I found ou there have been a lot of age of empires 2 versions realeasing latley. After a friend invited me to play with him.
However i refuse to buy steam and even if i got it. The new versions arre very large and my internet is very slow. So i can only dowload it via torrent. But the version i got has no multiplayer.
Maybe some of you play and know a way to fix this?
If a game has LAN functionality, playing pirated copies should be no issue, you just need both players to have the same version, and you can use services like GameRanger to connect with the others in case you're not actually in the same physical network.
The classic AoE2 definitely had LAN, like most PC games at the time, but from a cursory search it seems like they may have gotten rid of that in the HD releases. Or rather, they made it so you need a connection to the servers to be able to start the game, after which it switches to LAN, which just... completely misses the point of LAN play, which is precisely not being reliant on a connection to some other server. So it seems like you can't play multiplayer on the pirated version, unfortunately.
Thanks for the long repply.
It seems that the new versions are indeed single player only. Wich kinda sucks.
Yeah, games have been getting private servers and LAN functionality stripped out of them for years now, probably mostly as an anti-piracy measure.
Ironically, when the servers are eventually shut down all these games (or at least their multiplayer components) will be rendered worthless, while all the old ones will still work fine. Russians will still be playing CS 1.6 in 2100, while several console generations worth of games will just be lost to time. Truly, the most rational economic system.
Stupid corporate drones.
But old games are also unlikley to work because the new hardware and new os already dont suport older games. And emulation often does not work.
Hardware was built to not last very much. So that is not a solution either.
I think all these cultural products will just disapear.
