Really, I did think so. Alot of people are playing it and they seem to even have the skirmish ready, a very valuable asset in any AOE game. But they just seem to play with it themselves and not let us have it. I do understand that they may be afraid to set it live, because alot of people would love it. But hey, they want us to play their game dont they?

Also, its taking for ever to get the persians and celts out! Come on people!

well with playerbase at the values present it makes no sens to spend any development costs on content. their initial investment was nowhere near recovered and ... yeah.

I love the game and I would have gladly paid for the box.

But these guys have some cajones with their cash shop, especially for "Season Pass 1."

The content updates have been more than enough to keep me busy, but then, my playing time is relatively limited.  I can certainly see somebody who is playing this full-time get burned out, however.

I too would like to see the Skirmish Hall eventually, but am still working my way through the campaigns, which have been a bit more diverse than I expected.  Most are build-base-and-crush-enemy, but there are several which have different set-ups and objectives.

As far as cost, I believe that all the civilizations have been on sale at some point by now, so it shouldn't be hard to get them for ~$10 each.  I paid for the box for Greece and paid full freight for Egypt, but got Persia at half price.  I think the main concern is that the few people who bought Season 1 may not get their money's worth (MS has said that will not be the case even recently, but I'm not sure that is taking sales into account).

Just as an FYI, the Skirmish booster was delayed to December (at the earliest) due to many things; most notibly the amount of stress caused in the 4v4 :)

I myself am leaving for TOR coem December, but if I had stayed it wouldn't have been much longer.

Theres no ingame support, no ticket system, no ingame mods (this is full time volunteer or not) gold sellers and spammers are left unchecked, no marketplace just random spam in a small and very buggy trade chat tab, content is once per month in a giant patch, the patcher itself is incomplete and cannot do hotfixes only large updates once a month, far too fast levelling, unbalanced civ's, persians were rushed, etc.

All in all its an ok game to play for a few months, but after that with it lacking the above (which most online games have as standard, or at least should) your left wondering what to do at 40.