Age of Empires Esports is a fascinating subject to study, in part because so much was lost. Real-time strategy titles in general have a vast history, but most of it was lost over time when esports’ early rise faded in the early 2000s after the global economic recession. The infrastructure that supported bracket sites and early forums was replaced by indifference.

And yet the matches themselves never gave up. Age of Empires has bounced back and continues to thrive, surviving server shutdowns, no outside investment, and massive player migration. Today, the scene is a blend of old and new. Legends of yesteryear like TheViper, DauT, and Capoch rub shoulders with younger stars like Hera and Liereyy. Well-known organizers who have relied on the community are now able to tap into World’s Edge’s larger war chest to partially fund the esports scene. To document this evolution, Liquipedia contributors took on the challenge of creating a near-complete record of over 20 years of esports history.

In mid-2020, Age of Empires became one of the fastest-growing Liquipedia Wikis since the launch of the Alpha Wiki program. Big and small names in the community came together to strengthen the history of esports that is longer than most.

AoEs Liquipedia allows you to see a lot of the history of esports and the RTS genre. Looking at the structure of the wiki, you can see the key elements that kept the competition alive: community, camaraderie, and a deep love for the franchise’s games. These are the elements that drove the entire scene to create a story worthy of the Age of Empires name.

The WCG & Legion Clan Era

The story of Age of Empires is best started with its sequel, Age of Empires II. It is the largest and most famous of the entire series, and is now the flagship. It was a huge success when it was released in 1999.

Age of Empires II esports received great support from Microsoft and World Cyber ​​Games, who participated in the competition in 2000, 2001 and 2002. It was not easy to reach the WCG stage, hosting legendary titles such as Counter-Strike and Brood War.

However, WCG removed the game from the event in 2003, moving it to the newly released Age of Mythology instead. Age of Empires II players never had to miss a big tournament for long.

Legion Clan also emerged, a group that in an alternate timeline could have been an early esports organization similar to Liquid. (Imagine this alternate world.) It quickly became something of a special club for expert players (not dissimilar to Liquid in the European StarCraft scene). They also organized some of the best post-WCG events, such as the World Clan League series.

The WCL ran for four years and six events, with a total prize pool of over $10,000. This was amazing at the time for an esport, especially one with a sequel. Of course, winning the WCL was a dream for many players back then.

Speaking of sequels, while Age of Empires II began to sow the seeds for a generation of talent, Age of Mythology struggled to get off the ground. After a lackluster showing at the 2003 WCG, the franchise didn’t compete in a WCG tournament for four years. Given Age of Empires II’s relatively good competitive scene, some players continued with Age of Empires II instead.

One of the earliest starters and most talented players was DauT. He first played Age of Empires II competitively in 2002. Today, he is a 36-year-old master of the game and one of the most consistent competitors in esports. DauT is one of the top 10 players in the world and it’s fair to say he’s probably never dropped below that level.

As one of the best, DauT was of course a part of Legion Clan, but he would soon face the scene’s biggest setback and opportunity.

From Legionnaires to Tyrants

In the following years, Legion Clan lost its biggest supporter, Arbalet, who financially supported most of the clan’s tournaments and paid out nearly $100,000 in prize money to members of the scene. Canary took over as financier in his place, but the money soon dried up.

With StarCraft II quickly becoming the leading eSport RTS and Age of Empires III joining the fray, the Age of Empires scene faced great competition and great uncertainty. At the same time, the oldest dynasty in AoE also collapsed. Starting in 2011, Legion Clan began to lose momentum, before the scene’s online trade routes and even urban centers were attacked.

In 2006, Microsoft ended support for the MSN Gaming Zone service, the platform that hosted games for Age of Empires and many other CD-ROM games. Without them, online gaming would not have been possible. The community was as stubborn as ever, and persevered to build a new alternative.

In a company called Voobly, they had a client that could do everything they needed to continue supporting the multiplayer community. Voobly became the de facto competition for Age of Empires II in the years following the closure of MSN Gaming Zone, and the AoE community found new ways to succeed with this new client.

When I first explored the AoE scene, it felt very different from what I was used to – I came from an “established” esports scene with big LANs, big orgs, TOs, etc. The AoE scene felt very “DIY” and small in comparison. But their game had a very passionate community.

Players could develop their own patches for the game, without oversight from Ensemble Studios or Microsoft. You could customize everything from upgrades, buildings, and unit values ​​to how AI paths and formations work for groups of units. Community members also developed maps with themes and elements that challenged players.

Legion’s dominance at the highest level of competition was challenged by an old guard who forged a new legacy: TyRant. Many of the scene’s first generation of talented players retired for good, but of the remaining players, only DauT joined TyRanT early on, while the rest competed on national teams or in smaller clans.

But DauT was not the true king of TyRanT. That crown went not to a veteran, but to another talent, a champion of the next generation: Orjan “The Viper” Larsen. He joined the TyRanT project early on in its inception, and it didn’t take long for people to realize that this 19-year-old player from Norway had a skill level that surpassed that of most others in the scene.

Over the next decade, TheViper would not only become the best player of his generation, but also the best Age of Empires II player of all time. Since 2011, he won 71 of the 119 tournaments he played in. About 60% of players get #1.

But the essence of TyRanT wasn’t having TheViper or other world famous players on their team. But they built their legacy not on the promise of endless profits, but on coming together as a team, as friends, supporting each other and the community at large.

A Community That Never Stopped Working

It’s easy to forget what era we’re talking about here. These players started playing Age of Empires II competitively nearly a decade ago and continue to push each other to improve as both opponents and teammates. While many of the larger, sponsored esports collapse within a few years, a smaller, grassroots, ever-evolving scene has lasted for decades.

This consistency is thanks to a lot of hard work and support from the community. These efforts resulted in a plethora of emerging players and new challengers between 2010 and 2016. Players like Hera, MbL, ACCM, Mr. Yo, TaToH and others showed potential and began to score the first of many victories at the end of this period.

Most of the archives and even everything we know about the early Age of Empires scene come from collaborations. For a long time, all the information was in web archives, retellings of experiences, or at best archived forum posts.

AoCZone was one of the forums for Age of Empires II, but was later converted to AoEZone to accommodate fans of all titles. It is paid for by the community and was originally founded by TheViper’s father. Not much can be known about events before AoCZone existed. In many cases, Vod is the only thing Liquipedia contributors have been able to learn about the civilizations used, the cards played, and the true identities of the participants.

As the modern era of esports dawned, even its biggest events were born from the community.

Age of Empires The modern era of esports can be traced back to one such event, the 2015 War of the Dead. To this day, the total prize pool remains the largest in franchise history, with thousands of dollars in prize money. The event was organized by Voobly and financially backed by TyRanT. DauT, TheViper, JorDan, and remaining Korean veterans Khab and Nv won over $30,000, followed by second-team TyRanT with $25,000.

In the years following War is Coming, Twitch has experienced unprecedented growth, giving many AoE content creators the income and exposure to support new tournament series aimed at a truly global audience. Key figures in the scene, such as T90Official, Nili, Escape Gaming, and MembTV, grew their audiences and began organizing events for the scene.

Over the years, tournament series supported by these content creators and community members have emerged, many with unique and interesting twists. Nili, a talented competitor, commentator, and community leader, will host the tournament entirely from his apartment. MembTV, one of AoE’s biggest commentators and organizers, will host the tournament entirely on a desert map. T90Official went even more innovative with an event that hid the identities of all participants.

The AoE community has never lacked for ingenuity and individuality, but Escape Gaming will be the first to make a serious attempt to modernize and refine Age of Empires II tournaments. In mid-2017 they announced the EuroCup, culminating in a LAN event in Cologne.

A Modern Esport

Since Escape Gaming’s Euro Cup, not a year has passed without the Escape team dreaming of something bigger. In June 2018, they launched the Escape Champions League, which in 2019 ended with a LAN final in the organization’s home base of Manchester, UK. It was a revived circuit, rivalling the dreams of the WCL from the halcyon days of the mid-2000s. The winners of the

Circuit were also new names, recalling the long history of esports. Which team would lift the championship trophy? Team Secret, or as you know it, TyRanT.

In late 2018, Team Secret approached members of TyRanT to take over a large part of the team. TheViper, DauT, JorDan, Slam and TaToH competed in and won the 2019 Escape Champion League Finals under the new banner of the best team in the world.

After a successful year that saw them compete in the Nili’s Apartment Cup, King of the Desert and the second edition of the Hidden Cup, the scene once again seemed not only stable but growing beyond its limits. It was no longer just insiders looking to push the boundaries.

Twitch actively supports most of these developers, and Microsoft just recently announced World`s Edge, a new group within the publisher that will oversee the Definitive Edition of Age of Empires II and everything related to the franchise. She promised to modernize not only the game’s graphics, but also the observer tools.

This was something the AoE community had been actively working on in the past. The Capture Age team worked for years on developing powerful observer tools for the game, and World`s Edge will step in and directly support the team and formalize their work. Microsoft also began investing significant amounts of money into the prize pool in the years following the tournament series’ proliferation.

This is where Liquipedia comes in. Ricci, head of the Alpha Wiki program, says he was approached in November 2019 by robo_boro (then a tournament organizer for Escape Gaming) and Hitmark’s head of LATAM, Marcio Medeiros, to gather information on the field for the creation of a Wiki. In late May 2020, Nili, now part of Team Secret, joined the conversation. A month later, Age of Empires Liquipedia was installed.

For all other games, I use [Liquipedia] daily. I follow StarCraft 2, CounterStrike […] I felt like [the Age of Empires scene] was missing something like Liquipedia, […] they already had a strong base, it looked great, and I think it became a great thing and it made a lot of sense for everyone to flock there.

The Alpha Wiki program is a process where users band together to create a new Wiki for Liquipedia under Ricci’s supervision. It consists of three phases: pre-alpha, alpha, and main. In general, pre-alpha means that the Wiki is installed and contributors, who are virtually all volunteers, are setting up templates and modules; all the basic building blocks. The Alpha Wiki has a solid infrastructure, but it’s lacking content, which was a big problem for Ricci at the time.

I didn’t have high expectations. I knew very little about the community and figured there was a lot of historical stuff I needed to understand to make it better. I figured it would grow for sure, but it was a lot slower than it actually was. In fact, it’s grown so quickly compared to other wikis that I was really surprised.

Within a few weeks of the wiki’s launch, a handful of contributors started to take action, and many of them continue to spend hours every day maintaining and expanding the wiki. Prominent members and leaders of the Liquipedia community, Kano, Trev and Pikana, provided tremendous support in the early stages, training new contributors and installing various components necessary for the Wiki to function. In less than a year, the Wiki reached Alpha status and became the main Wiki, appearing alongside StarCraft, Dota, Counter-Strike and other leading Wikis.

[…] I played the game a lot in my youth, which intrigued me even more. At the time, I had no idea about competitive AoE […] Eventually, I found out that competitive AoE even existed. […]. When you set up a Wiki for a title that has been around for a long time, you learn a lot about the “history” of the competitive scene. It’s really interesting to see what competitive gaming was like when I was about 5 years old.

The current structure of the Age of Empires Liquipedia comes mostly from the StarCraft II wiki – fortunately borrowed from the sister RTS community. However, the Age community had to create some custom modules to support all titles in the franchise, as well as some community mod spin-offs.

Many new contributors helped get the wiki up and running (Redy, RobChang, Egerke, OLADUSHEK, Eitan96). From there, well-known AoE community members jumped at the opportunity to help build what could be the definitive permanent archive of one of esports’ most historic titles. (Robo, Nili, Nimanoe, Huehuecoyotl22.)

The main reason for the rapid expansion is the number of people willing to spend their time gathering information and writing pages about events that happened 15 years ago (some of them 10). These community contributors are just as instrumental in the growth of the scene as the content creators and definitely deserve a mention.

Of these, Redy is probably the MVP of the Contributor team. He alone has made more edits on the site than the next two main contributors (Robo and Longinator). Since then, he has surpassed all other participants.

Honestly, it’s been an amazing experience. Everyone here is so friendly and motivated to create the largest and most complete AoE database on the Internet, and I can’t help but feel the same way about you. Last but not least, it’s this special atmosphere that keeps me going – knowing that I’m doing something positive for the community together with other people who are at least as passionate about this particular game as I am.

The Golden Age of Empires

The coming era coincided with a once-in-a-century pandemic and exceeded much of what esports had experienced before. While Liquipedia contributors combed through web archives and old forums for every tidbit of information, tournament organizers and scene participants were working on the new future.

Red Bull Wololo was a new type of tournament. It used the new Empire Wars game mode introduced in the Definitive Edition, which generally made the game run faster. Being the only tournament of this format also gave it the unique feel that all of the successful Age of Empires tournament series had.

2020 broke almost every record in the scene and brought back many players who had retired long ago or taken an extended break. They were all welcomed back with open arms. The camaraderie within the scene is such that players who competed in the earlier days can pick up where they left off.

Kapok is the best example of a comeback with strength that has now blossomed three times over. Originally an Age of Empires II player and member of Legion Clan, he later competed in Age of Mythology, Age of Empires III, Warcraft, and StarCraft II. But in 2020 he celebrated his return to the legendary stage, quickly catching up with the rest of the field and delivering the best series game of the year so far. There has also been quite a bit of movement among

players. Aftermath was the second strongest team in the scene, founded in 2017, but almost disbanded after members Hera and Liereyy signed with Tempo Storm. However, the difficulties of the pandemic forced Tempo to disband the team, and Hera and Liereyy returned to Aftermath. However, Lierey has won Red Bull Woloro twice and earned the title of Desert King, which will challenge the status quo for the time being.

Team Secret also underwent a restructuring, parting ways with its players and disappearing from the scene. But the former TyRanT players weren’t without a home for long either. Germany-based esports organization GamerLegion swooped in and signed the whole bunch. Even DauT, who many thought was past his prime, still managed to pull off an impressive win at Red Bull Wololo 3.

Winning DauT [Red Bull Wololo 3] was a team effort, nobody believed in the Lord, but the team came together and made a strategy to make it happen. It was a great feeling not only for him, but also for the community. […] It’s not an easy task to get the community on our side and understand that we’re here to stay and grow AoE, but overall I think we did a good job. … This was just the first step. Julian “morxzas” Miculcy, Director of Operations at GamerLegion.
Today, the scene is growing faster than ever before. As this esports scene moves into a new era, its community also has the cleanest, most consistent access to the past. Thanks to the efforts of Redy, Longinator, Fuhloh, SyntacticSugar, and dozens of other contributors, Liquipedia can proudly claim to have a near-complete record of the competitive history of Age of Empires esports.

As you can see from the last Red Bull Wololo 5, which is of course a live recording. Streaming one of the largest prize pools in the history of the game, live on LAN from an actual castle, shows that AoE and esports as a whole have a lot more to offer.

We are very happy (and pleasantly surprised!) with the growth of the Age of Empires II DE esports scene. The community has been amazing and has hosted some great tournaments in the past few years, and the response has been our motivation. We are especially grateful for the partnership with Red Bull for the Wololo series. Two years ago, we could only dream that we would be able to see an Age II DE Esport LAN event in a real castle.

Times are also changing in the competitive realm. TheViper was the first to be seen as an underdog at this event, but won to people’s surprise. A talented talent that has been growing for years, such as Liereyy, Hera, MbL, and Yo, is now threatening to topple the GamerLegion(/Secret/TyRanT) dynasty.

Age of Empires IV

Ranking changes are not the only thing to expect. Age of Empires IV is due to be released in less than a month. Fans of the series as well as many RTS players are eagerly awaiting this title. With Blizzard announcing a gradual retreat from StarCraft II, Age of Empires is entering a new era, and game developer Frost Giant is getting closer to throwing its ring. The genre seems full of potential.

People from StarCraft II, Warcraft III, Spellforce, Command and Conquer, Supreme Commander, and the entire RTS division are all excited about Age of Empires IV. Some of these players participated in recent tech stress tests, and some even held tournaments before the game’s release.

I think AoE4 has the potential to attract a lot of new players and viewers to the scene. If it’s a good match, there might be big tournaments and I’m going to push myself to compete at the highest level. Even if it’s not as good as AoE2, if I keep pushing AoE2 tournaments maybe new viewers will get there. It feels more like a new opportunity than a reset button.

Just recently, the Elite Gaming Channel, which focuses primarily on Age of Empires III, announced GENESIS, arguably the game’s first major event, with a total prize pool of $20,000, just a few weeks after the game’s release. After an exciting qualifying tournament last weekend, a mixed group of eight players will compete in the first of many major events for Age of Empires IV esports.

There are some franchise greats that community members know, such as Kasva, Hera, and Viper from AoE II, and RecoN and TheMista from Age of Mythology. But encouragingly, the game is also drawing in from the broader RTS world, attracting Warcraft 3 pros LucifroN and Vortix, as well as StarCraft’s MarineLorD.

A new title in the series is on the way, but it’s not a competitor looking to drown out older titles. In conversations with the development team at World’s Edge, they made it clear that they’re proud of the work they did on Age of Empires II, especially the Definitive Edition. They still see AoE II as a title that will continue to grow in the coming years.

We have always wanted to help Age of Empires esports grow to new heights. The rate of growth has exceeded our initial expectations. It has been so much fun to watch these world-class players emerge on the global stage and compete against each other. We can’t wait to see the scene get even bigger and more vibrant in the future. We will reveal more details about Age of Empires IV at a later date. All we can say is that we expect the Age II DE competitive community to continue thriving after the release of Age IV.

If you read most forums and social media platforms, you might still feel like efforts to grow an Age of Empires esports community are pointless. It will never reach the heights of StarCraft, and major organizations will never challenge the game that peaked in the 2000s. My point here is that that was never the purpose of these scenes.

If there’s one clear message from the past two decades of these games, it’s that the players, competitors, commentators, analysts, and organizers are all just as passionate as any other scene. They love and adore their games. Everyone may have their own preferences, but he’s the players’ favorite.

Age of Empires Esports never sought validation from the rest of the industry. He never asked if he could call himself an esports title. He just did it, got people to take notice, and provided the scene with the tools and resources it needed to succeed, and the scene has used all of that to great effect.

To me, Age of Empires Liquipedia sums this up perfectly: For those who want to know what the scene has been up to over the years, 20 years of history are carefully explained. Thanks to Liquipedia, the history, culture and spirit of the Age of Empires esports people will always be there, a living and growing monument to their passion, unwavering since 1997.