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I joined Warhammer 40k back at the end of 2012 after a year of reading Cain novels, and playing Dark Heresy. It wasn't until I got into the table top game, did I start learning about the community, and all the stuff that came with it. After surfing the many posts(and 1d4chan), I get the feeling there was a golden age for GW. Then well, there was at some point a Horus Heresy if you will. Things started devolving until they reached the point they are now.

What was the cause, and when did it start?

I'm curious as a still somewhat new player. Was it something big, or a great many small?

As many answers as there are players. It's a lot of echo chamber effect on the internet (and you're using 4chan for god's sake).

Roughly 6-8 months after the person you ask started playing.

Roughly around when they started making 'business' decisions and leaving the hobby in second place.
The big one for me was when they stopped bits ordering. Not sure of a year but it seems like a long time ago now.
Since then things have been changed for the worse or removed altogether one by one.
Throughout this process the prices have increased faster than inflation which makes it an even more bitter pill to swallow.

If you never looked on the internet for GW related ideas and discussions then you'll find that you love for the company would be a lot higher.

Luckily you dont need to like the company to like the game, with all these great alternate model companies growing because GW is daft.

And we're off to the races.

 Alex Kolodotschko wrote:
Roughly around when they started making 'business' decisions and leaving the hobby in second place.

So far, this sounds like the most likely of causes for the decline.

When the internet was invented.

 Rippy wrote:
When the internet was invented.

This is the only answer.

Also, thanks for making this thread. It really helps me find the right people to ignore.

I think you could divide 40k players into three groups.

First are hard core tournament players. They tend to get rather upset when the rules change, complain a bit but then adapt until the next power army is introduced.

Second is the "Fluff Guys". The back story, setting and history of the game is most important to them. They react with great anger when things change too much or when GW re-writes the fluff (which they do a lot). Since GW changes the game a lot every time a new edition or codex comes out they are pretty much always unhappy.

Third is the casual players. They play more for fun, don't read the books, know little of the back story to their army and play mostly with friends and family.

The first two groups are pretty much always unhappy with any change GW makes and tend to be quite vocal about it on the internet. The third group generally cares little if the game changes, adapts to the new rules and carry on. They seldom complain about changes because they just aren't that concerned with them.

The thing that really pisses the first two groups off the most though is their belief that GW cares more for the third group than they do them.

off to the races etc etc

I'm more interested in when it became cool to ignore the blatant flaws in the game and just make snide comments like this instead.

It didn't go down hill. It's still great. The 'golden age' is a myth born from nostalgic rejection to changes in the game, in spite of the fact that the continuing development and evolution of the game is what makes it so great in the first place.

The game has always had balance issues, there's no denying it. I started in mid-early fifth edition and lived through a lot of OP stuff and a lot of less-than OP. I remember when Blood Angels were the top dogs.
However, in 6th, it feels like there are *So many* things to deal with, it's impossible to build a TAC list. In a friendly game where I know who I'm facing it's not so bad, but in a full-on tournament, you have to bring: Lots of AA, enough Anti-Tank to kill a Lord of War, enough Anti-MC for the same reason, heavy psychic defense, something to deal with various 2++ rerollable save armies, etc.
It's leaning heavily into rock-paper-scissors territory. And, because there are *So Many* different types of enemies and rules, it's becoming increasingly unlikely that they can fix it with one update to anything. Can they fix it? Yes. Will it be a slow, grueling process which involves updating almost every book? Unfortunately yes.

 Dakkamite wrote:

off to the races etc etc

I'm more interested in when it became cool to ignore the blatant flaws in the game and just make snide comments like this instead.

Absolutely!

"Are you kidding? It's WONDERFUL! Never better! And I happen to gak ice cream"

Maybe this thread can shed some light on the issue...

http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?388054-GW-Where-did-it-all-go-wrong

- Edited by insaniak. Please don't circumvent the language filter. It's there for a reason. -

It really depends on where you are at and the current era. There are a lot of places that still have huge groups of people that really bring a shine to GW and still host lots of games and enjoy it. Where I’m at the game started to drop around the start of 5th ed. That’s when most of my friends and I stopped playing it. For us, it was kinda the rules, but it was not everything, we had a lot of other things going on as well. Then group we used to play with lost a few members and we lost our Friday night at the FLGS we played at. It got eaten up by MTG, but the 40k group captured Sunday morning about a year or more later and still have about 5-10 people show up.

Then there is the Internet, if you’re from there you hate everything.

I was never really into Warhammer for the playing part of it. I love it for the miniature hobby. For me, I mostly stopped because my brother and dad stopped playing it. The game got too full of rule… people and the hobby of it became whose army was better and what it was made to do. The models got too expensive to continue at the pace I was going. There are a lot of cheaper games to get into and so I did.
Also not many kids of today play miniature games which also can be a factor of where you are at. It seems like most kids would rather play x-box or playstation or computer for four hours a day than sit down with a buddy and play a table top game. The list can go on…

Solis Luna Astrum wrote:
The thing that really pisses the first two groups off the most though is their belief that GW cares more for the third group than they do them.

Except that isn't really true. GW doesn't care more for the third group, the third group just has lower standards and is willing to put up with the garbage GW produces.

 Peregrine wrote:

Solis Luna Astrum wrote:
The thing that really pisses the first two groups off the most though is their belief that GW cares more for the third group than they do them.

Except that isn't really true. GW doesn't care more for the third group, the third group just has lower standards and is willing to put up with the garbage GW produces.

I dont have lower standards, if anything im normal. I dont force myself to play things i dont enjoy. I dont use my leisure time to play a game i despise. Maybe you are just a GW addict with a spiteful personality or something. After all we arent wasting our lives like the people with your attitude throwing money and time at something you hate is daft to me...

Although i do agree GW doesnt support any group really, us casual gamers are far more likely to buy 3rd party models for example as we dont take the game too seriously.

I think GW just takes what it can get and if you are slowly buying models from elsewhere and trying new things the best they can do is tell you to go somewhere else. In the end all they want is fresh blood or repeat customers. Rather than trying to bring back disgruntled players, which is where other companies come in and make their money.

Honestly, I am not a hardcore player, I love the hobby, I like the armies, and I enjoy collecting them.

I do enjoy the story behind 40k, I find it solid and pretty fun....in a murderous alien races killing you for the last can of beans that also happen to be everyone else but them in the universe kind of way.

I know the prices are higher then ever, people whine about paying money to play the game, and the rules always have to benefit your opponents army more then yours. That is normal, and ignoring the groups theory, it goes more like this:

out of 10 people:
4 wont know what warhammer is
3 play the game casually
2 players are hardcore to the point of obsessed with prices.
1 player is annoyed they aren't paying less and have decided to blame GW for not making models cheaper, instead of just buying less.

GW will spent more time with the ones on top of the list: the 7 players that will buy more, and play more.
Less time for the 2 that have already named their kids Draigo or Macragge.

Then acknowledge that one player is annoyed, then ignore him.

Hope this doesn't offend anyone. This is just how I see the majority of these arguements/threads/conversations/blogs/etc.

For me it was 6th. In 5th I had a ton of fun . Tough games against tough armies . Right now it is a bother to even take my IG with me . 6th seems to be wasted time for me , worse of it the codex bounce between good , monobuild and stuff like synergy armies. And you never know if after a year or two you get an actualy good codex like eldar or tau , or something like tyranids or chaos.

Models were always expensive. The rules were always badly written. The models were always awesome looking. People always loved bitching about gw.

Things started going down when more people got internet.

 Mywik wrote:
Models were always expensive. The rules were always badly written. The models were always awesome looking. People always loved bitching about gw.

Things started going down when more people got internet.

Models were not always expensive. When I started playing I bought a tactical squad each week with my £5 pocket money. That's equivalent to £8.60 in 2012, the last year data is available for:
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/education/Pages/inflation/calculator/flash/default.aspx

A tactical squad is now £25. Nicer models, but a kid can't buy them with pocket money any more. That's when the game went downhill for me.

Swastakowey wrote:... throwing money and time at something you hate is daft to me...

Have you stopped and considered the possibility that a lot of us complaining about the state of the game don't actually hate it?

It's possible to like something while still seeing its flaws. I love the Star Wars prequels. I still cringe at 'I love you because you're not like sand'...

40K, for me, is the same. I enjoy playing the game. But I also see enough of the flaws in it to know that I would enjoy it more if it was more tightly written.

And that's not even touching the difference liking the company producing a product and liking that product...

 insaniak wrote:

Swastakowey wrote:... throwing money and time at something you hate is daft to me...

Have you stopped and considered the possibility that a lot of us complaining about the state of the game don't actually hate it?

It's possible to like something while still seeing its flaws. I love the Star Wars prequels. I still cringe at 'I love you because you're not like sand'...

40K, for me, is the same. I enjoy playing the game. But I also see enough of the flaws in it to know that I would enjoy it more if it was more tightly written.

And that's not even touching the difference liking the company producing a product and liking that product...

I have yet to hear the person i said that to say anything remotely positive except that vandettas are great. Other than that all he talks about is how crap the game is. If you talk about apples tasting like feces you dont turn around and eat it, then buy more and keep eating them. I dont know you nor have i seen many of your posts but i was referring to pregriin or however you spell it, people with his attitude might need a new hobby or Councillor.

I hate the company but like the product, he however hates both it seems, just look at his comments and you will see, people like him i was referring to. Luckily he is a minority.

 Mywik wrote:
Models were always expensive. The rules were always badly written. The models were always awesome looking. People always loved bitching about gw.

Things started going down when more people got internet.

Models were always expensive, but they've hit new highs. Agree the rules were always badly written, personally I preferred older rulesets to the current ones not because they were perfect but they are just what I prefer. The models are actually average compared to the competition now.

Though you're probably right about the internet part. It helps spread all the crappy things GW are doing.

Personally I've felt GW have been going downhill since they removed bitz sales. That's not the only reason they went bad, of course, but around that time. Removing international sales, crippling online retailers, making it harder for FLGS's. You can't just pretend GW has always been the same and people have always just loved bitching, a lot of stuff has happened in more recent history to make them worse in the eyes of the customer.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Swastakowey wrote:
I hate the company but like the product, he however hates both it seems, just look at his comments and you will see, people like him i was referring to. Luckily he is a minority.

You can like the "product" and still hate the game as the "product" isn't only the game, it's the universe and the miniatures and for many of us it's the history (if I hadn't already been collecting 40k and Fantasy miniatures for 18 or so years, I probably would not start now). 40k has a cool universe IMO, and if you look at Peregrine's gallery, it appears he has a rather expensive DKoK army. DKoK are again a great product, if I hadn't sunk so much money in to cars, I'd probably own a DKoK army simply because the models are awesome. I'm really not a huge fan of what the game itself has become though.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Swastakowey wrote:
I hate the company but like the product, he however hates both it seems, just look at his comments and you will see, people like him i was referring to. Luckily he is a minority.

You can like the "product" and still hate the game as the "product" isn't only the game, it's the universe and the miniatures and for many of us it's the history (if I hadn't already been collecting 40k and Fantasy miniatures for 18 or so years, I probably would not start now). 40k has a cool universe IMO, and if you look at Peregrine's gallery, it appears he has a rather expensive DKoK army. DKoK are again a great product, if I hadn't sunk so much money in to cars, I'd probably own a DKoK army simply because the models are awesome. I'm really not a huge fan of what the game itself has become though.

Personally my biggest gripe with modern GW is the lack of imagination.

In ye goode olde days the GW design team effectively ran the show, and nearly every crazy new idea got turned into a product. In addition to the Fantasy and 40k releases we got all sorts of fancy things; Epic, Necromunda, Gorkamorka, BFG, etc. Even some free mini-games published in White Dwarf.

Modern GW is run by the sales team, and every new 40k release is an unimaginative copy/paste of the previous release derived from spreadsheets of production costs and profit margins. There's no risk, no new concepts, just the same template each time::

Generic Flyer combo-kit
Generic Monstrous Creature/Construct
Racial heavy infantry equivalent combo-kit
Re-designed finecast-into-plastic unit
Codex and psychic cards

It's a real shame that as GW have vastly improved their design + production technology over the years, the actual creativity behind them has all but vanished. Even Forge World are stuck in a cycle of pushing out Power Armour variant #452 each month because: sales.

Well, for me it was when they started to make resin (instead of metal) models. I recognized first that metal Incubi were much cheaper than resin ones. This was more than 2 years ago. During this surge (metal -> resin) prices went up also for plastic models and GW started a ridiculous information policy of not informing customers beforehand.

Economically, there never was a golden age. The first success was forced upon them by MB making standard advertising (Heroquest, Space Crusade), the second success was forced upon them by Lord of the Rings and DeAgostini's standard advertising. The second boost to sales was quickly dealt with, the contract with DeAgostini cancelled and sales returned to normal, staying flat or declining since then. Took GW some time to annoy the flood of new customers with bad business decisions incl price policy, but now they have achieved a solid and sustained shrinking of the company, in an otherwise growing market.

Here some internal view by one of GW's founders:
http://realmofchaos80s.blogspot.de/2013/01/rick-priestley-interview-from-realms-of.html

RoC80s: Having interviewed other people involved in GW during this period, they describe the atmosphere in the studio as being very creative and supportive, as well as being very loosely controlled when it came to design. Is this a view that you share?

RP: Erm… well the RoC books extend over such a long development period that the atmosphere in the studio probably went through some changes to be honest. But when we were in Enfield Chambers (prior to 91) the studio was a very easy going creative environment to put it mildly. We were left to our own devices for much of the time, and Bryan Ansell (owner and boss) pretty much kept the creative part of the business separate from the manufacturing and sales part. Bryan was a very creative and ideas driven man – I don’t think he’d mind me saying that – he always wanted to make great games with interesting mechanics and stimulating ideas – and he didn’t mind investing in creative staff. He was a real patron of the studio and took a real interest in all the models and artwork. Bryan always said that if the studio ever had to mix with the manufacturing and sales part of the business it would destroy the studio. And I have to say – he wasn’t wrong there! The modern studio isn’t a studio in the same way; it isn’t a collection of artists and creatives sharing ideas and driving each other on. It’s become the promotions department of a toy company – things move on!

 Swastakowey wrote:
That is one of way of looking at it, but if I where to buy models for the sake of models like you suggest (which i do) then i wouldnt complain about the game, because once you complain about the game then that suggests you want to play (or hate the game) the game as well moving it from model collecting to war gaming.

I think there's a lot of people in between that buy models because they look cool AND they want to play with them. DKoK are a great example, they are awesome looking models, but once you have them in your hot little hands and they're all painted up, don't you think you'd want to play a game with them?

I definitely buy a lot of GW models just because I want to paint them and because I think they look cool. But if that were the ONLY reason to buy them, I probably would have spent the time and money on model aircraft (the real world type), because I think an F16 or an FW190 or a Spitfire or etc etc etc look infinitely better than anything GW have produced.

But another point you brought up which is a big deal for someone like me, is the quality of GW models is no longer amazing in comparison with many other great companies. I at most only buy vehicles from GW but even then I have to try hard to do so. Scibor, vic minis and so on are all far better and then there are companies that are similar to GW in quality but are far far cheaper. In my area we all use other companies when we can (which is 90% of the time), and im sure we arent the only ones. This means they dont have the luxury of being the one and only best like they used to be.

Yeah, the fact there's so many good models these days is almost a curse as much as a blessing for someone like me who simultaneously paints what he likes but also wants to assemble a cohesive army, lol.

 obithius wrote:

 Mywik wrote:
Models were always expensive. The rules were always badly written. The models were always awesome looking. People always loved bitching about gw.

Things started going down when more people got internet.

Models were not always expensive. When I started playing I bought a tactical squad each week with my £5 pocket money. That's equivalent to £8.60 in 2012, the last year data is available for:
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/education/Pages/inflation/calculator/flash/default.aspx

A tactical squad is now £25. Nicer models, but a kid can't buy them with pocket money any more. That's when the game went downhill for me.

Thats subjective i admit. When i started playing in 2nd edition a leman russ battle tank was 50DM ... at that time i was ~15 and had 50DM pocket money per month. So for me it was expensive.

Admittedly Boxes are more expensive now but also kids get more pocket money. The point still stands that its a long way to a working army when you are that age. Today i can totally afford one or more expensive boxes but i refuse to because of the price and not being 15 anymore.

So for some kid starting the hobby nothing really changed.

What did change though is the fact that there are a lot more competitors than back in the day that offer a lot more value for your money.