Age of Empires Online isn’t a “nickel and dimey microtransaction thing”

Stop! Don’t lay a finger and/or hammer on that piggy bank! Age of Empires Online, you see, has no need for your nickels and dimes.

“It’s not a nickel and dimey microtransaction thing,” Microsoft Game Studios General Manager Dave Luehmann told Joystiq.

“I don’t like to pay for things I don’t like to do, that seems kind of backwards. So how about we produce things that people actually want?”

“So it would be like paying for an expansion pack. … You won’t buy one thing at a time. You might buy an entire civ or another region with a bunch of quests in it,” designer Jerome K. Jones said in response.

Apparently, though, the game already packs over 25 hours worth of content that won’t cost you a penny – let alone a nickel or dime – so there’s a little something for everyone. Or a lot, as it were.