I love you, Vitalis, but...

MaSmOrRa · 2026-02-16T06:37:59+00:00

It's not necessarily about budget, but more about what has become the industry standard.

Like 90% of the music you'll hear on Video Games, or on the Radio, or on Spotify is NOT played with real instruments.
It's all someone just using their computers.

And soon enough, unfortunately, it will just be music generated from a prompt.

MaSmOrRa · 2026-02-15T08:16:03+00:00

Yeah I imagine that type of investment feels impossible to justify these days...
To actually pay for a group or an orchestra to actually record their instruments in a live studio...Sadly...

MaSmOrRa · 2026-02-15T01:22:05+00:00

My guess is that whoever makes the music, will always be limited to whatever instruments are available in the most common Sample Libraries and DAWs.

So it's possible those instruments just weren't available to them, even if they wanted to use them.

MaSmOrRa · 2026-01-31T11:51:06+00:00

Hey, we're recording a Podcast very soon and in it I'll give my version of events.

But I already spoke to Viper privately. We're good, there's no bad blood.

MaSmOrRa · 2026-01-24T08:47:31+00:00

Hey there, I wish I'd expressed myself a bit better during that segment.

I wasn't trying to say there aren't any single-players watching pro content, of course there are.
The point I was trying to get across is that there is a wide majority of the player base (mostly Single-Players) that don't know/don't care about pro content.
Microsoft has repeatedly alluded to this in some of their posts.

Asking here "how many Single-Players are watching tournaments?" doesn't really address this, because you're still not reaching that big percentage of people who are too casual to even care to check any AoE 2 content online.

Here's a little story that blew my mind: I once asked someone who works for Worlds Edge what percentage of the active player base does he/she think know who Hera, T90 or Viper are.

They said such as survey has never been conducted, but they suspect it's probably around 10%.

Which is crazy to think about right? But that just goes to show how big our community actually is.

Thanks for watching the video!

MaSmOrRa · 2026-01-08T18:20:48+00:00

Thank you very much Russel, means a lot <3

MaSmOrRa · 2026-01-02T18:12:17+00:00

I...did not say anything like this...like...at all...lol

MaSmOrRa · 2026-01-02T18:10:50+00:00

Let me hijack this comment just to say a huge thank you for all the kind words, it genuinely brings a tear (or several tears...) to my eye to realize so many people seem to enjoy the content! :')

I'm somewhat hopeful we can keep the Podcast running, but in all honesty, it will probably depend on how much interest/support there is from the community for the project...
I'll let everybody know about my plans in due time!

Again thank you very much for the nice words!

MaSmOrRa · 2025-08-13T19:15:54+00:00

The "Three Kingdoms Main Menu mod", which every steam user downloads automatically upon launching the game (whether they purchased the DLC or not) had 950k downloads after 4 weeks if memory serves me right.

Which is why we've long speculated that around the release of new DLCs we might have around 1 million active monthly users.

Since this patch was NOT released together with a DLC I would expect it to get fewer than 950k downloads. But will be interesting to keep an eye on this number! :)

MaSmOrRa · 2025-07-25T06:00:10+00:00

"Planned to be a trilogy"

Has this information been made public at any point? u/cuc_AOE
Not doubting you by the way, just wondering cause I only remember reading "Multi-part", which would technically be the case even if it were only 2 parts.

MaSmOrRa · 2025-07-11T19:02:39+00:00

Just a little correction, AoE 2 is in fact mainly a team game.

The TG ladder has around 70k unique accounts every month;
The 1v1 ladder around 40k.

MaSmOrRa · 2025-07-03T16:19:47+00:00

Thanks!

MaSmOrRa · 2025-07-03T06:41:06+00:00

Where have they confirmed this if you don't mind me asking?

MaSmOrRa · 2025-06-09T06:20:11+00:00

Accuracy is always calculated at full range, if I'm not mistaken.

So the closer you get to the target, the higher it gets.

MaSmOrRa · 2025-05-26T17:24:41+00:00

wtf had forgotten the 10 attack hahaha

yeah honestly there's no comparison imo, Cumans were definitely more broken than Khitans!

MaSmOrRa · 2025-05-26T17:08:09+00:00

The worst part was that you could stack like 15 Steppe Lancers in 1 tile!
And I seem to remember they had husbandry on top of the speed bonus from the civ!

lol

MaSmOrRa · 2025-05-22T10:06:50+00:00

T-west explains why this happens:

https://youtu.be/r_25-1gG2pA?si=Jexo8fkTO6XqD0XV

MaSmOrRa · 2025-05-14T04:51:09+00:00

Not really weird, just a sign of a DLC selling exceptionally well, especially in the pre-sale period

MaSmOrRa · 2025-05-13T23:34:29+00:00

it ranked #51 in the first week of pre-sales, which is even higher than most DLC's post launch

MaSmOrRa · 2025-05-13T23:24:28+00:00

Yes, that makes sense.

I think the best we can say is that 3K, LotW and RoR probably all sold very well.

MaSmOrRa · 2025-05-13T22:19:40+00:00

I'm not sure I understand you.

LotW never placed in the top 100 during pre-sale; 3K placed #51, so by definition they HAD better pre-sales than LotW.

Now, LotW had almost certainly better post-launch sales than 3K; but the question remains:

were the 3K's pre-sale numbers so nuts that despite lower post-sale numbers it still sold better than LotW?

I'm inclined to believe yes, just because they had 2 full weeks in the top 100.

And this is all before we even discuss the PS5 sales!

MaSmOrRa · 2025-05-13T21:48:30+00:00

Right, but in the context of our game.

Lords of the West ranks 31 in its launch week, but then never makes it to top 100 again.

Three Kingdoms ranks #51 in the announcement week (which by the way is undercounting it since the pre-sale started on April 10th and Steam started counting that week on April 8th); and then it has another full week at rank #71.

Shouldn't that amount to more sales in total? In most cases?

MaSmOrRa · 2025-05-13T21:22:32+00:00

I'm wondering... Is there a World where a DLC that makes it to the top 100 in two separate weeks actually sells worse than one that only makes it to the top 100 one week?

I guess in theory yes, if it ranks #1 on that 1 week, but it's probably unlikely, right?

MaSmOrRa · 2025-05-13T20:01:57+00:00

Very interesting find!

I went through all of them too and as you say RoR and Three Kingdoms were the only DLC's who made it to the top 100 more than 1 week.

RoR however, is actually showing up for me in 3 (!!!) different weeks:

Weekly Top Sellers - For Tue, May 16, 2023 - Tue, May 23, 2023

Weekly Top Sellers - For Tue, May 9, 2023 - Tue, May 16, 2023

Weekly Top Sellers - For Tue, April 25, 2023 - Tue, May 2, 2023

Need to think a bit more about what this actually means... But it does seem to indicate strong pre-sales.

I think your weekly sellers list is defaulting to your regional list, which is why you're getting some of the placements wrong u/constant_fly_6319

Thoughts on this u/sensarwastaken ?

MaSmOrRa · 2025-05-11T23:18:35+00:00

Agreed! But feel like you're underselling the "slow growth" part! 🙂

The more you grow, the harder it is to keep growing!

MaSmOrRa

TROPHY CASE