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Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut





Bournemouth, UK

I do wonder if GW's system have come to the end of their life-cycle and no matter what they do the sales will drop off. We've had the 40K universe for 20 years now and in fairness it has done well considering there has been no real changes to the major races in all that time.

On the one hand it's great that it's so steady for all these years, that you could leave the hobby and come back, using the same army (with a few tweaks). Trouble is that it's harder to get new gamer's into the hobby and the vets (who GW have a love / hate relationship with) will probably have multiple armies and therefore not need any more.

In GW's favour it's taken this long for them to start bringing out stuff for 40K that just seemed to be about bringing out something for somethings sake. When PP brought out their "enhanced version" commanders I did raise an eyebrow, but I'd left the scene at that time.

To me a lot of GW's competitors are bringing a freshness to the hobby. It's ironic that Warlord Game's flourishing with the production of historical systems. These aren't "new" funky races or worlds, but old, used historical themes, but they are thriving with it.

Does GW have answer to this or will it plod forward to it's death?

I do wonder if Kirby has seen the writing in the wall and is trying to line his own nest before it goes belly up.

Live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about his religion. Respect others in their views and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life. Beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and of service to your people. When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.

Lt. Rorke - Act of Valor

I can now be found on Facebook under the name of Wulfstan Design

www.wulfstandesign.co.uk

http://www.voodoovegas.com/
 
   
Made in gb
Posts with Authority






Norn Iron

 Wolfstan wrote:
We've had the 40K universe for 20 years now and in fairness it has done well considering there has been no real changes to the major races in all that time.

On the one hand it's great that it's so steady for all these years, that you could leave the hobby and come back, using the same army (with a few tweaks). Trouble is that it's harder to get new gamer's into the hobby and the vets (who GW have a love / hate relationship with) will probably have multiple armies and therefore not need any more.

It's ironic that Warlord Game's flourishing with the production of historical systems. These aren't "new" funky races or worlds, but old, used historical themes, but they are thriving with it.


On one hand, background or setting is not the be-all end-all of wargames. This is something that many GW fans don't get, in my experience. Warlord Games also produce good rules in their own right, without all the shortcomings and hangups that can usually be laid at 40K and WHFB's feet. Including, in answer to some of your points: clockwork edition changes*, which in itself includes planned obsolescence, bringing out something for something's sake, and the 'few tweaks' of having to buy a lot more minis and/or learn and change your setup for a new meta. (Ironically, the tweaks never seem to include adapting the rules to proper company/mass army rules to account for the figure bloat)
WG also have the advantage of putting out plastic minis for a decent price, without perceived exclusivity to their rulesets (something shared by all historical miniatures), and with the bonus that they're one of the first of the new wave of 28mm historical plastic producers. It's bound to appeal to army builders.

On the other hand, the 'lore' (snort guffaw) of historical games is consistently popular. Heck, it's consistent, barring a dose or two of revisionism or any given rules writer's attitude towards warhounds or jomsvikings. It also can't be anything other than realistic, being the exploits of real people. Written on a page, they might not seem so 'epic' or superpowered to 40K fans; but to many they're more amazing and interesting because they happened, rather than being dreamed up and pulled out of Mat Ward's hrrhrmphhmph. Take that largely immutable credibility altogether, and it means WG isn't likely to retcon it's setting and inject nonsensical new models and unit types into it, just to bring out something for something's sake.

*Granted, Black Powder's been around only five years. But how many editions of 40K have we seen in that time?

In GW's favour it's taken this long for them to start bringing out stuff for 40K that just seemed to be about bringing out something for somethings sake.


Well.

From where you're sitting.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/08/26 10:09:18


I'm sooo, sooo sorry.

Plog - Random sculpts and OW Helves 9/3/23 
   
Made in gb
Lieutenant Colonel




GW have game settings.
Their game settings are quite detailed and inspire people to find out more.

(Apart from the last few years where the direction had been more 'Toys R Us ' than war game , IMO.)

I agree that GW are trying to apply a cyclical sales process to a product range that is not really suited to it.

I would say that GW life cycle is influenced far more heavily by poor management than the game backgrounds.

EG if the game backgrounds were supported by a solid rule set, and army composition lists.
Then the product could be promoted by campaign/scenario supplements.

So players could simply pick and chose what appealed to them , in a better defined and player controlled way.



   
Made in jp
[MOD]
Anti-piracy Officer






Somewhere in south-central England.

GW's current strategy is to keep changing or adding to 40K and Fantasy so that people are motivated to buy new stuff.

The problem with this plan is that it only benefits customers as long as the changes are improvements and offer a positive cost/benefit ratio.

The financial evidence is that this strategy is beginning to fail. Thus a new strategy may be needed.

I'm writing a load of fiction. My latest story starts here... This is the index of all the stories...

We're not very big on official rules. Rules lead to people looking for loopholes. What's here is about it. 
   
Made in ie
Calculating Commissar




Frostgrave

There's pretty much infinite scope to keep 40K and Fantasy fresh - they have boundless universes and even timelines. GW seems to have fallen into the trap of just releasing stuff to fit a sales quota and shoehorning it into the game where they can (Centurions, flyers) instead of expanding on the fluff or improving the game.

What's killing GW isn't the fluff, it's the game and the company. The game because it's hugely convoluted and clunky, and the company because they make such head-scratching business decisions that the buyer/seller relationship seems almost adversarial.

As said, if it was a case of the setting being stale, then historics would have died out long ago. They use largely the same fluff with with different rulesets
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut





Bournemouth, UK

For me personally it's units like the Centurions that appear to be wedged in and to some degree the Storm variant flyers. I can understand the need to add new stuff, but to me they do seem a bit forced. I do wonder if even coming up with a new race would help. I think it would need to be a new gaming experience, rather than the same recycled stuff.

Would it be too brutal to even suggest that long term GW gamer's just stop completely? Box it all up and move away for a few years, then come back to it?

As said, if it was a case of the setting being stale, then historics would have died out long ago. They use largely the same fluff with with different rulesets


I'm looking to get back into gaming and it will be with a Bolt Action Ffallschirmjäger force box. This I intend to use with the Bolt Action ruleset, the Too Fat Lardies ruleset and the Rules of Engagement ruleset.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/08/26 12:17:43


Live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about his religion. Respect others in their views and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life. Beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and of service to your people. When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.

Lt. Rorke - Act of Valor

I can now be found on Facebook under the name of Wulfstan Design

www.wulfstandesign.co.uk

http://www.voodoovegas.com/
 
   
Made in gb
Lit By the Flames of Prospero





Rampton, UK

Its all subjective,

I think that the 40k IP has massive scope and will continue to sell for generations yet, its only just scratching the surface, the real shame for me, is the way that GW have been using it.

They never did like adapting to the market, the IP could be used in so many different ways, ways which could benefit them as well im pretty sure.
There could be so many different types of games in so many settings, and im pretty sure they would sell well, but they just continue to streamline as we have seen for a while now, the opposite of what the real fans, the fans with lots of disposable income, really want.

I would not assume that someone else "does not get it", just because he does not agree though.

If they do go under, I will be sad, yet hopeful about what will happen to the IP.
   
Made in gb
Ultramarine Land Raider Pilot on Cruise Control





Silver Spring, MD

In my opinion, GW has been bringing out "stuff" for the sake of bringing it out since at least 2009. I very strongly feel that the 5ed Blood Angels codex was the start of something bad. Blood Angels needed more to differentiate themselves from C:SM, and most importantly needed new models to sell, but the fluff had been well fleshed out for a decade and a half. So GW set about creating new, arguably unnecessary units, with sometimes poorly designed models and overall poorly written fluff, so that people would have new shinies to buy.

Sanguinary Guard - BA deserved the unique models, but jump pack honor guard (and for that matter, jump pack command squads) should always have been available to C:SM too. Running out of fluff to mine.

Librarian Dreadnought - I fail to see how BAs could be the only chapter whose librarians occasionally end up in a dreadnought. Again, a niche unit that would have fit in the C:SM codex too - scraping the bottom of the barrel here.

Sanguinor - should never have been conceived in the first place - stupid fluff, ugly model. Consider the army design space completely tapped.

Stormraven - So, again, this vehicle should have been available to all chapters (nonsensical fluff that has since been rectified). More importantly, the model itself is a god-awful abortion, heralding the start of GW's inability to design models that don't look like squashed, chunky toys for preschoolers. This process (which I call Chibification) probably has to do with a loss of design talent and/or art direction, and increased meddling from above to "Design an X but make sure it fits on Y sprues, I don't even care how it looks", and has also more recently given us the Taurox. The Stormraven was ugly enough that it turned a minor third party bits maker (Chapterhouse) into a well-known name simply by virtue of having created a kit to lengthen the vehicle.

So in my opinion the Stormraven is the primogenitor of everything wrong with 40k now. Flyers really should not be included in 40k at all (this is a whole separate issue), but at least in 5th as a skimmer this was more reasonable. Pushing bigger kits whose rules didn't fit the scale of the game (flyers in general, superheavies, etc) has been a direct result of the trend toward adding things to the game for the sake of selling new kits, whether it makes sense or not, and I think the Stormraven was at the leading edge of this trend.

I can't think of any codex release prior to that where it seemed like they were shoehorning in nonsense just for the sake of making new kits, and virtually every codex since then has included units that fit this description. The only exception has been the few armies that really needed a revamp - Necrons and Dark Eldar - where there was plenty of room to work on new units. Every other codex has been an attempt to squeeze in something new at the margins, whether it's by increasing the scale of the game, or by making "unique" units that really aren't that unique, or by dreaming up nonsense units that probably shouldn't exist due to the stupidity of their backstory or model design or both.

Sorry for the rant, but what I'm trying to say is, this is not new. 40k has been a mostly mature game for half a decade or more, with well-defined armies and units and relatively stable rules. Almost every change or addition to the game since then has been bloat or needless churn rather than refinement or improvement.

Battlefleet Gothic ships and markers at my store, GrimDarkBits:
 
   
Made in us
Willing Inquisitorial Excruciator





Pittsburgh, PA, USA



Exalted.

Couldn't have put it better myself, and it made me start thinking about when it was exactly I started becoming less an ambassador for the game and more a reluctant critic.

   
Made in gb
Worthiest of Warlock Engineers






preston

Yep, GW does seem to be failing.

I remember when I was younger and first got in to Warhammer Fantasy. The store used to be packed with people playing games, painting minis or just catching up. They used to buy loads of stuff as well and the staff kept up the fun with campaigns and tournaments that could last for days. It was fun and many people just came in off the street as they saw everyone was having such a good time. Hell a good portion of the gamers where recruited that way.
Then GW started issuing mandates and orders. Suddenly you could only be in if you where shopping, painting or buying. Still the staff did their best and tried to accommodate all within this new regime. This displeased some of the higher ups and many of the good members got fired. Eventually the message seemed to get around and the staff stopped trying. Some quit.
These days GW Preston is rarely full of happy gamers. It tends to look empty and sad-like a memory of a bygone era and the golden days of Games Workshop.

Free from GW's tyranny and the hobby is looking better for it
DR:90-S++G+++M++B++I+Pww205++D++A+++/sWD146R++T(T)D+
 
   
Made in ca
Lord of the Fleet






Halifornia, Nova Scotia

 Wolfstan wrote:


Does GW have answer to this or will it plod forward to it's death?



I don't think it has the answer. Admitting in your financial report that you do no market research, nor care what the market wants is pretty damning as far as I'm concerned.

There'll be people clinging to 40k, telling us how new releases like GK are a great step forward, and a positive move for the faction/game, but the value isn't there. GW makes great plastic kits, but other companies are doing the same in plastic, or excellent work in resin, for far cheaper. That's not even touching on the train wreck the rules and codices are nowadays.

No, I think they'll continue to bleed customers. They have not demonstrated the slightest hint at changing their practices for the better.

Mordian Iron Guard - Major Overhaul in Progress

+Spaceship Gaming Enthusiast+

Live near Halifax, NS? Ask me about our group, the Ordo Haligonias! 
   
Made in gb
Stabbin' Skarboy





North Suffolk, UK

I can't decide if I want GW to turn things around and recover 40k and it's (GW's) reputation back to something we can all choose to willingly and happily be involved in and be satisfied with again, or accelerate into it's demise to the point of recievership such that the 40k franchise with it's fluff, game, rights, moulds, kits etc etc in it's entirety can be sold off as an asset by administrators and taken on by someone else who can look after it properly.

My two worst situations would be someone taking a childish "it's my ball and no one else is allowed to play" and destroying sprue moulds etc in a fit of spite, or the whole organisation sadly bumbling on in a drawn out downward spiral that lasts years and slowly grinds what good is left of 40k into dust.

Nat, the Reactor Mek

Pariah Press wrote:Help! Jervis just jumped through my window, wearing a ninja costume! He's taking my 4th edition rule book! He's taking my 4th edition rule book!

 
   
Made in fr
Drew_Riggio




Versailles, France

 Vermis wrote:
It also can't be anything other than realistic, being the exploits of real people. Written on a page, they might not seem so 'epic' or superpowered to 40K fans; but to many they're more amazing and interesting because they happened, rather than being dreamed up and pulled out of Mat Ward's hrrhrmphhmph.

Agustina de Aragón arguably had more balls than Yarrick and Calgar put together.
   
Made in au
Norn Queen






Lanrak wrote:
GW have game settings.
Their game settings are quite detailed and inspire people to find out more.


So do other games. GW has the advantage that there's over 20 years of material to dredge for inspiration, while newer game settings have a quarter of that development time, at best. But to claim that it's something unique to Games Workshop games is a bit ignorant.
   
Made in us
Camouflaged Zero




Maryland

 Nuclear Mekanik wrote:
I can't decide if I want GW to turn things around and recover 40k and it's (GW's) reputation back to something we can all choose to willingly and happily be involved in and be satisfied with again, or accelerate into it's demise to the point of recievership such that the 40k franchise with it's fluff, game, rights, moulds, kits etc etc in it's entirety can be sold off as an asset by administrators and taken on by someone else who can look after it properly.

My two worst situations would be someone taking a childish "it's my ball and no one else is allowed to play" and destroying sprue moulds etc in a fit of spite, or the whole organisation sadly bumbling on in a drawn out downward spiral that lasts years and slowly grinds what good is left of 40k into dust.

At this point, I don't want them to. Losing GW will open up the market for a dozen other companies to better grow and compete. The last thing I want is for GW to reclaim their former highs, when they choked out all other games in the market. Dozens of other companies have slipped in while GW stumbled, too many to even list here. The best thing that could happen to the Warhammer games would be for them to be sold off to a new, smaller company that can tear them down and rebuild them leaner and better.

Nowadays though, I don't think that will happen. Whether the fall of GW comes quickly over two years or excruciatingly slow over four or more, I don't know that another company will jump at the chance to buy WHFB or 40K.

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." -Napoleon



Malifaux: Lady Justice
Infinity: &  
   
Made in us
Posts with Authority






 -Loki- wrote:
Lanrak wrote:
GW have game settings.
Their game settings are quite detailed and inspire people to find out more.


So do other games. GW has the advantage that there's over 20 years of material to dredge for inspiration, while newer game settings have a quarter of that development time, at best. But to claim that it's something unique to Games Workshop games is a bit ignorant.
Battletech being a prime example.

The Auld Grump - who is not a fan of big stompy mecha... but is still impressed by the amount of background material for Battletech.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/08/27 01:37:14


Kilkrazy wrote:When I was a young boy all my wargames were narratively based because I played with my toy soldiers and vehicles without the use of any rules.

The reason I bought rules and became a real wargamer was because I wanted a properly thought out structure to govern the action instead of just making things up as I went along.
 
   
Made in gb
Lieutenant Colonel




In my previous post I was trying to point out of all the factors in GW plc problems, the game setting /background is NOT a limiting factor.

Poor management that has led to poor rules and customer interaction are what limits GW plc life cycle.

If the game setting was given to game developers who were free to engage openly with customers, and work with the community, I am sure the 'life cycle ' would not even be mentioned after 50 years or so...

There are games with just as detailed background .
Thankfully no other game system is saddled with such arrogant/ignorant corporate managers as GW games are.
   
Made in us
Daemonic Dreadnought





Eye of Terror

 Wolfstan wrote:
I do wonder if GW's system have come to the end of their life-cycle and no matter what they do the sales will drop off. We've had the 40K universe for 20 years now and in fairness it has done well considering there has been no real changes to the major races in all that time.


Brands and IP aren't really a system. They don't have start and end points, they rely on recognition to determine their usefulness.

Sales processes and marketing are systems. I don't like the ones in place now.

To understand the difference: I still think Terminator models are cool. I generally like thinking about them even though I don't really use them in my armies. But I hate the thought of paying $50 for 5 of them, and don't like the way GW manages the rules to make them more / less useful in new editions.

As long as people have favorable brand impressions, the brand can survive as long as the company adapts sales / marketing to consumer preference.

 Wolfstan wrote:

I do wonder if Kirby has seen the writing in the wall and is trying to line his own nest before it goes belly up.


If I understand the culture correctly, Kirby is charged with expanding revenues and profits for the company and is the final decision maker on decisions like introducing supplements. I don't have a favorable impression of the company's current sales and marketing strategies, therefore I am not a fan of the way he carries out this mission. Something tells me he doesn't like it either, and his departure is related to a lack of vision.

   
Made in si
Foxy Wildborne







Herzlos wrote:
There's pretty much infinite scope to keep 40K and Fantasy fresh - they have boundless universes and even timelines. GW seems to have fallen into the trap of just releasing stuff to fit a sales quota and shoehorning it into the game where they can (Centurions, flyers) instead of expanding on the fluff or improving the game.

What's killing GW isn't the fluff, it's the game and the company. The game because it's hugely convoluted and clunky, and the company because they make such head-scratching business decisions that the buyer/seller relationship seems almost adversarial.

As said, if it was a case of the setting being stale, then historics would have died out long ago. They use largely the same fluff with with different rulesets


This. If GW didn't feth up the rules and treat customers like dirt, they would be as strong as ever, regardless of competition.

Posters on ignore list: 36

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Made in ca
Longtime Dakkanaut






Toronto

GW will live. They are still the top hobby store on the market. I checked their stocks.

Adepta Sororitas: 3,800 Points
Adeptus Custodes: 8,100 Points
Adeptus Mechanicus: 8,400 Points
Alpha Legion: 4,400 Points
Astra Militarum: 7,500 Points
Dark Angels: 16,800 Points
Imperial Knights: 12,500 Points
Legio Titanicus: 5,500 Points
Slaaneshi Daemons: 3,800 Points
 
   
Made in sk
Regular Dakkanaut








Buypainted have nice explanation of GWs behavior to gamers.

"Faith is the soul of any army; be it vested in primitive religion or enlightened truth. It makes even the least soldier mighty, the craven is remade worthy and through its balm any hardship may be endured. Faith ennobles all of the worlds the soldier undertakes be they so base or vile, and imports to them the golden spark of transcendent purpose."
— Lorgar Aurelian, Primarch of the Word Bearers 
   
Made in jp
[MOD]
Anti-piracy Officer






Somewhere in south-central England.

That was a good explanation.

I'm writing a load of fiction. My latest story starts here... This is the index of all the stories...

We're not very big on official rules. Rules lead to people looking for loopholes. What's here is about it. 
   
Made in us
Automated Rubric Marine of Tzeentch





 CalgarsPimpHand wrote:
In my opinion, GW has been bringing out "stuff" for the sake of bringing it out since at least 2009. I very strongly feel that the 5ed Blood Angels codex was the start of something bad. Blood Angels needed more to differentiate themselves from C:SM, and most importantly needed new models to sell, but the fluff had been well fleshed out for a decade and a half. So GW set about creating new, arguably unnecessary units, with sometimes poorly designed models and overall poorly written fluff, so that people would have new shinies to buy.

Sanguinary Guard - BA deserved the unique models, but jump pack honor guard (and for that matter, jump pack command squads) should always have been available to C:SM too. Running out of fluff to mine.

Librarian Dreadnought - I fail to see how BAs could be the only chapter whose librarians occasionally end up in a dreadnought. Again, a niche unit that would have fit in the C:SM codex too - scraping the bottom of the barrel here.

Sanguinor - should never have been conceived in the first place - stupid fluff, ugly model. Consider the army design space completely tapped.

Stormraven - So, again, this vehicle should have been available to all chapters (nonsensical fluff that has since been rectified). More importantly, the model itself is a god-awful abortion, heralding the start of GW's inability to design models that don't look like squashed, chunky toys for preschoolers. This process (which I call Chibification) probably has to do with a loss of design talent and/or art direction, and increased meddling from above to "Design an X but make sure it fits on Y sprues, I don't even care how it looks", and has also more recently given us the Taurox. The Stormraven was ugly enough that it turned a minor third party bits maker (Chapterhouse) into a well-known name simply by virtue of having created a kit to lengthen the vehicle.

So in my opinion the Stormraven is the primogenitor of everything wrong with 40k now. Flyers really should not be included in 40k at all (this is a whole separate issue), but at least in 5th as a skimmer this was more reasonable. Pushing bigger kits whose rules didn't fit the scale of the game (flyers in general, superheavies, etc) has been a direct result of the trend toward adding things to the game for the sake of selling new kits, whether it makes sense or not, and I think the Stormraven was at the leading edge of this trend.

I can't think of any codex release prior to that where it seemed like they were shoehorning in nonsense just for the sake of making new kits, and virtually every codex since then has included units that fit this description. The only exception has been the few armies that really needed a revamp - Necrons and Dark Eldar - where there was plenty of room to work on new units. Every other codex has been an attempt to squeeze in something new at the margins, whether it's by increasing the scale of the game, or by making "unique" units that really aren't that unique, or by dreaming up nonsense units that probably shouldn't exist due to the stupidity of their backstory or model design or both.

Sorry for the rant, but what I'm trying to say is, this is not new. 40k has been a mostly mature game for half a decade or more, with well-defined armies and units and relatively stable rules. Almost every change or addition to the game since then has been bloat or needless churn rather than refinement or improvement.


Couldn't have said it better myself, +1
   
Made in us
Posts with Authority






I think that they are trying to avoid a WWI aesthetic - given that trying to claim that the Land Raider was a unique design, and not at all based on the British Mark I tank went so well for them.

Mind you... Space Marines flying in a WWI Bomber would look really stupid cool.

The Auld Grump

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/08/27 14:46:28


Kilkrazy wrote:When I was a young boy all my wargames were narratively based because I played with my toy soldiers and vehicles without the use of any rules.

The reason I bought rules and became a real wargamer was because I wanted a properly thought out structure to govern the action instead of just making things up as I went along.
 
   
Made in us
Cosmic Joe





lliu wrote:
GW will live. They are still the top hobby store on the market. I checked their stocks.

There's more to it than stock prices.
Look at the history of TSR.



Also, check out my history blog: Minimum Wage Historian, a fun place to check out history that often falls between the couch cushions. 
   
Made in ca
Ancient Venerable Black Templar Dreadnought





Canada

 Naberiel wrote:
Buypainted have nice explanation of GWs behavior to gamers.
Really liked that video and the guy presenting.
Summary is the main product at first glance is to sell a game.
GW treats it like an "in joke" and the answer is no, collectable items = the "GW hobby".
The golden daemon winner gets mentioned often while the tournament winner is "a nobody", love that quote.

Hence the focus on all the collectable codex releases, cards and things... not a game but collectables.

Problem is, the association to give an object collectable worth (sports star, star, infamous person, important event, limited supply, gives advantage) all do not apply (much) to GW.

Hit the nail on the head why they are spinning their wheels and they cannot understand why a "limited edition" something cannot be $500 like the item in the video.

A revolution is an idea which has found its bayonets.
Napoleon Bonaparte 
   
Made in jp
[MOD]
Anti-piracy Officer






Somewhere in south-central England.

Also they are missing the point that the majority of their customers buy stuff to play games.

Once the GW stuff is overpriced, people will go somewhere else.

I'm writing a load of fiction. My latest story starts here... This is the index of all the stories...

We're not very big on official rules. Rules lead to people looking for loopholes. What's here is about it. 
   
Made in ca
Ancient Venerable Black Templar Dreadnought





Canada

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Also they are missing the point that the majority of their customers buy stuff to play games.
Once the GW stuff is overpriced, people will go somewhere else.
It is my main motivation for a particular model is to field it (coolness does factor in a bit).
"Overpriced" still boils down to the thinking of size/coolness vs. cost of the item and not the emotionally charged collector item thinking they really wish we would use.

When the Khorn-mower came out at $300 which I would not touch with a ten foot pole (good detail, big model, interesting enough... but the price!).
It actually went down in price ($190 GW online store, $130 locally) so is almost in the realm of consideration... no logic to this at all but highlights what determines a buy.
I could buy the X-wing game and seventeen normal fighter booster packs for the same price (Game $40, $15 per ship X 17 = $295) gives me goose bumps thinking of fielding that.

A revolution is an idea which has found its bayonets.
Napoleon Bonaparte 
   
Made in sk
Regular Dakkanaut





Mass produced collectable items are worthless, as I can buy tons of it.

"Faith is the soul of any army; be it vested in primitive religion or enlightened truth. It makes even the least soldier mighty, the craven is remade worthy and through its balm any hardship may be endured. Faith ennobles all of the worlds the soldier undertakes be they so base or vile, and imports to them the golden spark of transcendent purpose."
— Lorgar Aurelian, Primarch of the Word Bearers 
   
Made in us
Nasty Nob




Cary, NC

It's interesting to me, at least, to think of GW's failings as a company, and their failings in the development of their background, as being related:

Both as a company, and as a creator of their IP, GW keeps wanting to make "the next big thing", instead of focusing on steady, quality, development.

On the company level, GW keeps releasing "Big New Products", even though I feel like a company would be better served by a steady stream of sales. This includes shifting the games towards huge models (giant vehicles, walkers, monsters, and centerpiece models), as well as introducing entirely new (or previously rare) elements, like Fliers, Lords of War, Fortifications, etc. They also seem to be focusing their efforts on driving sales through major changes/revisions/expansions to the rules, even when those directly contradict their development strategy previously (for instance, focusing on huge monsters in WFB, while putting out a rule edition that heavily favored large blocks of infantry and spells that are devastating to single model units). This also includes rolling out new editions or rules expansions which make major changes (The Nagash book changing Lord restrictions and allowing access to Necromancy to all armies).

In the background, GW also seems to be determined to have MAJOR CHANGES rather than normal development. The Nagash supplement seems to be heavily promoting the Time of Ending, just as everything in Warhammer 40,000 seems focused on the last 5-10 years of the 41st Millennium and the Time of Ending.

This whole focus on BIG DEVELOPMENT and BIG NEW RELEASES is just foolish. You have a huge game with hundreds of model choices. You can fill in options and expand options and create new options, without throwing gigantic models into the basic game. You also have two huge, well-developed game universes, but instead of exploring centuries (or millennia) of background, you focus on the very last percentage of the timeline.

Even when the sales data OBVIOUSLY point away from this strategy, GW ignores it. The Horus Heresy books are immensely popular, but they don't advance the 40K timeline by one minute. The Heresy era FW range is hugely popular, and it didn't really do anything to shift the focus of the game away from infantry and non-superheavy vehicles. Most of the releases are infantry and vehicle variants, and the other popular stuff (Ad Mech) is stuff that's been in the fluff for years with no models.

GW seems determined to market something new and different to us, despite there being an untapped market of unexplored stuff they have already created. Then they compound it all by insisting that their new stuff is so much more EXTREME and IMPORTANT than all of the old stuff.

Firefighters fight every fire. They don't turn down a fire because it's not bigger than the last fire they fought. The fourth house fire isn't safe because the first three were dangerous.

If they aren't going to fundamentally change the game (Oh, hey! Cadia fell. No more Cadians!), then stop overhyping stuff and stop acting like it's the end of the world (or the Imperium). Stop acting like everything cool and interesting happens in the last 15 years of the 41st Millennium. The Crimson Fists were heroes BEFORE the disaster at Rynn's World. The Grey Knights might respond to a daemonic incursion even if it isn't the biggest one EVAR.

Similarly, people will buy new models if they are good and cool, even if they aren't some new thing. People bought Meganobs and Flash Gits, even though they were not some new unit to the codex. People bought Space Wolves when you released a new sprue, even if the sprue didn't come with ICE LASERS or WOLFY BULLETS. You can make good stuff that people will buy, and you can have good background that people will read, even if its not THE MOST IMPORTANT THING THAT EVER HAPPENED.

 
   
 
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