What's so great about it?

Microsoft's key that requires an Internet connection to install and play online.  It also causes the "Your CD Key cannot currently be validated.  Please wait a few minutes and try again." errors.  They are annoying.

The "Out of Sync" errors that often crash the game when playing online.  When there's a problem, rather than ruining the game for 4, 6, 8, or more people, Microsoft should work around it rather than intentionally crashing the game for all of the players.

The so-called "2,4" errors that prevent most people from uploading their stats after finishing a game.  It's frustrating to win a game, then have your rating go down.

The limit on the number of units you can select at any time.  It's 30 now, and I think it was 40 in the previous games.  That's a small annoyance, but that seems like something that should get better rather than worse.

Microsoft could fix the above, if they wanted to, but the real problem I see with it is the people that quit the games.  My great-nephew bought the game for me, and has been trying to get me to play.  I've played online about two dozen times so far, and not once have all of the other players finished an entire game.  They just quit.  I guess the soccer mommies don't teach their kids to finish what they start.  "Honey, it's ok.  If that's not fun any more, you don't have to do it."  It's just not worth the effort of playing for 20 minutes to build-up then to only have some punk ruin the game by quitting.

BTW, my nickname AoM is TS_zoom in case you ever see me around.  One day, I hope to find a game that isn't ruined by having someone quit.z

Zoom, Computers were invented so that you gamers wouldn't have to interact and be social.....just play by yourself.........I have about 10 hours of time on that game myself...

I'm not that impressed with it.  It's basically the same as Age of Empires I and II but with different/better graphics.

Aww, but it's so much more fun to beat-up on an actual person [:)].  I would play by myself, but the AI is terrible.  On hard, if you know the basics, you can beat it every time.  It doesn't look like Microsoft spent much time at all on the AI.  On titan, Microsoft setup the game so that the gather rate of every resource is doubled, so it is impossible to beat without resort to tricking the AI.

I just played a 45 minute that ended in an "Out of Sync" error.  That's 45 minutes times six people that was wasted.  Thanks Microsoft.z