Yes indeed, my fellow Age fans, on the battlefield that's AoKH, there's always something going on, whether it's a swordsman getting pelted by an arrow or an Aro getting stabbed with a sword. Every week, your mostest favorite dictator-friend plans on continuing the age-old tradition of giving a weekly report to our much-loved community; on both the happenings of the week, as well as what you might want to look out for in the future (like fast wagons, exploding birds, or even that darn industrial revolution).
A Complete Site Revamp?!?!?
On Sunday of last week, everyone was surprised with a site revamp that seemed to have come from nowhere; one that you knew about, of course, but one that came much sooner than any of you had expected. Much sooner than we had expected too, to be honest! This revamp has been in the planning stages for quite some time, with the AoKH team hammering out the details in the darkest alleys of AoKH; once our design was finalized, the revamp was announced, and we had our basic content available, we quickly decided "why not RIGHT NOW?!??!" With some help from our lovable CTO Zen, we were able to get the new site operational. Although this revamp is far from finished, this week we introduced two new features of what will eventually be many, giving you a face-full of old school and a large dose of new school: the Blacksmith Features, brought to you by the legendary feature-writer BrandNewCar (JackalRat on the forums), and the Works-in-Progress Spotlight, maintained by none other than Scud.
That's not all the revamp introduced to you, of course; we pulled another feature out of our hat this week in the form of a revamped University, as well as a new forum dedicated to recieving *your* articles! We already collected a batch of new submissions, with more on the way. And of course, we're continuing to look your way on improving our lovely articles section: if you, humble reader, have any cool strategies, scenario design tricks, or other AoK information you would like to share with the community, feel free to submit your own article!
PTC08 and the Blacksmith
September 10th saw the end of our Pretty Town Contest, where our large design community entered some pretty cold designs for your viewing pleasure; the angelic trio of judges are almost finished, so watch this space for the results. And as reported by Angel Mashek, our huge file database (affectionately known as the Blacksmith) recieved some updates too; there is now a Contests section available, which contains all previous AoKH contest entries conveniently packaged into a single section. It's the only place to go if you want to see what kinds of cool contest entries we've recieved in the past!
ES Shutting Down
Unfortunately, we were also hit with some sad news this week, when Ensemble Studios, creators of the Age series, announced that they were shutting their doors. Our entire staff wishes every member of Ensemble Studios the best, and we would like to thank them for making Age of Empires II, the RTS king that we've devoted so much of our time to covering over the years. They will be missed, but never forgotten, as the Age series will always be in our hearts and our "Favorite Games" collection.
Community News
"Hey AoKH, how the heck can you guys find so much news on such an old game?" Hmmm... a better question is, how can we *not* find news?! Our large Age of Kings community is always buzzing about something, and this week was no different, especially with all of the huge changes to the site we've been seeing. Among those changes, of course, was the promotion of a familiar face: Mashek, our dedicated cherub, was given a larger pair of wings this week when he was promoted to an Angel (congrats again buddy)! We also had some content additions, with our very informative Playing Online FAQ being published on the main site; you all had the opportunity to give the FAQ a test-run on Saturday, with the kick-off our weekly Multiplayer Custom Scenario Night, brought to you by Impeached! And of course, we must pay close attention to our Modding community, who are rapidly making new developments: this week we took a look at Jatayu's Mod Workshop, a very viable replacement for MPS which includes tutorials and install scripts that will assist any aspiring modder in shaping the game in their own image. We also took a look at AGE, another modding tool that lets you edit unit attributes, remove or add units, technologys, and far more!
Oh, and we can't forget about the revised Review Guidelines. There were many revisions made already to benefit our download community, and there's still an open discussion available to *everybody* on how to improve those guidelines even more!
This Coming Week
Yes folks, this was definitely a busy week for Age of Kings Heaven, but you best not count out next week (or else...)! Expect more content to be put up on the main site; expect those much-sought-after PTC results; and definitely expect additions to our staff roster so we can keep giving you guys the content and support you crave! And don't think we'll run out of steam either; you know all of those changes you saw this week? They've only been what we AoKH-enthusiasts call phase 1 -- there's still a lot more content coming into play, and we're going to make sure you have plenty to look forward to! That's all for now, my friends; I'll see you on the battlefield!
[This message has been edited by Aro (edited 09-15-2008 @ 00:14 AM).]