Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Age of Empires

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 18:14, 29 April 2008.

[edit] Age of Empires

Article has gone through 2 GA reviews (first failed, second passed) and an extensive peer review. Lots of copyediting too. Seems ready to me, look forward to comments from others. Cheers, dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 01:37, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

  • Comment don't have time for a good review, but this is so I watchlist the page and don't forget about you...
    • "The series commenced with the first game, Age of Empires, in 1997. Seven games have been released from the series, as well as three spin-offs." Commenced? Just seems to stick out from the text. Perhaps reword to be more straightfoward "The series began with 1997's AoE..." Secondly "seven games..." reword to "Ensemble has released seven titles in the series, as well as three spin-offs (could list what they are)
      • Done, and done (but didn't list as that'd be too long...) dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 01:58, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
    • "The games in the series " remove "in the series, I think it's been established
    • "The popularity and quality of the games has earned Ensemble Studios a reputation which has lead to them working with developer Bungie Studios on Halo Wars." this doesn't exactly make sense to a reader: how does a reputation correlate to Halo Wars? Perhaps it should be "a reputation for real time strategy games; when Bungie Studios wanted to create a RTS based in the Halo universe, they chose Ensemble" or something like that.
    • "as well as its uncommon use of a game system which treats both player and non-players fairly" maybe you should elaborate more on that?
    • Image:AoE Helmets.jpg is in my opinion rather ugly with the borders. Could another image serve it better? (Or I might make some myself)...
      • Photoshop hates me. I'll ask around, if you don't want to. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 01:58, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

More to come, but a good job so far, Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 01:46, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 01:58, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Comments

All links checked out fine. Ealdgyth - Talk 02:19, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
DHMO will have to speak for the others, but Music4Games is not a self-published source, has a staff, et al, and is a major partner for game music events. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 02:29, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
Bless your lucky stars I'm a gamer, so I've heard of a lot of the sites ya'll use. At least you're spared the questions on IGN/Gamespot/etc. (grins) Ealdgyth - Talk 02:34, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm very grateful for that! :) dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 07:53, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
struck the replaced ones, left the others up for others to decide for themselves. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:21, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 11:57, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Support based on additional changes that cited information and removal of excessive non-free content. The rest are stylistic issues and not important enough to warrant an oppose. Ottava Rima (talk) 12:59, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose Some sections lack references. Non-free image used without corresponding section explaining absolute important to the article. I don't understand from the article why there is a "series" article that mostly rehashes the individual game articles, is this a a glorified list? References seem to be about individual games, not about the series as a series. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:50, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
    • Which sections lack references? I'm not seeing them, sorry. Which non-free image is used without a decent explanation? Again, I'm sorry, but it's very difficult for me to fix the issues if I don't know what they are. If you're unsure as to the article's layout, you may wish to look at Mana (series), Kingdom Hearts (series), Halo (series), etc.—to describe the games is an essential element of the article. I've added as many references discussing the series as a whole as I could find, there weren't that many, surprisingly. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 07:53, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Articles lacking references 1,2,3,6, and yes, these paragraphs introduce some information that should be cited. I don't see why the icons are necessary to the article, nor do I see how icons could be absolutely important to it, so the fairuse rationale for FA (which is higher than standard article) doesn't match up in my eyes. I just looked at the Mana series, and the way series are discussed is far different than the way you put forward. Note, they have history and design, whereas, you have summaries of the plot. Maybe you should follow the chart format put forth by the Mana series and move the development section up in order to show that this is a page on the series instead of just a rehash of every other page. Now, there is a problem with the other "series" games, which can be seen on their FAs - they were passed with very few commentators. Two supports and twp possible oppose for Mana, for instance. The same goes for Kingdom Hearts. Hmm. I don't really know what to tell you to use as a guide here. It seems that our major problems is that there aren't enough people to really come up with a unified consensus on "series" formats. Ottava Rima (talk) 12:57, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Now I'm very confused...the FAC is for this article, yet you say other articles lack references? Or, if sections, then the external links section (among others) lacks references? Icons/images dealt with below (removing). Please see Halo_(series)#Games - the best example of what I was talking about in terms of game info. I'm not sure about that last point...there seems to be a consistent and well structured format that's appeared on numerous FAs. If you disagree with it, the best place to go is WT:VG. I think I've done everything actionable in your oppose. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 11:57, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Paragraphs for this article. Sorry, that was left out, but in context, that should have been understood. Especially when I mentioned in the preceding statement. Its not hard to look at your own article and determine which paragraphs lack citations. And the Halo series doesn't offer anything to justify many of the problems with your article, especially with the constant duplication of other information. You haven't provided why the series is notable. You have only provided why parts of the series are notable. This, if anything, is easily accomplished by a category. Furthermore, the Halo series is not an FA, so you can't use it to even form a basis for what an FA should look like. You lack effective notability, there are paragraphs missing citations, and there are images that are inappropriate for FAs. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:11, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
My apologies for misreading you. I wasn't taking this as well as I could have (I suppose I blame school and stuff here, right?...), and I really should have read your comments again. Sorry for the confusion, especially on my part. To address, briefly, the other points - yes, the Halo one isn't an FA, but it's close, and the other ones pointed to are FAs...I suppose some series get different coverage to others, and in the case of this one, most mention of the series is generally in the context of talking about an individual game (in a review of it, etc.), so that's all I have to work with, I guess. Also, the images have been changed around a bit...how are they now? dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 11:35, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • The following are lines that need citations:
  • How "Age of Mythology" can be considered as part of the "Age of Empires" "series", because it is not a sequel.
  • I've added some references that make note of it being in the series. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 11:35, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • "The Age of Empires series has been highly successful commercially, with sales in excess of 15 million copies."
  • "The popularity and quality of the games has earned Ensemble Studios a reputation in real-time strategy gaming"
  • "leading to fellow developer Bungie choosing Ensemble to create Halo Wars"
  • "as well as its uncommon use of a game system which treats both player and non-players fairly, as opposed to the use of "cheating" artificial intelligence (AI)."
  • "However, Age of Mythology had only one campaign; it was also longer and had a more distinct story than the other games in the series.[2] Age of Empires III split its campaign into three "Act"s; each “Act” covers the story of a generation of the fictional "Black" family.[3]" How do either of these sentences fit in with "common gameplay elements"?
  • "The missions in a campaign mostly follow a historical setting and focus;" Apparently not if you include "Age of Mythology" as you have.
  • Reworded (generally, hence emphasising the AoM exception). dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 11:55, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • "For example, while Germany at the time of Age of Empires III was largely Protestant, the design of the German church building is Catholic rather than Protestant."
  • "The series' sporadic faithfulness to history has earned them criticism for the games. "
  • "The series’ spinoff, Age of Mythology, and its expansion pack, The Titans, are set during the Classical period, but focus on mythology rather than history as their themes." The page of Age of Mythology doesn't call it a spin-off, so you need evidence to justify the inclusion.
  • Hmm...not sure why the AoM article didn't say that, I've reworded it there. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 11:55, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • "was the first game in the series as well as the first major release from Ensemble Studios." -major- is a term that needs a citation.
  • "Due to the games taking place around historical events, the team often had to do large amounts of research to depict the events."
  • "The artificial intelligence (AI) used in the Age of Empires series has received praises many times." Also, the use of "praises many times" is awkward.
  • "He created the original music in Age of Empires with sounds of instruments from the periods in the games."
  • "Age of Empires has often been credited for influencing numerous real-time strategy games and series, including Empire Earth, Cossacks (and its sequel), and Rome: Total War."

Finally, you have sections without "main article" links to their appropriate articles, which isn't following standard format. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:23, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Done. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 11:55, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Comments:

  • "The series began with the first game," Redundant. It's not going to start with the second game, is it?
  • The second paragraph describes the setting and focus, but still doesn't mention about how the game is actually played.
  • "which has lead to developer Bungie Studios choosing to work with them on Halo Wars." Awkward phrasing. I was going to suggest the word "collaborate" but I guess that's in the next sentence.
  • Shouldn't "AI" be written out in full the first time it's used?
  • First caption: No need to put "Age of Empires", because that can be seen and is also the topic of the article, so it's obvious.
  • "Turn based" is hyphenated in the Wikipedia article, so it probably should be here.
  • "The series features several recurring modes of play; "random map", "death match", and "campaign"." Not sure about this, but shouldn't a colon be used here as opposed to the semi-colon? Tell me if I'm mistaken.
    • I think you're mistaken...though I'm not competent enough to explain why, it just seems right. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 10:33, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
  • "The attention to detail on units and characters in games varies For instance"?
  • I have a problem with the second paragraph of "Common gameplay elements", because it's confused between whether it wants to explain how the game is played, or how it is made. Plus, we even get a bit of "Reception" thrown in there as well.
    • I see your general point (reception? Where?), and have reworded some. I suppose the way the game works does sometimes interrelate with how it's designed...but I'll try and do some more on that too. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 10:33, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
  • "one of the first history based real-time strategy video games to be created." Any chance of a source?
  • Too much repetition: "Despite the year spent developing the game, there were still numerous bugs in the game". The subsequent sentence then uses "despite" again.
  • "with over 3 million units sold," I learned in my own FAC that, apparently, "more than" should be used as opposed to "over". Anyway, shouldn't "3" be written out in full here? Same for other examples of this.
  • "with over 3 million units sold, and spending years high on sales charts." Is there any way that this could be reworded to sound better than it does now.
  • "the player choses a"?
  • "The first version contained multiple software bugs, though many of were". them?
  • "The game introduced several new units and the concept of "unique technologies"." There's no point in stating it and then not explaining it.
  • "The Age of Kings was more successful than its predecessors". But according to this, its predecessor sold more. Reword to say that it was more successful critically.
  • "was released on October 23, 2007; breaking the "tradition" of one expansion per game." Are you sure that that semi-colon should be there instead of a comma?
  • "The Asian Dynasties was slightly less well reviewed" This doesn't say that the game got lower scores, only that the reviews themselves were of lower quality, which I don't think is what's trying to be said.
  • Don't use full stops at the end of captions if they're not full sentences.
  • "Spin-off" is hyphenated in the header, although it isn't in the text in other parts of the article. Needs consistency.
  • "The game is similar to other turn based games, such as Advance Wars," This article's getting opposed unless you replace Advance Wars with Fire Emblem;-). Only joking—keep it as it is.
    • Maybe I should say "other GOOD turn based games", to avoid such problems in future? :D dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 10:33, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
  • "Age of Mythology went platinum," Not sure about the wording here.
    • It's what we use on music articles, unsure if there's a different way of doing it here... dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 10:33, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
  • "Age of Empires: The Age of Kings earned an 80% score" Why use "earned" here. I would personally replace that word. Seems to imply that it attained these scores deservedly.
  • "The games in the Age of Empires series were developed in similar ways" to each other?
  • "of the game; a first for both teams." Again with the punctuation usage. I may be wrong, but I don't thiink it's technically correct.
  • Inconsistent sources: some use *forename**Surname* while others use the reverse order.
  • What's going on with ref 25?
  • Ref 68 probably isn't a reliable source considering it was written by a randomer.

I Hope this helps. Ashnard Talk Contribs 09:38, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

It does, thanks! dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 10:33, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Most issues have been resolved now; nice work on making the amendments. I'm afraid that I'm unwilling to support though. I'm just not confident that the prose is "engaging, even brilliant"; I just think it needs that extra bit of polish, sorry. Ashnard Talk Contribs 21:31, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Hopefully the stuff below will sort that out. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 11:35, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Issues resolved, ЭLСОВВОLД talk 14:16, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Support since it has improved a lot since it passed the GA (where there wasn't even a "Gameplay" section, this part was covered only in each game). And let's hope the rest of the games reach GA/FA class (only AOE III, one of its expansion packs, and AOM have it so far).igordebraga ≠ 16:13, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
    • Thanks. :) Yep, slowly working on get the series towards FT. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 11:57, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
      • But you'd better add some gameplay image, since it's hard reaching FA with only a logo. igordebraga ≠ 02:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
        • Images added, will ping elcobbola again. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 11:35, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
          • Now we've entered a conundrum. WP:NFCC#8 requires that fair use images contribute significantly to our understanding. Both you and the editor suggesting more images have implicitly and explicitly supported promotion even in their absence. Isn't the implication, then, that they aren't really necessary to facilitate understanding? FAs do not require any images whatsoever, and we can't compare nominations to other FAs. That being said, there might be a case to be made for Image:Age of empires.jpg (certainly not Image:Age of Mythology ingame screenshot.jpg, however, as it is of tangential relevance, at best). The AoE image, however, would need to be low resolution (NFCC#3B) and have a relevant and appropriate purpose statement ("fighting tactics and battle are thoroughly discussed" seems patently false, no?) Obviously, I'd rather the additional images not be included for reasons of logical consistency, unambiguous policy compliance, precedent, etc., but I won't oppose if just the AoE and logo images are used (assuming the AoE's issues are corrected). ЭLСОВВОLД talk 23:18, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
            • It's just that, as the links show, all Featured VG series have in-game images. They help showing how the games are and how the gameplay goes. But if the first one only needs a resize, fine. But I'll do it only if "H2O" is too lazy for it... igordebraga ≠ 04:48, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
              • That's not relevant. FAC nominations need to be evaluated against policy, not other FAs. Existing FAs may have had images added after promotion, or the images may not have been checked for NFCC compliance in the first place. As I've said, comments made thus far have implicitly and explicitly indicated that the new fair use images are not supported by NFCC#8. ЭLСОВВОLД talk 05:01, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
                • The AoM image is gone. igordebraga, if you could do a resize, I would appreciate it—I'm hopeless with that sort of thing. elcobbola, I expanded on the caption for the AoE image. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 00:10, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
                  • The caption was actually fine (does it violate succinctness now?); the problem is that the AoE rationale's purpose statement isn't applicable to this article (it was just copied and pasted from another article's rationale, no?) The AoE rationale just needs to be tweaked to articulate the image's particular role in this article. ЭLСОВВОLД talk 15:09, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
      • Resized. igordebraga ≠ 02:48, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Issues Revolved Karanacs (talk) 13:11, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Support. My concerns have been addressed. The article is comprehensive, well-organized and reasonably well-wrriten. Karanacs (talk) 13:02, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

  • Comments
    • These were followed by a trio of games centering around Europe in the Middle Ages, as well as the Spanish colonization of Mexico.

Change around to on.

Done. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 11:35, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
    • Age of Empires III split its campaign into three "Act"s; each “Act” covers the story of a generation of the fictional "Black" family

Change "Act"s to "Acts"

Done. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 11:35, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
    • The missions in a campaign mostly follow a historical setting and focus; faithfulness to history was an less important to the team

Change an less to a less.

Reworded. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 11:35, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
    • A spin off game have been loosely set in the historical time period of the original Age of Empires, but have focused on fictional elements of Greek, Egyptian, and Norse mythology.

Change A spin off game have been...but have focused.... to A spin off game has been...but has focused on...

Done. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 11:35, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
    • "Death match" starts players off with large amounts of resources and have them fight until only one side remains.

Has is singular and have is plural. So here change have to has at it refers to Death Match..

Fixed. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 11:35, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
    • The review scores from Metacritic as well as Game Rankings show that they were retrieved in January, 2008 according to the URL access date. These review scores will undoubtedly change with upgrades or new game releases over the next few years. For this article to be timeless, it would be good to place the date of the rankings, if not in the prose, then as an extension of the reference citation... such as The following games have the highest average score of main sites as of April 15, 2008:
Hmm...I doubt any new reviews will come out, since none of the games are very recent. I'll add that note in anyway, in case new games come out... dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 11:35, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Kind Regards and good luck SriMesh | talk 02:10, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks heaps for taking a look. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 11:35, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
SupportThank you for replying above, I have changed my comments to support. I feel the latter half of the article has a smoother flow than the top of the article, but overall presented well. Good Luck!! Kind Regards SriMesh | talk 02:18, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks very much, I appreciate it. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 00:10, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment: One of the first things that struck me when looking down the article is that the first image - the series title one - looks awful. Is there any chance of replacing it with a better image of the series title, preferably one with a slightly bigger size on the page? It just looks out of place and somehow "wrong". Hardly a major point, but to me it has a slightly negative impact on presentation. -- Sabre (talk) 11:21, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
    • I really wish I could do something about it, but despite a lot of searching, I haven't found anything. :( If you do find something, feel free to upload it over the old image (or link here and I'll do it)... dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 00:10, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
    • Just checked back to see how this is progressing, the new image is fantastic, far better than the previous one. Good job whoever dug it up. -- Sabre (talk) 10:48, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment: I don't have a problem with the article as a whole, but I had 5 specific objections to assertions in the article when I was reading through it; I summarized on the talk page. If it's going to be called FA, these probably ought to be addressed; I didn't change the article itself because I don't have the sources right now and am frankly feeling lazy. Coanda-1910 (talk) 07:21, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
    • Thanks for your comments there. All done or replied to. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 08:52, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
      • Support Clear, accurate, and well-focused on the topic. My concerns have been resolved. Coanda-1910 (talk) 22:19, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Reliable sources concerns have not been addressed; please refer to WP:V policy in establishing whether sources are reliable. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:12, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
    • I've done some more searching and found replacements for the aoe.heavengames.com link noted above. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 08:52, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Looks good to me. Support. Though there are some issues with the reliability of some sources, the fact is that most of these are cited on the page as being a view, not an absolute. We're not talking about a hard science here. --rm 'w avu 01:18, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose Mostly prose. I've only skimmed the beginning, but what I found is enough to make me oppose. Here are a sampling of problems I found. As always, please go through the entire article; don't just fix these.
    • "The games are set against historical events throughout time." As opposed to "historical events" throughout something else?
    • "The initial games focused on events..." Initial is far too vague here. Two, three, four?
    • "the artificial intelligences fight players " This grammatical usage of AI strikes me as quite odd.
    • "Most of the Age of Empires games belong to the real-time strategy genre (with the exception of the" Why not say all and get rid of the parens?
    • "The most popular of the series' game modes is "random map"" Really? This is certainly not stated in the source you give. And what does "most popular" mean anyway? How exactly is popularity measured here?
      • The source called it a hallmark of the series...not really the same, so reworded. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 08:52, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
    • "In a "Death match" game" Death is capitalized because?
    • "however, Age of Mythology and Age of Empires III have been exceptions to this trend." Meaning what? One campaign? No campaign? State explicitly.
    • "yet design teams do not strive for absolute historical accuracy" Design teams? This certainly throws readers. "yet do not strive for" is perfectly fine.
    • "For example, while Germany at the time of Age of Empires III..." "At the time of"?
    • "However, the design team did take great care" Now singular and past tense. Is this a specific game's design team?
    • "that are relatively well-known but also include" Spot the missing punctuation mark.
    • "The series' sporadic faithfulness to history has earned them criticism for the games." Now series is plural? Also, the reader assumes "them" refers to the series here, so why "for the games"?
    • "Moreover, critics have panned..." Moreover implies that this is something different than the previous sentence(s). This is not the case here.
    • "none of whom ever fought in history" "ever" implies "in history".

BuddingJournalist 02:00, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

All these are done, I'll try and get a full copyedit done, and also ask someone external. Cheers, dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 08:52, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
Striking out for now, but I have yet to revisit the article in-depth. BuddingJournalist 20:27, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Support. I've copyedited it, and it looks good: not too specific, not too vague. Well done DHMO. (By the way, did anyone notice this FAC is longer than the article itself...) · AndonicO Engage. 02:42, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.