Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition News

WHAT: Server Maintenance (Matchmaking Servers)
WHEN: Wednesday, February 19 @ 2:00p PT / 5:00p ET / 22:00 UTC (Countdown)
EST. DOWNTIME: 2-3 HOURS

[h3]GAMES & PLATFORMS IMPACTED[/h3]

• Age of Empires: Definitive Edition (Steam / Microsoft Store)
  
• Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition (Steam / Microsoft Store / Xbox)
  
• Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition (Steam / Microsoft Store)
  
• Age of Empires IV (Steam / Microsoft Store / Xbox)
  

[h3]OBJECTIVES[/h3]

• Routine server updates and maintenance.

[h3]DETAILS[/h3]This coming Wednesday, February 19th, the platform team will be taking the multiplayer servers down for regular maintenance. Please note:

• Ranked matchmaking will disabled exactly one hour before the maintenance window to prevent disruption to newly-formed matches.
  
  
• Any matches still in progress at the start of the maintenance window will be disrupted when it begins.
  
  
• DURING THE MAINTENANCE WINDOW, YOU WILL STILL BE ABLE TO LAUNCH THE GAME, BUT WILL NOT BE ABLE TO MATCHMAKE OR ACCESS ANY ONLINE FEATURES.

To prevent any interruptions, we recommend wrapping up any games at least 10 minutes before the maintenance window. The downtime is expected to last between 2 and 3 hours. You can watch this thread with any changes to the schedule as they arise, as well as the all-clear when the maintenance is complete.

Thank you for your patience!

2024 was a year for Age of Empires and Age of Mythology players and —a year shaped by your passion, creativity, and epic moments. Thanks to your dedication, it’s been an incredible year not just for the community, but for the franchise as a whole. Together, we’ve had an incredible year. We kicked things off with the New Year, New Age showcase, crowned champions at Red Bull Wololo: El Reinado, connected with many of you at Gamescom, and celebrated the launches of Age of Mythology: Retold and Age of Empires Mobile. Along the way, we expanded the franchise in new ways and welcomed over 10 million new players—reaching an incredible milestone of 60 million Age of Empires players worldwide.

Our players continue to influence the many ways in which the franchise moves forward. Today we’re thrilled to start 2025 by unveiling what’s ahead. Settle in, because we’ve got a lot to share!

Welcome to a minor update for Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition focused on a few Xbox stability fixes. Be sure to dig down into the post below to get all of the smaller details before hopping in-game and checking them out firsthand.

💬 DISCUSS: Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition Forum
🗣 JOIN: The Age of Empires Official Discord

Thank you again to our amazing community members, all of whom have helped to make Age of Empires what it is today!

—The Age of Empires Team
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      ◆ Minor Update 133431 ◆

[hr][/hr]

Xbox

[h2]Stability & Performance[/h2]

• Fixed a crash that could occur when disconnecting from Voice Chat.
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur during the intro video.
  
• Fixed various crashes related to playing through multiple campaign missions.

[h2]Ongoing...[/h2]


[h2]Investigation[/h2]
As always, we are continuing to track issues reported by the community for future updates.

For other known issues, please visit this page to see what’s being tracked!

[h2]What’s on the Horizon?[/h2]
[h3]COMING UP…[/h3]
Hey there Community!

It’s been a minute since we’ve provided an idea of what’s coming your way. Since we last teased what’s on the horizon, you got the surprise announcement and launch of Chronicles: Battle for Greece, the newest DLC for Age II: DE developed by CaptureAge. Since then, we’ve been watching everyone play and gathering plenty of feedback, so don’t be surprised to see updates and fixes coming for Battle for Greece in the near future.

Your feedback remains a north star for us and recently you heard about ongoing efforts around pathfinding. This is something that the team is constantly paying attention to, and we’ll often ship fixes related to this system in updates where we also make balance changes or launch other gameplay-centric features. With anything affecting gameplay and especially pathfinding or related areas of code like unit behavior or formations, we’re increasingly cautious about this process. It’s an area where it’s especially easy to create unintended consequences and new bugs, so changes here will happen slowly and over time even if the feedback and conversations happening around them are more immediate and topical. Please stay tuned regarding any updates in this area and please know that we’re definitely at work – we’ll have more to share when we know what kind of changes we can deliver and when, with our priority being to keep your experience as stable and performant as possible.

There’s also the challenge of all of the other things in our calendar 😉

We promised big surprises last year and those surprises are even nearer to being revealed now that we’re in the New Year (how is January already almost over!?) Unfortunately we can’t announce or spoil any of those things here, but you might not need to wait much longer. Watch this space.

Even with big surprises looming, there’s still plenty more that the team is busy with and a pretty exciting set of plans we’re constantly considering. None of this would be possible without this amazing Community that continues to show up and play this game we all love so much, which is something we remain incredibly thankful for. Today’s patch notes are obviously tiny, but we’ll be back pretty soon with more to talk about as our roadmap plays out – we’re excited about what’s waiting for you!

Wololo!

[h3]:alertalert: DISCLAIMER[/h3]This list is subject to change and should not be considered a comprehensive list of all the known issues we’re tracking. The above is to inform you of the team’s current priorities, which will change as other issues arise or take precedence.

For the latest updates and announcements, please visit our social channels.

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