1.0 Conclusion of Second Chance and Future Events


And with a thrilling 4-1 victory over BritishMusketeer, Duolckrad claims the self-annointed title, “first among trashcans,” showcasing an impressive amount of skill in both AoE and the art of duck-related wordplay, bringing our Autumn festivities to an eventful close. But what events they were! The Autumn Tournament, giving birth to new casters and up-and-coming players alike, saw a record high number of casted games this year and even reached a peak viewership we haven’t seen since the legendary, unprecedented ESOC grand finals between H2O and BlackStar_OP almost two years ago!


As we move forward, the team here at ESOC looks to continue to provide and improve upon the same great, competitive content we’ve come to expect, all the while entertaining ideas to help keep the community fresh. This means more events are coming! And although we do not have any definitive dates at this time, expect to, in the near future, receive another update on our future plans.


2.0 Team Changes


A lot has happened since we’ve last touched base a week ago. Various internal teams are letting old faces go, welcoming in new ones, and in same cases, re-welcoming back the familiar. With that said, please extend a warm welcome to edeholland now back on the admin panel and wish WickedCossack the best following his decision to take a step down. Rumor has it, he will be using his casting prowess to commentate the Tour de France next year, watch out! Extend another belated welcome to pecelot who will be using his time and talents in a newfound moderator position, hopefully still finding the time to create Goodspeed-tier comp stomp guides. Gichtenlord, bringing with him some saucy treaty background, will join Durokan and Rikikipu on the maps team ever hard at work providing fun and interesting new content for personal and competitive use alike.


Over in the forever underappreciated sector of ESOC, the dev team, buckethead parts ways with us and with him we send our best regards. In the media team, I’ve taken up the difficult task of filling the large l̶i̶v̶e̶r̶ shoes left behind by Jerom, successfully breaking up the Dutch monopoly that has stood for so long. In addition, to help mitigate the ever prevalent need to find casters to commentate matches, we’ve brought on a number of new faces for just that. Please say hello to casters Dror, site, and forgrin. Interested in casting? Send a sample recording to the media team; applications are always open! Lastly, G̶o̶o̶d̶s̶p̶e̶e̶d̶ the masterminds behind the EP, in an effort to continually bring in fresh perspectives and play testers, extend a hearty welcome to new members breeze, mongo10, Kaiserklein, Incog, and SirCallen.


3.0 Behind the Scenes


On the topic of EP, be confident play tests are already in progress; the team is taking your opinions into careful consideration in the discussion of balance design. In addition, you may have noticed a new, sleek looking home page! The site has undergone a small overhaul, cleaning up the sidebar and adding in ESOC’s social media links located overhead in a rather aesthetically pleasing fashion. Huge thanks to the devs, it looks great!


4.0 Community Content


ESOC prides itself on the sustainable model we use (ty donors) to provide the community with high quality, exciting tournaments featuring tangible stakes. Be that as it may, we are unable to produce year-round content but still believe there’s no such thing as too much AoE! It is in this void that you, the community, can flourish.


JakeyBoy is hosting his own Diplomunion 1v1 supremacy tournament coming up soon! Interested in playing or casting? For more information, follow this post here: http://eso-community.net/viewtopic.php?t=8803 or the Diplomunion website here: https://www.diplomunion.com/index.php?threads/age-of-empires-3-newbie-tournament.23183/


Our very own MCJim is starting a new series on his personal YouTube channel titled, “AoE3 Casts.” In this, official ESOC casters can commentate various live 1v1 gameplays from a wide array of skill levels and have the opportunity to have the videos published to YouTube under an established, popular AoE3 user. Interested in participating as a player? Find a good mate and send a PM to Jim!


And lastly, we want to thank everyone that keeps the twitch TAD streamer list in the left hand sidebar always lit up. Over the past couple of years, Age of Empires has undergone somewhat of a revolution in terms of streaming personal game play and it couldn’t be better. Keep up all the effort, streamers!