I don't mean to disparage other people's experiences but I find a massive disconnect between what other people are feeling and how I feel about this game.
Actual AOE is still alive and kicking through the Definitive Editions and now AOE4 with a very active online community and developers. While 0AD is great and fully opensource, I still don't find it comes close to the Experience of the actual AOE titles. Maybe I'm biased because I don't mind paying for proprietary software and I sometimes use Windows. I do however definitely agree how great of an achievement 0AD is and it is definitely a great game when considered in isolation.
A more interesting peer to this game is Beyond All Reason, an open source clone of Total Annihilation that has essentially revived a community for the franchise
The new AOM is really buggy (c.f. the original), so "alive" probably only applies to AOE2. I'm not sure I'd call AOE4 "AOE" (yeah, it's branded as it, but so was "Age of Empires Online"), so the series basically died at AOE3. The other thing is the new DEs (which are relatively recent) and AOE4 are Windows-only (there were Mac releases for the originals, and the originals were much easier to get running under wine), so there is more incentive to look at other games (or reimplement the engine like https://openage.sft.mx/).
Age of Empires 4 is not the same as Age of Empires Online and is a a full fledged game in the Age of Empires Series incredibly similar to AOE2 with some learnings from AOE3 added in.[1] It very much plays like it’s predecessors. It is highly enjoyable and has a very active community as responsive developers. There are many content creators and tournaments for this game now. It has a large enough userbase for you to be able to find a game quickly and they are constantly releasing new content and patches. The latest patch was released quite recently.[2]
AOE2, 3 and 4 have lots of tournaments, some of them with quite decent prize pools.[3]
I personally don’t play AOM so I can’t comment on that but as far as I have seen, Microsoft has done a good job at reviving the other games and with the new game so while I don’t doubt AOM is buggy I do have faith they are actively attempting to fix issues.
As for the Windows only thing, as I said, I use windows at times myself and I don’t mind paying for proprietary software. But I understand if others have qualms about that.
But to say that the Age of Empires series died with AOE3 is untrue, and while 0AD is a great achievement, to say it is a replacement for the actual Age games is also not true.
Also note that MS did reimplement the engine for the AOEI definitive edition, unsure about the others.
I've played AOE4 (during the free load balance trial), and sure, it's not Age of Empires Online, that doesn't mean it's an AOE game (another example: Halo 4 and 5 may be called Halo games, it doesn't mean they are ones). This view extends to the group of friends I play AOE2 with, so while I'm glad AOE4 has found its audience (so maybe they'll redo AOE1), I'm cynical that any sequels will be ones we want to play.
The issue for the new DEs/4 isn't that they're proprietary, it's they've gone backwards for cross-platform play (no MacOS, worse on wine), hence the open source implementation (with propriety assets) would enable playing on whatever systems people have.
EDIT: I will agree that 0AD isn't the same as AOE2 if I want to play AOE2, but given the option of playing a game that will work (0AD) vs. one that may work (new AOM), I'll take the one that will work.
As someone who grew up on playing AOE and AOE2, I remember people said the same thing about AOE3 when it came out. In the end I never got into it myself but then when AOE4 came out it felt like a breath of fresh air. They way I see it is that each iteration in the franchise is really a different game and not a replacement for another. So I still find myself playing the AOE2 campaigns from time to time in the definitive edition for the nostalgia factor. So I think it’s a bit unfair to say AOE4 isn’t an Age of Empires game.
At the end of the day the goal is to have fun so if the new game doesn’t fit your vibe that’s totally understandable. But I invite you to give it one more shot , even the Viper plays it from time to time :)
Also definitely agree about the no Mac/wine thing. A friend of mine ended up buying a new PC to play the game with the rest of our group.
Actual AOE is still alive and kicking through the Definitive Editions and now AOE4 with a very active online community and developers. While 0AD is great and fully opensource, I still don't find it comes close to the Experience of the actual AOE titles. Maybe I'm biased because I don't mind paying for proprietary software and I sometimes use Windows. I do however definitely agree how great of an achievement 0AD is and it is definitely a great game when considered in isolation.