It's not like AoE3 is the only game that has amazing graphics...
If you live in a 3rd world country you should be happy to have a decent home, a job and enough food to stay healthy. I know it's not fair, but that's just the way it is. Some people who get lucky and think of something smart, for examle John de Mol then you can earn a shitload of money. Now if someone else got less lucky, like my aunt who almost didn't finish middle school and never got started to do a following study. Then you'll have hard time getting enough money to pay your bills.
Now Johny can easily buy thousands of new supercomputer while my aunt is happy she managed to buy a cheap one 5 years ago...
I mean come on... it's not like you are forced to use all the nice effects. You're just getting the possibility to do so. I can't run Doom3 full graphics, I've to run it on low res and low graphics, yet I'm not complaining cause the game is still fun to play. If I would want all to see the game in full glory I'll need to buy the best of the best, but I can also just play the game with lower graphics.
Times are changing, if ES would make a crappy looking game, like with the best graphics settings it would have AoM quality. Then not a lot of people will buy it cause it looks like shit. They'd prefer to buy some other rts wich has about the same level of gameplay but has half life 2 graphics.
Summary:
You don't need to turn on all the effects and high graphics settings, you can also play it at a low graphics level. And of course you won't be able to play it on a pc that's like 10 years old. All those people who don't have the money to buy a new pc about every 3/4 years just don't have enough money to play pc games. Maybe they should do other things or buy a console.
"Give me Age of Empires, sir, and you may keep your Warcraft."
[This message has been edited by Spacemonk (edited 06-29-2005 @ 10:33 AM).]