While I thought Lord of Ultima was pretty cool with it’s persistent world real time strategy, it lacked one thing, immersion. For example, you send off your army to face off against a level 6 Dragon, but you don’t get to see the fight. Everything is conveyed to you, post-battle, in the form of stats (how many troops returned alive, based on troop category, on how much loot plundered, and whether did the Dragon survive the encounter).

I think I just found the game to beat Lord of Ultima ad then some, it’s called….Age of Empires Online. Yup, Microsoft’s venerable RTS title is back, and I must say it’s in fine form. As a free-to-play title, gamers can build up their own Greek civilization which will continue to live and grow even when the player is offline. The keyword here is persistence and you just have to take a look at the following trailer to see how awesome this premise is…except for the game doesn’t have dragons: