Good day friends, medieval historians, battle connoisseurs, and to all you lords and ladies of the Ages!

To say the least, it’s been a busy month since the release of Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition! Over here at World’s Edge, we’ve been hard at work gathering your feedback, prioritizing your requests and bug reports, and helping our development partners while they work to build and test the latest improvements to the Definitive Edition.

And they’ve been busy; so busy, in fact, that next week we will be releasing one of the largest updates Age of Empires 2 has ever seen. The team has put together a holiday package with over a hundred bug fixes, gameplay improvements, and even some brand-new features to improve your experience.

Here’s a small snippet of some of the big highlights:

Game Stability Improvements & Crash Fixes

Civilization and Unit Balance Changes

Balance Changes for the Cumans and Steppe Lancer

NEW! Map Ban System for Ranked Matchmaking!

Updated Map Pool for Ranked Matchmaking

Lobbies & Matchmaking Improvements

Campaign Balance and Achievement Fixes

NEW! Campaign Completion Medals!

AI & Pathfinding Improvements

Art of War Challenge Missions now have Localized Voice-Overs

Our developer friends have been working to improve (quite literally) every aspect of the game, and they’re not done yet! While next week will introduce changes based on this first month of the Definitive Edition, we’re already hard at work planning out the next systems you’ve highlighted as a community!

And with that in mind, remember that you have the power to inspire change! We’re always looking for feedback, suggestions, and bug reports over on our official forums and here on Steam, where there are already thousands of players discussing the game. If there’s something you’d like to see changed or added following next week’s build, go see if someone has started a discussion about it! If they haven’t, then there’s no better time to kick off a thread than right now!

While you’re waiting, let us know if there’s anything you want to know about before the patch drops next week…perhaps we can get away with sharing more details about what’s on the way!

Happy December!

—The Age of Empires Team