Last week Age Of Empires II: HD‘s producer outlined the glorious future of the high popular strategy title that fans are still playing two years after release.
Producer, Ryan Chaply outlined their plans for Age Of Empires II: HD via Steam just as version 3.9 was rolling out to users. Among a few interesting features that fans will enjoy such as more 2v2 centric additions, they have discontinued support for Windows XP, permanently.
“Starting today, and moving forward with development on AOE II HD, Windows XP will not be supported for new updates. We are making a XP branch publically available you may select to continue playing content, however strongly encourage that the remaining XP diehards consider upgrading. Running unsupported and vulnerable operating systems is not a great idea, and puts both yourself and your data at risk. According to the steam hardware survey, this will affect only a very small percentage of users. “
Ryan continues to iterate how Steam Workshop has been a big part of Age Of Empires II: HD success. They will continue to improve this in 2015 as well as do more for the community. However, the big announcement was that of a brand-new expansion to Age Of Empires II: HD that fans can expect later this year.
“Back in 2013 we had this crazy idea, work closely with a group born out of dedicated community members to do something very unusual – make an official expansion. Despite being somewhat uncharted territory, Forgotten Empires became a great content addition that both stayed true to the AOE spirit and moved the franchise forward. Transitioning from a community collective into more rigid timeline schedules and people management of development team often is where projects can break, but the FE team had great discipline, and awesome content ideas as we brought new bonus campaigns to the expansion through last summer.
So with all of that said:
I am extremely excited to reveal that we’ll be working with the Forgotten Empires team to formally bring a new expansion to the Age of Empires franchise later this year. “
Chaply has promised that the content will be just as robust as that offered in Forgotten Empires and will include new civs, campaigns, game modes, units, and more. Age Of Empires II: HD fans have a lot to look forward to this year.
