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    Age of Empires Online

    Game » consists of 1 releases. Released Aug 16, 2011

    One of the best-selling real time strategy franchises returns with Age of Empires Online, Microsoft's first title to utilize a free-to-play model. The game is no longer playable, as its servers were shut down in July 2014.

    Games for Windows Live - a fail story.

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    Tennmuerti

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    Edited By Tennmuerti

    A brave young man was trying out Age of Empires online a few days ago and finally decided to get the full experience so to say. This obviously required him to spend some moolah. Armed with a credit card in one hand our hero jovially clicks the blatant buy me icon in the game. Up pops up the Games for Windows Live interface. So far so good."OH NO" he exclaims. "microsoft points? WTF is this shit?" instantly summoning the image of Mr. Picard to his mind.

    No Caption Provided

    "fine" thinks the man and grits his teeth, "if we have to buy silly points we will buy points. Yes we indeed would like to top-up our points balance, duh." Forsooth another obstacle rears it's ugly head, he cannot purchase the points he needs to the exact amount and will have to part with more money then originally intended. Undaunted by this second obstacle he decides to take it all the way. Another click of a button. "Credit card info, finally" a ray of light starts to shine on the weary hero. Alas it dims just as quickly, for the hero falls down the trap of having to enter billing information page. As he brushes of he notices that the country is already selected and cannot be changed. (in a previous episode he had to select the glorious country of Great Britain to crate the Live account, since his European country of residence was not listed) "Strange," he thinks to himself "why can't I be billed to a different country, that does not correspond to my country of residence?" Finally some wit is required of him, a challenge that he readily accepts. Buy the sheer power of his intellect the hero looks an address of one of his company's offices in dear old London and uses it daringly as the billing info. "HA take that!" With the ugly billing monster vanquished the hero is returned to the door of credit card info.

    To be honest I'm tired of this gimmick, let's ditch it:

    I enter the credit card info, and this piece of shit tells me that the billing option can't be verified. Well balls. Ok we go to the Games for Windows Live website and try to jump through their hoops from there. Entering the credit card info here I see that once again the country for my credit card is already selected and set in stone. What. The. Fuck. really Microsoft really? I can't own a credit card outside of my country of residence? what kind of retarded shit is this? Obviously now I can't put in my real credit card address info here since my postal code won't match to the GB postal codes. Well fine assholes, I put in the address of my branch office in London as the credit card address and click save.

    "Please enter a valid credit card number."

    I did. Save.

    "Please enter a valid credit card number."

    FUCK YOU ... it's a valid credit card number, I use the same credit card to buy games on Steam and toilet paper from the hobo across the street.

    You know what Microsoft, fine, if you don't want me to give you money for this F2P game, I'm not going to. Toodles.

    Goes and buys Bastion on Steam in 4 mouse clicks

    No Caption Provided

    PS: no I don't want to have to create and deal with an additional Paypal account on top of GWL bullshit.

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    Tennmuerti

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    #1  Edited By Tennmuerti

    A brave young man was trying out Age of Empires online a few days ago and finally decided to get the full experience so to say. This obviously required him to spend some moolah. Armed with a credit card in one hand our hero jovially clicks the blatant buy me icon in the game. Up pops up the Games for Windows Live interface. So far so good."OH NO" he exclaims. "microsoft points? WTF is this shit?" instantly summoning the image of Mr. Picard to his mind.

    No Caption Provided

    "fine" thinks the man and grits his teeth, "if we have to buy silly points we will buy points. Yes we indeed would like to top-up our points balance, duh." Forsooth another obstacle rears it's ugly head, he cannot purchase the points he needs to the exact amount and will have to part with more money then originally intended. Undaunted by this second obstacle he decides to take it all the way. Another click of a button. "Credit card info, finally" a ray of light starts to shine on the weary hero. Alas it dims just as quickly, for the hero falls down the trap of having to enter billing information page. As he brushes of he notices that the country is already selected and cannot be changed. (in a previous episode he had to select the glorious country of Great Britain to crate the Live account, since his European country of residence was not listed) "Strange," he thinks to himself "why can't I be billed to a different country, that does not correspond to my country of residence?" Finally some wit is required of him, a challenge that he readily accepts. Buy the sheer power of his intellect the hero looks an address of one of his company's offices in dear old London and uses it daringly as the billing info. "HA take that!" With the ugly billing monster vanquished the hero is returned to the door of credit card info.

    To be honest I'm tired of this gimmick, let's ditch it:

    I enter the credit card info, and this piece of shit tells me that the billing option can't be verified. Well balls. Ok we go to the Games for Windows Live website and try to jump through their hoops from there. Entering the credit card info here I see that once again the country for my credit card is already selected and set in stone. What. The. Fuck. really Microsoft really? I can't own a credit card outside of my country of residence? what kind of retarded shit is this? Obviously now I can't put in my real credit card address info here since my postal code won't match to the GB postal codes. Well fine assholes, I put in the address of my branch office in London as the credit card address and click save.

    "Please enter a valid credit card number."

    I did. Save.

    "Please enter a valid credit card number."

    FUCK YOU ... it's a valid credit card number, I use the same credit card to buy games on Steam and toilet paper from the hobo across the street.

    You know what Microsoft, fine, if you don't want me to give you money for this F2P game, I'm not going to. Toodles.

    Goes and buys Bastion on Steam in 4 mouse clicks

    No Caption Provided

    PS: no I don't want to have to create and deal with an additional Paypal account on top of GWL bullshit.

    Avatar image for tennmuerti
    Tennmuerti

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    #3  Edited By Tennmuerti
    @Anwar:
    I don't have problems with Ubisofts DRM in functionality, just in principle.
    As for trying it out - eh, you aren't missing much. I honestly prefer AoE2&3 more then this one.
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    jakonovski

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    #4  Edited By jakonovski

    My AoE Online installer kept crapping out for a multitude of reasons all day yesterday. This morning I found a solution: uninstall the GFWL client. Everything works perfectly!

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    rmanthorp

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    #5  Edited By rmanthorp  Moderator

    Mine AoE worked fine, but yeah, fuck GFWL.

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    valrog

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    #6  Edited By valrog

    Hahaha, that's an awesomely written blog. Though the GFWL part is sad, not funny. But still.

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    TheDudeOfGaming

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    #7  Edited By TheDudeOfGaming
    @Tennmuerti: You should have went with the gimmick, i found it very enjoyable. Anyway, it's F2P you can still play it. That being said, Games for windows live is a horrible, horrible thing. 
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    lord_canti

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    #8  Edited By lord_canti

    cool story bro

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    Taefarinas

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    #9  Edited By Taefarinas

    AK! Same problem! I live in Germany, but come from Canada. Made the account back in Canada. I can't change which country I'm in, so I have to use a Canadian credit card to buy points, even though I've got a German credit card. I use my parents' billing address, to avoid making a new account. Also, I think they might have fixed it, but you used to not be able to pick English as a language for games if your country was Germany. Now I have to put up with deals I can't get. And lots of ads for Ontario, for some reason, which seems like it might be better advertised to Germans anyway. Germans love the idea of vacationing in Canada.

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    keyhunter

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    #10  Edited By keyhunter

    I went on XBOX live and bought points with paypal.

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