Well, if a site is to be useful it cannot be a mile wide and an inch thick. The amount of myopic examination of trivial and meaningless topics on the site is beginning to baffle the senses.
Where is the leadership on this site? Who is setting the broad themes for these discussions? Does this site have a strategic objective other than cozying up to ENSEMBLE and pandering to 11-17 boys?
Anyhow you read it here first. If you care about your 'investment' in AOE3 and by this I mean your time, energy, charisma, ... then realize that nothing much of importance is accomplished by 11-17 year old boys acting unsupervised. Military history teaches this emphatically.
Most girls and women will read less than one page before dismissing the lot of you. And if the women won't follow, then you're back to playing this game in your bedroom.
And most advertisers would conclude that the AOE3 early adopters will dominate early AOE3 online play and write off AOE3 until it shows a 'broader' following.
And most game designers will laugh to tears at the amateurish level of response Age of Heaven is showing in terms of directing all this 'undirected' energy. What is the point of being first off the mark if all you do is collect the most intractable, least manageable elements of the final marketplace?
If anyone who works on this site expects to have a career in this business in five years GET YOUR BUTT IN GEAR. It is not pre-boom or boom times anymore. It is after the dot.con is over and this looks suspiciously like the undisciplined sites that existed before the autumn of 2001.
Because, right now, this early attempt at Age of Heaven looks like a rowboat with about 20 raucous teenagers in it all fighting over the oars.
I will come back in a month and see if their are any improvements, but I am not hopeful. Indeed, I think it is prudent to dismiss any interest in AOE3 based on my early observations of AOE3 devotees.