I'm really bad at legal stuff so I'd appreciate it if someone else could pass some input on this question.

My sponaneous thought is that yes, while it isn't piracy by definition, extracting assets and using them in your own project might be in violation of some legal rights.

I actually recall that some time ago there was an Age2 mod which used the graphics from Age1 to recreate the game in the AoE2 game engine. I think that was allowed to slide because in practicality MS doesn't really bother with a non-profit mod using assets from a 20 year old game, but with DE being a more current property, I think different rulings may apply here.

By the way, if you want to import the graphics into the original AoE, don't you have to reduce them to fit with the original's resolution and color palette? Doesn't that pretty much defeat the purpose?

Not sure on the legality either, but you can't sell this that's for sure. Like Fisk said I don't think MS would care one bit though if this is simply a mod. As I recall all tiles, building and tree assets were increased 25% over the original ones, not sure about the units, but you would have to scale them down for things to be accurate. And yes you would suffer some color loss because of the limited palette, but even with that you can minimize this if you know your way around Photoshop or similar.

I'd love to see this in action as I prefer the original games over DE, send it to phatfish (atttt) heavengames (dotttt) com pretty please!

Still haven't received or heard from you, would like to take a look at this.

G_Ramirez can you show me that mod? I wanted to try it out. Don't worry, I wouldn't share it publicly.