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The Online Launcher for Age of Empires Online seems to be stuck. I cannot click Play Is this normal?

Online Launcher when not started as administrator

It only works when I start the launcher as administrator.

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you answered your own question, AOE requires administrator access, possibly to download files or to check for cheating. – spartacus Aug 31 '11 at 12:26
But this can not be true?! Admin access for a GAME??? – powtac Aug 31 '11 at 15:01
This seems somehow to be connected to gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/23283/… – powtac Nov 7 '11 at 18:15

2 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

Yes, this is normal.

The Age of Empires Online launcher, requires administrator access, so it can successfully patch the game, if a new patch is available.

To launch the game with administrative rights, right click the launcher executable and press "Run as administrator".

As noted by Drackir in the comments, you change the properties of the executable to always run as administrator;

  1. Right click the executable
  2. Click properties
  3. Navigate to the "Compatibility" tab
  4. Check the box "Run as administrator"
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So Microsoft is unable to deploy a game which does not require administrative rights??? – powtac Aug 31 '11 at 15:00
It has nothing to do with Microsoft nor the game. It has something to do with UAC (User Account Control). Which basically limits applications to read only rights, for user safety. Therefor if the game needs to be patched, it needs write rights to the system, which can only be gained by giving it administrative rights. – mordi2k Aug 31 '11 at 15:05
Technically, w/o admin access the user does have write rights to things like the My Documents folder, which is why many games now put your save games there. However, UAC prevents write access to Program Files (as @mordi2k said) unless you're admin. So, if you want to actually update the game's files or EXE, you'd need admin rights. – Richard Marskell - Drackir Aug 31 '11 at 18:08
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@powtac - It's not the same as an installer asking for permissions to install something. I could be wrong, but I don't think there's a way for applications to force the user to escalate their privileges. Also, in this case, they wouldn't want you to run the game unless you have the latest version, so forcing you to be an admin is really the only option. – Richard Marskell - Drackir Aug 31 '11 at 21:32
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@powtac - Yeah, I hear ya. It's kind of annoying and not exactly intuitive. You can run it as admin by right clicking. You can set the properties on the shortcut so it always runs by choosing "Run this program as administrator" from the Compatibility tab of the properties window for the shortcut. – Richard Marskell - Drackir Sep 1 '11 at 0:41
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up vote 1 down vote

The reason it needs administrator access is because it downloads files and puts them in the Program Files directory... And to edit Program Files it need administrator access.

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