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It seems like there's no way to win, as if the game was unpopular it would have been cancelled again, I'm sure.

If something is worth doing than it's worth doing at its maximum profit extraction rate.

It makes total sense for GW to add The Old World to their product churn, if for no other reason than the save the products their currently churning to an early grave. They're scheduled for another AoS edition next year, no doubt with another poorly received launch box at an even higher price.

While they're on a runaway train that will eventually fly off a cliff, doing a three year turnaround is just too fast, it's turning the community off the game and putting a damper on the excitement of launch boxes. Four years is a much better pace.

 Da Boss wrote:
It seems like there's no way to win, as if the game was unpopular it would have been cancelled again, I'm sure.

Yeah, I wish the game had been in some mythical middle road where it got support without being punched for money, but I am not sure such a middle ground exists. You are either punched for money or binned.

Or Necromunda, I guess, but Necromunda isn't really enjoying the kind of release volume the full-size GW wargames hope for.

Im all for the churn if it means more new models for this game. Way too many armies are plagued by atrociously dated kit

 streetsamurai wrote:
Im all for the churn if it means more new models for this game. Way too many armies are plagued by atrociously dated kit

Yeah, I kinda agree here. I'll take some rules turnover if it means kits that started voting in the last decade can get a refresh before my kids get to vote in the next one.

Not orcs Boar Boyz though. Those are perfect.

 streetsamurai wrote:
Im all for the churn if it means more new models for this game. Way too many armies are plagued by atrociously dated kit

I kinda agree, but at the same time… I dunno, the direction 40k has gone in recent years has put me off it completely. If I were to buy in, I’d feel like I was paying for a subscription I barely have the time use, rather trying to dive into a hobby. I’m so glad we still have customisation and profiles-with-no-models in TOW
Either way TOW will never be on the level of AoS or 40k so it might be a baseless worry, just give us new minis every couple of months, new AJ every 3 months, new erratas and FAQs every 6 month.
If we get skirmishes sorted, another couple of tweaks here and there - no need for a new edition for the next 3 years for sure imho.

I'm all for churn if it means legacy armies can get added back in and they fix the Murderous rule for Dark Elves.

I'm very sure we'll get churn! The other bonus is that Old World isn't like AoS with a "posterboy" army so each new edition can come with TWO factions getting big range refreshes that they need (or one new one and one new/returning army).

AoS being forced to always have Stormcast has led to problems for the model range and I'm convinced the last edition did poorer for having stormcast again and triggering a bunch of 3 year old models being removed from the line.

 Overread wrote:
I'm very sure we'll get churn! The other bonus is that Old World isn't like AoS with a "posterboy" army so each new edition can come with TWO factions getting big range refreshes that they need (or one new one and one new/returning army).

AoS being forced to always have Stormcast has led to problems for the model range and I'm convinced the last edition did poorer for having stormcast again and triggering a bunch of 3 year old models being removed from the line.

They did seem like they were trying to release it with the Empire as the posterboys, with it being 'the old world' and 'the empire almost but not quite civil war' era and then sort of did nothing with it. Other than a couple of articles talking about the timeline, an AJ for nuln, and released a couple of MTOs for old empire kits.

I think they always planned for it being an Empire & friends game, more akin to the Horus Heresy, with a lot more limited scope of what would be released but they ended up bringing back way more than they intended and it lost its 'empire as posterboys' status.

I'd honestly not be surprised if the 'the old world' subheading is quietly dropped around a proper version 2 or version 3 of the game, and we just have Warhammer Fantasy battles again.

I would be surprised if they went back to "Warhammer Fantasy Battles" - that's just a very generic name and GW has been changing names to tighten up IP for years now. "The Old World" has much more of a distinct identity

The only time I could see them drop "Old World" would be if they dropped Age of Sigmar

I want new State Troops or MtO 2000 ones.

 Overread wrote:
I'm very sure we'll get churn! The other bonus is that Old World isn't like AoS with a "posterboy" army so each new edition can come with TWO factions getting big range refreshes that they need (or one new one and one new/returning army).

AoS being forced to always have Stormcast has led to problems for the model range and I'm convinced the last edition did poorer for having stormcast again and triggering a bunch of 3 year old models being removed from the line.

I think GW would benefit tremendously from not assuming that everything that works in the 40K market will translate to the fantasy side of things.

+ Space Marines work, so of course we can make fantasy Space Marines!
+ Kill Team is on fire! Let's rejigger War Cry to be similar!
+ Horus Heresy is a sleeper hit! Knock the dust off the Old World molds!

I like the AoS and Old World models; a lot of the lore is cool, but there's just too much stuff, and the player base isn't big enough to support three, or four, if you count Underworlds, sub-brands.

Spearhead seems to work really well! Quadruple down on that for a few years and see what happens. Maybe they won't have to give away the 5th-edition launch boxes at Adepticon, then.

RazorEdge wrote:
I want new State Troops or MtO 2000 ones.

Oh my Sigmar, I would go bankrupt if GW ever did an MTO for the 6th edition Empire State Troops

 KidCthulhu wrote:

RazorEdge wrote:
I want new State Troops or MtO 2000 ones.

Oh my Sigmar, I would go bankrupt if GW ever did an MTO for the 6th edition Empire State Troops

I wish they brought these back anstead of that Ghaky Backwater Hobbos from 2007...

I'm doing Warlord Landsknechts for my Empire when I get around to them.

I'm not looking forward to them re-doing ranges, I hope I have time to purchase the stuff I still want to get before they do because once they increase the scale on the miniatures I won't be buying any more. I'm one of the people genuinely happy to be buying old kits. I wish some of the even older stuff was generally available!

 kirotheavenger wrote:
I would be surprised if they went back to "Warhammer Fantasy Battles" - that's just a very generic name and GW has been changing names to tighten up IP for years now. "The Old World" has much more of a distinct identity

you say that but the term 'the old world' is literally a historical one, referring to europe and the americas as the 'new world'. Because WFB is based on the real world it nicked a whole lot of historical language, cultures and terms. Cathay is literally an old term for China. Nippon is an anglicisation of Japan's real name.

The Old World already has a distinct identiy. It's as distinct as 'the british empire'...

 Mallo wrote:
I'd honestly not be surprised if the 'the old world' subheading is quietly dropped around a proper version 2 or version 3 of the game, and we just have Warhammer Fantasy battles again.

I think part of the reason they went with "The Old World" instead of "Warhammer Fantasy Battles" is to help differentiate between the timeframes those two titles represent. If they had resurrected the WHFB name, that would have implied returning to the almost-End-Times era of the setting. New timeframe; new title.

And they've clearly not taken it literally. They stuck Cathay in with a visiting fleet and then just went all in and had a book about Cathay itself, nowhere near the old world.

You could argue that the Dark Elves are closer to the old world than Cathay is, geographically. And the Southlands Lizardmen, which come up to the bottom of Khemri.


So yeah I expect it to continue to be a title rather than a description.

Fantasy Battles is way too generic for GW to really ever use again, in their own ecosystem and for any outside copyright/trademark claim

The Old World also isn't just about the timeframe within the old Warhammer Fantasy World but in context to Age of Sigmar being the new world
Even if they jump around and make the setting 2800 it would still be the old world
(Same as Horus Heresy will stay Horus Heresy even if the game moves past the siege of Terra)

Saw some people saying there were rumors of TOW sales cratering late last year or earlier this year and that demand didnt sustain itself past the initial wave of nostalgia releases.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Saw some people saying there were rumors of TOW sales cratering late last year or earlier this year and that demand didnt sustain itself past the initial wave of nostalgia releases.

Honestly wouldn't surprise me. I've not really seen anyone playing it beyond dusting off their existing collection (and maybe expanding it a little).
It certainly didn't help the game that the initial release state was quite poor, and by the time they materially improved the situation well the launch hype was gone and the reputation was there.

We have more people playing it here than AoS now.

What do you mean by the initial release state was being poor? Was it the lack of certain factions that should rightfully be there?

If you mean balance, their biggest game released it's 10th edition to a far more abysmal state in that regard. TOW at release was like the epitome of balance compared with it.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Saw some people saying there were rumors of TOW sales cratering late last year or earlier this year and that demand didnt sustain itself past the initial wave of nostalgia releases.

Like a lot of games that aren't 40K - it seems spotty in terms of some areas its big some areas its not. I do expect that with Cathay now out with a brand new army, we might well see nostalgic sales of older models in existing armies start to dry up.

Some armies will fare better than others; but with a clear sign of GW doing new models in plastic I predict that people will be wanting shiny new stuff. Of course any old models brought back for one time castings and such will still sell - the nostalgic power is there; but 30 year old skeletons need replacing.

That said I think GW are well aware of that and will already have plans for updating things; its just a bit of a waiting game.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Saw some people saying there were rumors of TOW sales cratering late last year or earlier this year and that demand didnt sustain itself past the initial wave of nostalgia releases.

AFAIK, the vast majority of the sales of a kit are in the few weeks following release. So a big dip in sales would be expected. I think that the best indicator of the long term viability of the game are the sales of the grand cathay kits. Again, AFAIK, they sold extremely well, and at the very least, we know that a lot of these kits/boxes were sold out for a long time

People on Youtube forever talk about the WFB players who hate on Age of Sigmar and are unfair to it, yet the reality is the number of people who are dead set on spreading negative rumors about Warhammer Fantasy games and how they never sell are far, far louder of a group.

Saying Old World kits only seem to make a lot of sales after initial release and thinking you've said anything at all, is so bizarre. Everyone who works in the hobby gaming business will tell you that a product's biggest sales come a month after its release, then it falls off (this is big releases not indie stuff waiting to find an audience). It's true for Star Wars Legion, Battletech, and most of GW's products.

I know the Lords of War guys rag on The Old World a lot, which is fun because then you can make fun of them for their terrible predictions (Cathay to be given away for free at Adepticon, was it?), but Games Workshop shows no signs of slowing on the game. And it's very much got a different audience than 40K, it's not dominated by young players, it's mostly hobby veterans. And then new players enter communities of hobby veterans, so that's who they learn the ropes from. People who played WFB in the 90s, most of them just want the cheapest price, get what they want, get out, play with people they know, a lot of them have big dining room tables or basement gaming spaces... it's not the kind of crowd who needs a gaming store experience with a game store dad to guide them through how to paint a model. But GW makes their money all the same.

If ToW is mostly nostalgia, there's still a huge back catalogue of miniatures waiting to be mined.

As a Bretonnia collector, if they were to do a re-release or MTO of the 5th and 6th edition ultra-rare Questing Knights, for example, they could take all the money my grubby little paws could afford to hand over.

I have already bought everything I want that they currently sell. Release more and I'll buy more.

 Return_to_Bretonnia wrote:
If ToW is mostly nostalgia, there's still a huge back catalogue of miniatures waiting to be mined.

As a Bretonnia collector, if they were to do a re-release or MTO of the 5th and 6th edition ultra-rare Questing Knights, for example, they could take all the money my grubby little paws could afford to hand over.

I have already bought everything I want that they currently sell. Release more and I'll buy more.

I've been waiting on a 5th Ed Knight MTO as well. And to be honest wouldn't mind the rest to come round again as well, I could only get so much past the scrutiny of the GF last time the archers and men at arms came up.

Lords of War have actually recently said that ToW has done steady business this year bringing in about the same as last year

(now thats probably a bit suboptimal as you'd hope it would be growing but with limited new, new stuff it's pretty decent)

 kirotheavenger wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Saw some people saying there were rumors of TOW sales cratering late last year or earlier this year and that demand didnt sustain itself past the initial wave of nostalgia releases.

Honestly wouldn't surprise me. I've not really seen anyone playing it beyond dusting off their existing collection (and maybe expanding it a little).
It certainly didn't help the game that the initial release state was quite poor, and by the time they materially improved the situation well the launch hype was gone and the reputation was there.

I honestly have no idea what it is you're trying to say here. I think the initial release state was pretty good, the launch hype was solid, and the game had a positive reception and reputation?

 streetsamurai wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Saw some people saying there were rumors of TOW sales cratering late last year or earlier this year and that demand didnt sustain itself past the initial wave of nostalgia releases.

AFAIK, the vast majority of the sales of a kit are in the few weeks following release. So a big dip in sales would be expected. I think that the best indicator of the long term viability of the game are the sales of the grand cathay kits. Again, AFAIK, they sold extremely well, and at the very least, we know that a lot of these kits/boxes were sold out for a long time

Thats hyperbolic. Yes, demand for a new kit will always be heaviest at launch, but the idea that post-launch sales are miniscule or insignificant isnt quite accurate. If that were true, then space marines would not be consistent best sellers (not every release is a space marine release, after all), likewise new players would constantly be entering the game without ever buying 80-90% of a given factions catalog, etc. Which just isn't a realistic stance to take.

A successful miniatures product line will continue to have a sustained baseline level of demand and sales volume and demand for months or years after release, driven by newcomers to the game system or ongoing sales to existing customers. If sales are cratering (again, this is rumor, grain of salt and all that), that implies that sales volume/demand is approaching zero or dropping below an expected sales baseline, in turn implying a lack of growth or continuing sales to established customers.