"GW to make new lotr game???" Topic

With talk of a new lord of the rings TV show doing the rounds I am wondering if GW may try to aquire rights to make a new game.

Perhaps one to replace the hobbit abomination (meant in the nicest possible way, of course).

Could warlord or mantic beat them too it?

Thoughts?

GW dropped the ball in that they didn't go for the biggest miniature IP after Tolkien, a series of small indie movies by a certain George Lucas.

You'd have to be made of stone not to resist that kind of plastic …

Yes. I agree. Cruising in hot rods would make a cool game.

That was a series?

Then I could have the Thx 138 license plate decals!

Perhaps one to replace the hobbit abomination (meant in the nicest possible way, of course).

I'd say that's being extremely kind.

LOTR TV series?? Haven't heard of that

I think it was Amazon that picked up the rights from the Tolkien estate for 200 Million

GW still has extensive rights to use the Tolkien IP, including the right to come up with new characters and such. How much they use it is another question—supposedly all new development has been passed to Forgeworld, suggesting limited expansion and more expensive kits.

Well, GW announced this, which is new to me but may be old news to you:

link

LOTR wasn't a big seller for GW the first time round and might even have undercut WFB.

LOTR was a huge seller for GW – the problem was it sold too well and GW geared up the business for a turnover it couldn't sustain. I can't them getting carried away a second time though.

Wait…is that the REAL Rick Priestley?

My joke up top was for the two American graffiti I films. Indiana Jones seemed too easy.

Hmm. …

Battle companies for lotr are nothing new. I see a new topic in this…

Who wouldnt want to be 18 again,and chase down Suzanne Summers in her white Thunderbird?

My joke up top was for the two American graffiti films

There were two American graffiti films?

Believe it or not Rick gets around, is a real person, is extremely helpful and loves the hobby😉

I just wanted to be sure before I had a terribly embarrassing fanboy moment…

I met Rick Priestly once, he seemed a perfectly normal guy, if you discount that weird bright halo around his head …

@28mm Fanatic,

Lots of misinformation here being spread as usual when it comes to GW topics:

But first and foremost, where in the name of all miniature scales did you ever get or make up the total fabrication that LOTR "wasn't a big seller the first time around"?????

LOTR was one of GW's biggest sellers ever. The years 2001-2003 were among the most profitable the company had ever seen! The problem was that it sold so well that once the movie-hype had died down and sales began to die down with it, it also nearly pulled down GW with it. However they managed to navigate through it.

You can call LOTR many things, but one thing you cannot call it is a poor seller.

Dragon6. Yes. I have the two pack dvd.

I highly doubt that GW is looking at starting up a new LOTR line based on a TV show, just doesn't sound feasible or realistic or even anything that GW would consider to be worth caring about.

As far as what was said above about GW "dropping the ball" by not picking up Star Wars IP, I really think people who don't know a lot about business need to go back and reset.

Perhaps the reason that GW never picked up Star Wars was simply because they didn't have the production capacity to do so!! Why assume that it had to been a "dumb move" or an "airhead decision" on GW's part? Do you seriously think that GW's people weren't aware of how huge the Star Wars universe was in terms of merchandise and gaming?

People forget that GW for many, many years were producing not only Warhammer and WH 40k, with all the accompanying rulebooks and supplements, not to mention the massive miniature ranges for those games, but ALSO literally hundreds of boxed games and specialist games of varying scales. And this still doesn't include the Black Library which has been a huge fantasy fiction part of their business.

The idea that GW "dropped the ball" I often find to be dubious.

It seems that with GW we find ways to put down both their successes and failures. They can't win. If something sells well and then end its run, we say the product failed or that "they couldn't sustain it". If something doesn't sell well we say the product was doomed to be a loser.

I'm far from being a GW fanboy, but it seems to me that GW is damned if does and damned if it doesn't.

I thought smaller companies have produced star wars miniatures and games. If so there would be no reason GW could not do it.

Perhaps they only want 40k to be Sci Fi and don't want to produce other kinds of Sci Fi.

Perhaps they only got the lotr film based license because they did not want some else getting it and competing with wfb.

WizKids produced the Star Wars miniatures game. Before that they had produced other games which gave them the capacity to produce that type of game. FFG sells the X-wing miniatures game, Armada, and Imperial Assault. These games are all "FFG style" … high quality boardgame-type components, mostly prepainted/preassembled miniatures and very tight boardgame-like rules. None of these games are like the typical style of most GW games (model-focused with more open ended RPG style rules).

Maybe GW did not have the capacity or desire to pick up the license. Maybe they thought it would overshadow their primary products and they would only have the license temporarily. Who knows, only they know the actual reason, but I'm sure its not just because they are too dumb to realize what Star Wars is.

Plus they could always just make a couple of 40k star wars armies like theyhave done for other films. Marines already look part stormtroopers.

You could have some robed imperial guard desert dwellers with psyker types and nomad warriors (like sand people).

Them some splinter of the Empire/empire with slight chaos psyker influence and lots of light marines. New light power Armour. All here to take back the imperium.

I did read somewhere the lotr show may be a prequel. In that case it may be able to slot in with GW s existing range, license depending.

They are also re releasing some fine (cough) cast figures. I wonder if they will be in plastic, I would assume so. Will they be cheaper? I assume not as they appear to be only two in a pack. They really should do hero boxes to make them more affordable.

I'll disagree that GW can't do Star Wars because they are not set up to take on such a huge license …

Not wanting to cannibalize their own 40K property is a much more likely explanation and that the Lucasfilm rights are a nightmare to deal with. Long gone are the days that a small company in Canada had the rights to a Star Wars miniature game.

Revell and other companies are similar to GW, and they do fine with Star Wars, production is not an issue, it's just a matter of expanding production or finding the right partners like FFG do.

How would GW even be considered for a SW license? The timing was against them.

40K was introduced the same year, 1987, as WEG's Star Wars RPG, which had been in development before that date. With WEG having the license, no need for Lucas to approach GW, who was still a fairly small British company at the time. WEG picked up the miniature rights as well, and released their SW line in 1989. WEG lost the license only because WEG went bankrupt in 1998/99.

Wizards (aka Hasbro, which George Lucas owned a chunk of by that time) took over the license for obvious reasons. They held it until 2010, with RPG and miniature gaming.

Lucas approached Fantasy Flight Games, who got the license in 2012. The president of FFG has mentioned that Lucas pretty much lets FFG know what type of SW games they want to see. Lucas (aka Disney) felt the time once again was right for a collectible game, hence the release of the Star Wars: Destiny CCG/Dice game. Same for their upcoming Star Wars miniature game, which is going to blow the doors off the miniature gaming world, with tons of new gamers expected to pour into the the game from the board gaming craze. It's going to feel like the early 1990s all over again, but driven by Star Wars instead of 40K.

I think we will have to wait and see on the last point. How many non mini gaming star wars fans are going to be interested in painting Alec guinessesbeard. I feel they are more used to pre painted things. This may not stop them buying but may stop them entering the rest of the hobby and other games. I think lord of the rrings would have had a bigger effect due to there not being decades worth of film merchandise available at the time.

I think the confusion arises from LOTR being an initial big seller but not a sustained big seller. I picked up lots and lots of LOTR for deep discounts as the fad quickly faded.

It was overall one of the better GW designs though with some issues with the "hero point" system. A bit more development might have created a really outstanding game. It also presented a closed universe with only so many armies available. Figure expense also got unreasonable then followed by blow out discounts.

Success is judged long term not by initial fad sales. In that context LOTR was ultimately and interesting failure. Great figures though.

TomT

Don't like the sound of Amazon's acquisition, which seems to revolve around a series based on the background rather than an adaption. I was discussing it with a guy at work, and we both came to the conclusion that Amazon probably think they can make a 'GoT' out of it, which will probably break the source material as its just not that kind of background! And Tolkien'ites will hate it!

Though I doubt it would do GW any harm to run a 're-launch'.

As for GW and SW I believe they did look at it back in the day, but I understand it was too expensive a license. And possibly this was before it was quite so much of a dead cert in gaming terms! Though I have often wondered why GW never attempted to pick up a sci-fi license to partner its LoTR one, after its success, and diversify the stable a bit.

I think the lotr game happened because the people in charge at the time we're big fans. Also because that is what war hammer and even 40k came from, via d&d to an extent. With enough original people still around there was no way they would not try for it.

Now days with the hobbit. That was only done because they already had lotr. There was no love in it. You could see their passion for the lotr franchise in every model and book of the first games. The later stuff and the hobbit show very little.

With people suggesting that GW have now turned around and are more in touch with what people want, perhaps a new lotr edition/range will work out better than the hobbit?

My point being they won't do a Sci Fi game like star wars as they only like their own ip. The lotr game is the exception as noted above.

Its worth bearing mind that GW, nee Citadel, historically had a license to produce LotR figures. I don't know how well they sold, but a major motion picture adaption of probably the classic work of fantasy, and gaming gateway, enthusiasms of the staff aside, the license would have been a business no brainer. Not just in terms of cash, but building customer base – there was a mainstream multipart magazine release!

Arguably with the Hobbit they were lumbered with a way overcooked turkey that just wasn't generating the same momentum as the LotR trilogy – so you can see the design team flagging and management not really putting the resources behind them!

As for GW business strategy, past and present, meh, who knows! Currently they are at least giving the customer quite a lot of what they want. And perhaps have stopped pretending they exist in isolation from the rest of the industry. Still if I was their business development manager I'd be taking a hard look at the customer and financial data from the LotR license.

They would have done far better to release the hobbit like lotr. Metal boxed sets and blisters with plastic 'options' for grunts. Then people would have bought more. I know one avid lotr collector who won't touch the hobbit.

Warlord are doing doctor who in metal. It's a much nicer and more collectable material. Plastic/resin is cheap and nasty compared to metal.

You could have had all metal fellowship collection. I think the figures in the two towers box riders of Rohan and fighting urkhai were the first to not have metal options. Shame.

GW's plastic Rohan figures, and most plastics it produced before that suffer by comparison to the quality that they produced later, and continue to produce these days. Some of my favorites are the plastic Morgul Knights, which are some really nice figures. The Hobbit era range of plastics are almost all well done, though the cost is more, you won't be disappointed by their quality.

I see no problems with the fellowship plastics. As far as plastics go they were nice one piece figures. All plastic hip's figures suffer from solid moulds. They are cheaper as compensation.

The fact there is not as much metal in later lotr and hobbit is a real turn off. Many want to just collect them and not play. The fact metal is seen as a more desirable collectable is a notion people either get or they dont.

With luck GW may go back to metal for lotr so collectors can buy something of material value, and, to many, more visual and collectable value. One can hope.

I am quite happy with plastic. I just am not interested in much from the Hobbit movies. I did get some (plastic) high elf cavalry out of them. I might have been interested in some dwarves (the ones with spears were good), but just too expensive.

In general I prefer plastic because of price. But that hasn't held true lately.

andy

Just following the hobbit rule releases, it was just one long slippery slope. Boxed set with limited ed figure. Then just a book and suspicious plastic elf heros. Then a free booklet. All the while the original boxed game was available with its limited to the first print run figure. Not the success they intended.

I suspect the change to fine cast was the main killer. Also as the horror unfolded year on year more fine cast figures seemed to appear, things you would think would be plastic. Spiders, basic soldiers. Gosh have gone any more than the two spiders would break the bank. I doubt many people bought more than a single box, if that, with cheaper alternatives from every other fantasy figure company.

How many expensive plastic legalis? elf heros were sold I could only guess as few. What with everyone having or able to buy the much cheaper metal versions. Collectors would have an army of him already. Over five at least.

I think that there was a list of things that hurt sales of the Hobbit version of SBG. They've been said before, but it doesn't hurt to remind people. That said, the GW Middle Earth Team seems to be doing something to rectify some of them.
So here we go:
- The HOBBIT movies didn't do as well, probably due to less time for writing and IMHO an over-reliance on CGI. Less consumer interest in the movies flows down to all associated merchandise, including miniature figures.
- The HOBBIT movies didn't contain as many epic fights as did the LOTR trilogy. This lessened the options for armies to collect and battles to re-create. The goblins looked deformed and are horde army that few seem interested in playing.
- GW raised prices on plastic figures, halved the number of them in the old boxes, and ceased production of a lot of metal figures, replacing a few with the unpopular "Finecast".
- GW stopped releasing much of anything for the better part of a year, leading people to assume that the game was on its last legs and would soon be gone.
- GW pulled all of their product for LOTR/The Hobbit from stores, making only some of the available online-only.

The Forgeworld models aren't cheap by any means, but their quality is better than the Finecast, and they are actually less expensive in some cases. They actually have package deals where the savings for buying larger quantities result in some significant savings. Their customer outreach has improved dramatically, and they seem to be responding to customer criticisms a lot better now.

It's a shame that past problems seem to have driven off a lot of the potential customers.

GW dropped the ball on not doing wood elf warriors, dwarves of the iron hills and the various orcs, trolls etc from the Battle of Five Armies in plastic.

I would have bought boxes of all of those for various projects. The LOTR elves don't have as generic a look as the BOFA elves.

What coulda been…..

I don't get it…apparently some people in this thread run billion-dollar fortune 500 companies and know better than GW how to run their business.

Why was The Hobbit game supposedly an "abomination"? An abomination in what way?

"What could have been"? As opposed to WHAT? What does that even MEAN? Their LOTR and Hobb. metal and plastic ranges were HUGE in their variety and coverage. Whatever reasons they didn't make certain things in plastic, that doesn't make the whole game a failure!

The LOTR movies allowed GW to produce a game and minis. that made a lot of money and gave GW a lot of success in the early 2000s. The Hobbit, while not on the same level of hype and success as LOTR was,has still been a quality game and mini. range.

And as was mentioned a couple posts above, Forge World made a lot of Hobbit movie stuff in resin as well – trolls, Iron Hills dwarves, etc. for prices that in reality are not as bad as they have been portrayed.

Just seems that people like to throw around words like "failure" and "abomination", and phrases like "dropped the ball" when it comes to anything GW-related. Even their successes are portrayed as and twisted into failures.

Crack, crack…Ok, then…

If you cant tell the Hobbit run was an abomination in comparison to LOTR, please allow me to reiterate:

LOTR had three loverly well done boxed games, along with plastic grunts and metal heros.

Hobbit had one loverly boxed game, still available with its limited to the first print run figure at the end of the series run! Then the next game was not even in a box, just a book and two odd plastic elf heros, no doubt originally designed for the not to be boxed game. Lastly the final installment was shrunk to a free pdf. A bit of a fall from the return of the king box, the third installment of the LOTR run.

You can suggest, erroneously, that that is not an abomination of a release run, if you want.

The LOTR run had reasonably consistent boxes of plastic and collectable metal heros and scenario boxes. Hobbit threw fine cast at people who were unsure of it or saw it as not a good quality material for a collectable. Remember not just gamers bought LOTR, but film and book fans and collectors who require quality materials like metal, those that hold a traditional value. Not to mention the higher prices. "A plastic elf hero!" "What's he asking?" "$40.00 AUS" "Tell him he's dreaming"

If you want to, erroneously, suggest that this is not an abomination of a way to treat you customers and your product/licence, you may also.

So, yes, the Hobbit was a failure, compared to LOTR at least, and, yes GW did drop the ball with it.

Finally, no, the Hobbit was not a success, at least compared to LOTR, for the reasons I mention above.