Age of Empires 2 is one of my all-time favorite games, and I know I’m not the only one who loves getting a look behind the scenes of its development at Microsoft’s defunct Ensemble Studios.
The original title, Age of Kings, launched in 1999 and was followed quickly by the Age of Conquerors expansion in 2000.
Sandy Petersen was a lead designer and developer at Ensemble from 1997 until it closed shop in 2009, and he played a key role in designing Age of Empires.
More than 25 years later, Petersen shared some interesting tidbits on X regarding the Conquerors expansion and the massive influence Korea, at the time, had on the gaming world due to the popularity of StarCraft.
Peterson says he chose the “conquerors” theme, which made it easier to select four civilizations to add to the base game: the Spanish, Aztecs, Huns, and Mayans.
Ahead of schedule by about five weeks in January 2000 — roughly eight months before the official Conquerors expansion launch — Petersen received a call from Microsoft.
In 1999, I was assigned to design the expansion pack to Age of Empires 2. I chose The Conquerors as the theme, and wishing to have 4 civs (as we had on Rise of Rome), I chose the Spanish, the Aztecs, the Huns, and the Mayans. The project went ahead extremely well. We were… pic.twitter.com/b7Af0djI8aMarch 18, 2025
The four civilizations planned for Age of Conquerors were about to get an addition at the behest of Microsoft.
StarCraft, developed by Blizzard Entertainment and launched in 1998, was at that time seeing massive success in Korea.
It’d sold 3 million copies in Korea alone, and Microsoft wanted to get in on the action.
As Petersen puts it, he told Microsoft:
“Koreans, greatly to their credit, were not conquerors. They stayed in their lane. While they’re cool, they don’t fit the Conquerors theme. Starcraft doesn’t have any Koreans in it, so those sales had zero to do with a Korean civ.”
Petersen’s arguments against the addition of a Korean civ for a game focusing on conquerors were valid. But Microsoft wouldn’t budge.
This last-minute addition, of course, sent the Ensemble team into a scramble to add an entire civ in about five weeks.
So I went ahead and we crammed in the Korean civ in the last 5 weeks we had. No Microsoft didn’t give us any extra time. We made what apparently were three mistakes. We used the wrong art for the turtle ships (we used a legitimate source, but apparently Koreans didn’t like that… pic.twitter.com/27wk1eDiOeMarch 18, 2025
I give Petersen’s team credit for creating a Korean civ for Age of Empires II that is still fun to play to this day.
👉 Related: Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition review
However, Petersen points out three mistakes that Ensemble made during the rushed development of a Korean civ.
The unique Turtle Ship unit had artwork that wasn’t appreciated by Koreans despite Ensemble’s use of a “legitimate source.”
The Sea of Japan, which isn’t called the Sea of Japan in Korea, understandably ruffled some feathers, and the mention of a Japanese invasion of Korea in the late 16th century allegedly caused a Microsoft rep in Korea to be “arrested and detained for awhile.”
Petersen wraps up the X thread by pointing out that Age of Empires 2 never ended up selling three million copies in Korea, no doubt because StarCraft still hadn’t gone anywhere.
Where is StarCraft today?
Age of Empires and its Definitive Edition remaster are still going strong, pulling in more than 21,000 players on Steam alone in the last 24 hours.
The indirect sequel, Age of Empires 4, launched in 2021 and is still receiving updates and new content.
Heck, even Age of Mythology recently received a quality remake at the hands of Microsoft and its studios.
So what’s happening with StarCraft? I played the first game quite a bit when I was younger (when I wasn’t playing AoE 2) but never touched StarCraft 2.
While both StarCraft games have a dedicated fan base, it’s been too long since we’ve had anything new from the IP.
Blizzard is now owned by Microsoft, and it makes sense that the company would want to continue to produce games under the StarCraft banner.
There are rumors that a StarCraft shooter is planned, but so far nothing concrete has come out.
I have no idea if we’ll ever see some sort of StarCraft 3 in the future, but I’m sure the idea hasn’t been dismissed.
Real-time strategy (RTS) games haven’t seen the same level of popularity in recent years as they once did, but there are still a lot of us out there searching for the next big title.
