Age of Empires Online

Given the popularity of free-to-play games, somebody eventually came to the idea of taking beloved games and making free versions of them. Behold Age of Empires Online, a beloved historical real-time strategy turned into an online game, which you can download and play for free.
Well, it's not bad. The good old Age of Empire play mechanics are all there and to make the whole "online" thing work, they turned it into some sort of blend of massively multiplayer role-playing games and real-time strategy. How it works is like this - every player has a persistent capital, which levels up and maintains your skills and equipment. There you receive quests and "sail off" to actually play the missions. The system works, but it gets dull and repetitive pretty quickly. The quests are short yet numerous and they always begin in pretty much the same way. Also, having your upgrade system in capital means that you use the same set of technologies and troops in every mission unless you repick them between quests.
There are more problems. While you could say that Age of Empires franchise started off as educational, AoE Online is simply a game with a historical setting. All the enjoyment of building up a civilization from the stone age and making it flourish is replaced by a family-friendly looking MMO, where you simply rush through piss-easy maps to level up. In the process you gather magic items which you equip or sell. Seriously...
And what's with the cartoonish visuals these days? Are they so much cheaper to make that every game has to use them? It worked in Team Fortress 2 because they were ironic but otherwise it just makes a game childish. I can't stand to play Settlers VII because of the similar style (also, the game keeps calling me a princess), although the gameplay itself is pretty interesting.
There are two more major faults with AoE Online. First, it uses Games for Windows Live, which should be a crime. For example, if you lose your internet connection for a second, the client throws you out of the game and you lose all your mission progress. Secondly, the game has an awful payment scheme. Usually, free-to-play games have some premium content which has cosmetic effect or helps you progress more quickly. In AoE Online, payments give you great advantages over non-paying players in competitive play, making it pretty much impossible to win matches if you don't cough up a buck. Also, the prices are outrageous - 100 $ for six months? Are you fucking kidding me?
So yeah, overall a decent game but brought down by some huge problems.

Saiko