"OK GW haters you might want to watch this..." Topic

The logic appears sound and really why not?

YouTube link

Interesting

I also found this very interesting. But why is this directed at me again?

I don't hate them, they most likely will never see a dime of my money but I don't hate them.

No hate here. I just think AOS was a huge marketing mistake. Only time will tell. Also this video is about GW's digital side of the business, not their physical games. So apples to oranges.

Interesting video none the less, thanks.

I don't hate them,

Well I do hate them and the key thing from this video are the comments.

Like:

Maybe if GW made its prices affordable then people would actually buy their products

The rules thats what pushed me away from tabletop…..

so long story short, they don't care and want money for doing nothing?

part of the reason that Game Workshop, and the Warhammer games aren't that strong anymore is because the quality of the minatures have gone down and the price has gone up. We have noticed, and I know MANY people that would love to get into Warhammer, but it's just too ing expensive for a hobby that they would rather play MtG and any other tabletop game.

If GW stopped shitting on their consumers, and continued to make quality items, for a reasonable price, they would push more products, but over the past 11 years they have been leaning towards. "Well since not many people are buying, let's make those people buying pay through the nose.. We need all the money, not some." Which NEVER works for ANY sort of marketable thing.

probably because age of shitmar went so bad they needed extra cash flow

why exactly do many long time fans have a negative opinion of AoS?

Because it is awful, the rules are awful and the lore is pathetic. They needed a "skirmish mode" to make W.Fantasy more accessible. We got Sigmar.

Because a beloved franchise of over thirty years was, basically, strapped down to the altar and sacrificed to the Ruinous Powers to bring Age of Sigmar about.

GW is a disastrous game company. Its best managers left the company to found their own companies. Its CEO went on stating that they are a model and not game company. They alienated their core players with a buy to win game model. They did not give a toss about the competitive tournaments. They killed their best IP, warhammer fantasy and replaced it with Age of Sigmar. They abandoned Necromuda and Blood bowl. Never released ONE … ONE model of their specialist games for the last ten years. Their Lord of the rings product line is dead.

"Their stock has plummeted" – which I'm sure has nothing to do with the absurd overpricing in places like Australia where most of us gave up because it was even more stupidly expensive than when we were kids. Y'want people to get back into it? Stop charging hugely inflated prices for the stuff.

Although I haven't played table top in a long time, it's extremely expensive to play, you could easily rack out a couple of hundred dollars in figurines and still not have enough to play properly.

Playing Total War: Warhammer and Warhammer: Endtimes – Vermentide got me really into the Warhammer Fantasy universe though… only to find they killed that setting. I have no interest in Age of Sigmar, as I prefer the more gritty Warhammer Fantasy then the weird vaguely sci-fi nature of AoS. If your one theory about selling these games to bring attention back to the tabletop world is true, then they are doing a terrible job of it on that end, as I've seen no recent AoS video games, but various Warhammer Fantasy ones.

Now, if I want to get into Warhammer Fantasy, I need to go out of my way to find models for that game. I have been told by others that AoS is simply the continuation of Warhammer Fantasy, but looking at it from the perspective of somebody who just got into the lore, they seem so different that they might as well be two different settings. It just makes me a bit sad and frustrated that I found a setting I really liked only to find out that GW had stopped supporting it.

feel the most interesting aspect of GW's current approach is that the biggest of the current slate of games is Total War: Warhammer – which has now been released…a year AFTER the game it was based on was phased out and replaced by Age of Sigmar. The product most likely to turn people to the tabletop game is for a now non-existent tabletop product.

Oh there is far more comments just like these.

But the last one is key. Total War: Warhammer is out but like the above individual as pointed out GW killed Warhammer nearly a year ago.

Just so that they can being out their Space Marine Fantasy Game – Age of Sigmar.

Within the next two months or so their earnings report will be out and then we will know the truth.

Ah,Mithmee!

I look forward to more of your posts in a few days.

Or whenever it is that Bill lets you out…

I no longer bear GW any ill will. But, when my wife was shopping for some new miniatures for Frostgrave at our FLGS, she saw the GW display and got very excited for the pretty pictures on the boxes… then she saw the prices and told me they were ridiculously overpriced, that she has seen me fund entire projects for the cost of one of their character figures. And that is coming from someone who s essentially new to the inside of the hobby. Nice looking, but far too expensive for the layperson.

GW stores I have been in recently looked practically empty of product. With no Warhammer Fantasy on the shelves the few AoS products looked lonely.

I still hate 'em for trying to rename tabletop wargaming "THE GAMES WORKSHOP HOBBY" They will never be forgiven for that.

When I had a brief flirtation with Warhammer, I went out of my way to buy cheap from flea markets or eBay.
Too expensive? Buy elsewhere or cheaper proxies. No reason to hate them just because they are super expensive arrogant idiots.

If I had brought all my Bretonnians from the GW store I would have had to take out a second mortgage. It was all internet and trades.

Not relevant to my hobby, of course …

Phil

+1 Phil.

And no I did not watch the linked item. I hate GW that much. Well, hate is not the right word. It would be disdain but I do not care about the company enough to have disdain for the.

I don't hate Maserati. It would be cool to have one. They look awesome and have some stuff you don't get elsewhere. A Maserati is waaaay beyond my price point, and simply put, I have a nice car that works well (and better in a number of uses … a Maserati is not a good "everyday" car) and don't bear anyone else ill will about what they do with their money.

I find it highly ironic they released a Total War Warhammer game without any support on the miniatures side for that world. I am an outsider looking in, picked up Total War and loved it.

This Sigmar game looks laughable. How are they pushing those models as fantasy? They look like StarCraft Marines.

I guess my big question is, as an outsider, is it worth getting into the Warhammer models at this point? Will there be future support for the universe from Total War or is it dead and I'm wasting my time?

I stopped buying when they replaced metal with resin

I'm with chicklewis and, when I was teaching in schools, made a point of telling youngsyers interested in WH that there was a whole world of fantasy wargaming outside of GW, with cheaper figures, better rules &c &c.

I hate them for killing of WFB and replacing it with AOS, gone from spending 1000 of USD to zero, now warlords, Perry and many others get my money.

+1 to Ironsides.

TomT

The public trading system is an anathema to this hobby. It just can't function that way. GW's overwhelming fear of any of their secondary miniatures properties siphoning money off the big two (now one and a half?) is costing them big. It is like they are sifting through waist-high mounds of quarters looking for dollar bills.

I would like to know what they feel the minimum number of sales are required, over whatever period, to worry carrying a particular pewter SKU. It is probably at least ten times that of ANYONE else in the industry.

Hollywood makes multi-million dollar flops JUST to churn their IP. Why GW can't bring themselves to toss some small change towards the tiniest bit of production and promotion of their secondary "specialist" lines? Because the corperate types consider it "chump change". In the grand scheme of things, the entire tabletop wargaming industry is chump change. And always will be. One day, they'll figure that out. But maybe they already have? In this day and time, the notion of selling electronic games to promote miniatures is like giving away food to sell toothpicks.

Thanks for posting the link. It was a very interesting analysis of their business model. As a side effect, I saw that there is a series on the Punic wars which I started listening to.

Regarding GW: I've said it before and will say it again. They are in it as a business. They are in it to make money.

I thought that was a very interesting take on the marketing and development of popular culture

Ah,Mithmee!

Now just how could I miss this thread?

Oh and more comments from the video link.

OMG I was a game store last week and a guy came in asking about 40K after playing some mobile games. The shop owner managed to sell him on Warmachine instead.

"Games Workshop has been struggling a bit of late. Their stock has been in a slump and they've had some shakeups in management."

Hmm, I wonder if GW's superior knowledge of their business might not be… nah, impossible. It must be a weak hobby gaming market. Couldn't be their own decisions. After all, they know best. Right?

Games workshop could probably increase their sales if they didn't charge 50 bucks for a single plastic figurine.

Oh and I have been thinking about getting Total War: Warhammer and this thread has sealed it for me and I will be getting onto Stream tonight and getting it.

Warhammer Fantasy may no longer be on the tabletop, but it's alive and well on the PC in Creative Assembly's 'Warhammer: Total War.' Reviews have been very favorable so far.

As for the de-centralized approach in licensing their 40K IP, it's an acknowledgment that video games have gone beyond mere PC's and consoles to smart phones and tablets.

What really made me angry is that while I expected Warhammer Fantasy 9th edition to be released, Instead they trashed it all and presented us with Age of Sigmar.

The topic of the video, and the OP's posting of same, was the analysis of GW's approach to licensing intellectual property--that previously GW had chosen the path of working with one chosen game developer at a time, and now were trying the tack of a shotgun approach involving divvying up the licenses to a ton of different developers at the same time. THIS is the whole point, not dozens of you coming in to whine ad nauseum once again about the price of a GW model.

You post ANYTHING about GW and it is like ringing a little bell so that hundreds of GW-haters come running out of the woodwork to post their bitterness about pricing or what-have-you, regardless of the topic of the actual original post.

For all you guys with Warhammer fantasy figures that are just collecting dust… Try Dragon Rampant. The rules are only $15 USD and take about 20 minutes to learn. Got the rules yesterday and had a quick game with my daughter last night. Empire vs. orcs and goblins. A great way to get young people back into fantasy tabletop gaming.

With you on that one davbenbak

Had lots of fun DR games this year :)

You post ANYTHING about GW and it is like ringing a little bell…

In defense of the GW bashers, the OP's title "OK GW haters you might want to watch this" is addressed directly to them and appears to bait them.

As I've said before, I don't hate them.

I find them laughable. Obviously, YMMV.

Yeah idk where you're coming from Yogibearminis, most people on here are bemoaning how stupid it is they liscensed out WFB to a top tier developer, who made a fantastic game, only to then have new players disgusted when they find out about AoS.

I'm so glad they made total war warhammer.
For to long CA/SEGA have been stealing my money by dividing the game into pieces so you pay twice as much for the game. Only because it's historic games have I bought and played these bad gamea (last good one came in 2006)

Now that they have gone over to warhammer I don't have to by their games anymore.

"OK GW haters you might want to watch this" is addressed directly to them and appears to bait them.

Yup, could not resist not posting and I did watch the video and read nearly all of the comments.

Oh and by the way I said nothing about prices.

My hate for GW goes well beyond prices.

"I still hate 'em for trying to rename tabletop wargaming "THE GAMES WORKSHOP HOBBY" They will never be forgiven for that."

That was actually a marketing buzz phrase that they were using back when they were trying to find investors to form the company in the first place. No-one remaining at GW remembers where it came from.

Oh and you know what is really funny.

At the beginning of Total War: Warhammer there is a thing from GW stating you seen the game now check out the miniatures.

GW killed Warhammer a year ago and there are no longer any miniatures for it.

I first loved GW, then hated GW but now they have no relevance in my world at all.

I don't get this 'hating' a gaming company. Especially when it is stated by folks who have no intention of ever again interacting with said gaming company.

I think if you read the comments a lot of people would come back to the Warhammer universe and GW in general if things returned to the way they were in WFB. I know I would. At present, I don't hate GW, I just dislike what they have done with AoS and personally will not support them until we return to the old universe.

Disliking them makes sense if you have been burned etc. It is the 'hate' part that seems inexplicable to me.

Not if you have been burned by them over and over again.

AoS is starting to grow on me. I didn't like the look of the minis in the photos, but having put some together I am starting to dig them. As for the story line, divorced of the End of Times backstory, it is fun to game. I'm sticking with the premise that chaos lost again and AoS is a hallucination brought on by Sigmar eating a gyro gone bad.

I do not stock their product and have not since 1984. That does not mean that I hate them. They are just another manufacturer with difficult requirements.

I also do not stock battlefront for the same reasons.

if you have been burned

Being burned implies that the other party had some type of legal or moral obligation to you, not just they did something you didn't like. I'm not saying that isn't possible (in fact, I believe I have been burned by a non-GW gaming company). I genuinely don't know what that situation would have been WRT GW.

Examples?

Bought a Squat army just to have it retconned out of the game.
Bought a TK army just to have it retconned out of the game.
Bought a Brettonian army just to have it retconned out of the game.
Bought a unit of Dwarves with spears only to have them change the rules, now dwarves can't equip spears.
Spent $50 USD on a rulebook only to have it revised and re-released every 18 months. Same with the army books.

And..These days a single dwarf character model is $30. USD For. One. Dwarf.

Examples

Gee, where do we want to start?

Yes Squats –

Everyone's favorite Dwarfs in space. Bikers, Land Trains, Overlord Airships kept them safe from all of the galaxy's horrors except the editor's red pen!

Their stand alone games; all dead and gone

Epic 40K killed off nearly two decades ago.

Warhammer Fantasy Battles kill off around a year ago

Nerfing of Eldar Guardians by not allowing them to have Las Guns (though they did when they first came out).

Eldar Shuriken Catapults down to 12 inches from 24 inches range

The one thing you can count on from Games Workshop is that sooner or later they will screw you.

I understand the above examples.

What obligation did GW have for continuity? Had they mad promises of such?

I mean, hey, look, I loved my TRS-80 Model I. Write my first mortgage calculator on it. Still works today, and gives the right numbers. So did Tandy/Radio Shack burn me by discontinuing it?

Does a company have an obligation to continue producing something because someone likes it? If so, VW owes me a new mid-80's ('86?) Golf convertible, preferably at mid-80's prices.

Does their discontinuation somehow stop you from enjoying what you got from them? As opposed to the Golf or TRS-80, wargame miniatures require practically no maintenance to keep them in working order.

Same thing with the changes. Was there some obligation to remain static? Does change somehow deprive you of what you have?

WRT prices … again, what was the obligation?

@etotheipi

You don't need a logical basis for hating a company.

Speaking of discontinuing product lines, let's say a company releases a new much improved version of a classic boardgame (originally released in 1990) which sells out rapidly and then goes out of print. Demand for the game persists.

They then rerelease the game with a few extra pieces a couple of years later.

Is this a good thing?

NO! OBVIOUSLY this company has committed a crime against humanity, by (i) screwing over every person who bought the first version without the extra pieces thinking that the game would be sold out quickly, (ii) making a blatant cash grab by rereleasing essentially the same game with only a few token upgrades, and (iii) pricing the latest edition at almost three times the MSRP of the first edition in 1990.

(I was referring to the 2 iterations of Space Hulk third edition and anti-fan reception)

GW prices are high, but not all that much higher than some other companies. I love the rules and models. The rich background for the games is a huge bonus. So I'm a loyal customer.

I was furious when they killed White Dwarf the magazine, thought it was dumb when they cut back on their online hobby support, and raised an eyebrow with some less-than-politically-smart public comments.

But, hey, the world's not perfect. And they have turned around a bit. I like their new games, such as Deathwatch Overkill (great figures), the plan to bring back some of their secondary games, such as Battlefleet Gothic, and the announcement that they're bringing back the magazine.

I like what GW has created, and despite a number of false steps, they are giving me what I want. I hope they continue to move in the right direction, as I'm quite happy to surrender my limited discretionary income for a few more toys and some great gaming moments with my fellow hobbyists.

Take care.

Yes they destroyed what was once a great magazine but to actually have great articles in it required them to pay the individuals providing the articles.

This is something GW hated to do so they just turned it into a Fanboy paid for Advertisement Magazine where there were only very bad Battle Reports and petty pictures of their models/miniatures.

As for them bringing back their old games they will do it mostly to get a quick cash influx and in such a way that those who have the old game will not be able to use their stuff.

Such as EPIC 40K being around 10mm instead of 6mm.