The one thing that remains constant throughout my life is my love for LAN games, Shall never forget the days of college when I flunked my minor exams for taking participation in a LAN gaming competition at BHU. Among all games that I used to play AOE is a bit close to my heart. My brother trained me to play this game somewhat 9 years back when I was in class 10 and since then when someone asked what is the greatest achievement of Microsoft than I must say its not Windows nor is it Bing but its AOE.
The problem with this game is, its quite strategic you shall find its boring till the time you learn it but after you learn it, you are going to love it for the whole life. Its purely a LAN game, there is no fun if you are playing it with bots, and that’s the thing I miss, so the best way to play this game is to play it online. I have done a lot of research while I started playing online, the ways and method I found at that time were outdated, earlier Ensemble studios and Microsoft zone provided the facility of playing online between players sitting across globe but later on they closed it. The best I found was using 
GameRanger.
GameRanger is nothing but an online service for LAN game players, its totally free of cost and supports more than 600 games including AOE, the best thing is you can play with your friend mates without any network problem, these are the various steps you need to follow to play this game online:
Step 1: Have a latest version of Age Of Empires on your Desktop.
Step 2: Visit GameRangers website i.e. http://www.gameranger.com/ and from there download GameRanger’s software, its free of cost and download only a small patch file which while you run connect you to GameRanger’s site, follow the instruction it prompt you to register with your email id and install software on your Desktop.
Step 3: Open your e-MailId and activate your account. Once your account get activated you can login into it, you shall find a long list of various game, you can join any of the game or even host the same.
Step 4: For further improvement you can create friend list’s and categorise games according to your desire.
Step 5: After joining any game you can play it and enjoy it.
LAN Gaming is a world in itself. Happy playing, and enjoy the game.
I really enjoyed perusing the content in your weblog. I actually saved as a favorite it and will come back to read extra. Thank you so much. Please forgive my English, I am not native.
This post is really helpful for a gamer like me.
Wow, awesome post. I love stuff like this.