I think you vastly underestimate the time and effort required to just implement voobly in this manner.You make crossplay and problem solved, competitive scene is happy and casual people still on DE2 without need to install voobly, and is absolutly possible and would be 100% solved all, and MS would lose nothing, just gain more and more, since would be promotion all over, and everyone happy.
Beyond the obvious licensing issues that would come up re: using the existing work and scrapping the current online system, setting up a whole new system is not like flipping a switch, and the current AoE2:DE team is not huge. It would be MUCH better if the team, as small as it is, can focus instead on crashes, which are the most pressing issue with the game, and much more likely to be manageable.
As a side note, people on this forum seem to be under the impression that "Microsoft", the company, is making this game with all the power of the entire company (I've seen people say stuff along the lines of "MS is a billion dollar company, why can't they fix the game!") They're not - it's a small team, spread over three (four?) smaller teams, if I recall correctly. Forgotten Empires handle the gameplay and scenario creation, Tantalus and Wicked Witch handle the engine and graphics, and Relic handle the online system (I suspect as practice for AoE4). They do not have infinite time or money. Not that this is a 'defense' of the game in its current state, but the idea that they can just "make it like Voobly" straight away or just plug in the game as it stands to Voobly isn't really based on solid grounding.
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