In order for a an Age of Kings 2 (or Age of Conquerors 2, or Age of Empires: The Conquerors or whatever it's called) to work, all the developer has to do is replicate, improve but not destroy. Exactly what Starcraft 2 is to Starcraft and not what Microsoft did with Age of Empires Online.
To me, there are two sides of AOK which make it so successful. The gamers side and the designers side.
The gamer used to play the single player scenarios and a few LAN games with his mates, but has since moved on to multiplayer online matches and enters tournaments and clans and whatever else.
The designer spends most of his time in the editor, trying to create cool maps for people to play. He might play multiplayer every now and then, and he most likely plays other peoples custom scenarios; but mainly it's designing.
Then you have inbetweeners and offshoots. Like people who do both, play and design a lot (like people who design multiplayer maps to play online etc). Then you have people like modders, who like to turn the game upside down and create new graphics and units etc or expansions.
For the Gamer...
The gameplay is absolutely fine already and doesn't really need to be altered; the concept works!
There are a few AOK community patches which get rid of some bugs and annoyances (like the user patch) and a similar thing should be done with a new game.
So for example, boars would still be boars, but the AI WOULD be able to hunt them. Everything replicated, but then bugs removed or common annoyances taken off.
The multiplayer side for AOK is still very strong. For the gamers, a new game is just a graphical improvement without the annoying bugs, and a few cool additions. Those multiplayer guys should fit right into an already winning game style and play style. Except they get HD graphics (obviously with the option to turn off fog, enhanced lighting etc for people with less powerful machines), bigger screen resolutions and voice chat. They still feel ike they are playing their loveable Age of Empires 2, but it's better, balanced and built with the community in mind.
For the people who USED to play it, it's like, "hey, i remember that awesome game, I used to play that when I was a kid, I'mma buy it". And the new kids, will look at it and think "Cool, a medieval rts!", and then play it and think "Cool, this is fun, simple to play and I'mma start learning strategies, my fave civ is this and that and blah blah blah".
For the Designer...
For longetivity side, enhance the editor, add more triggers, conditions, effects etc and allow complete customisation for the potential modder and scenario designer. (and maybe the tools to do it). We had modpack studio for aok at first (which was very good but improvements needed), but the data editing side was poor.
It's taken 10+ years for us to have some decent quality modding tools. Which is great coming from the community. But having an industry tool capable of doing anything would hopefully keep the game more active for longer.
You're trying to inspire people. Give them more tools to play with, let them be free and creative. Let them make that epic campaign they have in their head with minimal headache. Don't know what to include? Then ask the scenario design community for Age of Empires and Age of Empires 2. Get feedback and then build the editor around that. If the editor was originally an after thought, then well, actually it's built a huge successful part of the AOK world, and hopefully the designers would help those people and give them something they want after all these years. It also gives them a reason to switch to the new game, without any complaints.
If you don't make the tools, then allow the modding community to do so. Let us edit the data, in the same way we can now, but explain it better. Let us add new civs, or new terrains, or make flying units etc. Let us add new particle effects or modify skins or the colours of the lighting styles etc. (Think Dawn of Fantasy style editor).
Graphics wise...
Age of Empires 2 in 3d should look like Age of mythology, but with much better graphics (and also the editor navigation in age of mythology SUCKS compared to aok). I'm talking perspective and so on.
Orthographic, and simple. Maybe, maybe people can freely rotate and zoom in, but to me I'd keep it simple and probably not even allow that. Depends on feedback.
Graphics would be very very good, great animated water with waves and fully interactive with objects. Great lighting etc and generally next gen styles of rts, but still AOK!
Apart from the additions, the graphics would look similar to what they do now, except in 3d. So barracks would like current barracks etc, but obviously improved. Play around with university so it looks prettier, or modify the churches (make these unique to each civ), but generally, its all recognisable.
There would be more terrains and lots of environment objects, to create different worlds (similar to AGE of mythology, but much better quality). Each piece would be to honour the original game, however, things would be added; like different rocks, cliffs, and general gaia nature pieces to make each area unqiue.
Think of any location, desert, tundra, african type planes, europe plains to jungles to lucious green pastures etc. Each location has it's own trees, bushes, plants, animals. Animals would be split into huntable groups. For example, in europe it's sheep, but in asia it could be goat. It could be boar or buffalo or lion or wolf etc. However, again, thinking of the longetivity and the scenario designer, all animals will have the option to be huntable in the 'editor' for scenario design purposes.
Maybe even make each civs building unique. Units are a bit more confusing, because if you change names or appearances things drift off from aok and make things confusing. Unless of course it was purely asthetical, and still had all the same stats and same tech line. Or make more unique units. OR, just allow modders to edit skins and models etc, so they can add their own units if they really want to for scenario designers. It's probably not as important to your average multiplayer player.
General Improvements...
Then of course, throw in a few features (like the vil idle button tell you how many vils are idle, improve the mini map and whatever else; throw in a couple of new civs (maybe Thailand, or African Civs etc), improve the balancing and ai and pathfinding etc and you're done.
Blah blah blah blah....
Please make it so, Microsoft!
[This message has been edited by Tetsuo Shima (edited 09-22-2012 @ 07:44 AM).]