoms on Voobly. Without Scripter and the WK team we would not have been able to do this, because we simply don't have the time resources to achieve this. Do me at least the favor and thank Scripter and the WK team for contributing to Voobly, if you don't want to give me or Elusive any recognition. It's really pissing me off to read this crap over and over again.
For me it matters, that the game I play is stable with good performance, and I certainly don't care about fancy graphics or a company like MS, who wants to print money on their Mixer platform. A platform that does not even offer a Twitch integration and just wants to promote their own platform and completely removes the ability to communicate on their multiplayer platform, nicely shows, what they are after and what they want us to do on Mixer. And then of course that Age of Empires IV video which reminds me of Age of Empires Online with its comic-like graphics. I guess it will only be a matter of time, until we even see microtransactions in game. Just like EA they are milking their customers by releasing the same products over and over again. Let's hope, that at least Blizzard goes back to its roots and releases a game like D2 again.