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The long release cycle for codexes, especially considering that they usually roll to a new edition before they even finish all the dexes. Couldn't they just roll out the dexes 1 per month until they were all out?

Dark Apostle 666 wrote:What Annoys you about G.W?

There isn't an alternative that is as good yet.

My main annoyances with GW are the lack of Specialist Games support, and the now long ago ending of the Black Gobbo eZine.

Oh, and I'm still bitter they split off Undead into Vampire Counts and Tomb Kings

Cruddy codex writing (pun intended), lack of playtesting, and above all, lack of variety (in 40k).

In Fantasy humans are the minority (3 armybooks i think, not counting the undead humans in tomb kings and vampire counts) compared to the other options. 3 flavours of elves, ogres, undead, dwarves, demons, lizardmen, beastmen.. the list goes on and on...

In 40k how many non-human armies do you see at a FLGS. Not many..

Half the codex releases are for one faction, there are only a few xeno races, and they aren't all their own codex:

Tau, incorporating Kroot and Vespid- why not a Kroot codex

Nids

orks

eldar and dark eldar

Necrons

8 if we're feeling charitable

Imperial guard
blood angels
black templars
grey knights
battle sisters
space wolves
Generic marines (ultramarines et al)
dark angels
chaos marines

( 9: 8 if you argue that chaos boys aren't human anymore..)

I'd love them to address the disparity. In the fluff it usually goes like this:

'Inquisitor fillinnamehere allied with (cool sounding alien race) and their (awesome sounding ships) helped prevail against (fill in enemy here). He then exterminated the race 5 years later...'

Talk about wasted opportunity...

The fact that they don't allow you to use non GW models in store has gotten to me lately... While I can understand where they are comming from, there have been many conversions Id like to do that are about 70% GW and they wont allow me to use them in store. Somewhat frustrating. >.<

2 words. Model Prices

The lack of conversion articles and such...god-emperor I miss the old rulebooks/codexes with tips and guides how to make terrain, special stuff and such...
Also that they fail at putting down enough time, proof reading and a disturbing lack of respect for their old stuff/fluff(Swarmlord go away and die...Mephiston please stop flirting with chaos...).

All in all...just a long timer collectors rage at change. But change is bad in warhammer, for it makes Tzeentch stronger! Soon the hobby will be lost in a vortex of badly-written fluff,
bad streamlining of rules and Hollywood produced Space Marine/Eldar lovestories...and Tzeentch just smiles...cause is victory is complete.

Or things MAY change for the better...but until then I preffer to stick to the "old ways"

It annoys me when any race barring Marines takes forever to get updates.

The fact that GW doesn't grow a pair and get rid of SG.

Don't get me wrong, I love SG, epic was got me into the hobby in the first place some twenty-many years ago, and to this day I think BFG is the best ruleset they've written, but if they're not going to give them any support, then why bother?

There are 3 easy solutions:

Sell the rights to SG to a trusted company like FFG and let them do it.

Set up an independant sink-or-swim company within GW group to do it.

Let forgeworld take over SG (as forgeworld's traditional role of creating big/wierd things for 40k has become increasingly absorbed by the new plastics anyway).


That, and the usual price hikes/codex creep/release schedule/paranoid secrecy/blaa blaa blaa.... that we all know is wrong anyhow

I really don't mind all those petty little things mentioned before.

Yes, it isn't cheap. Most hobbies aren't.

Yeah, some GW staffers - some - are idiots. In all likelihood, some of you probably are, too. Idiots are everywhere, expecting GW to not have some of them is a very optimistic view, and utterly unrealistic.

Yep, they do not update every codex every two years. That's a problem, but to allow them to update quicker, they'd have to hire more gamedesigners, and then all that stuff you love would be even more expensive.

They do not support specialist games, because that would cost them money, and the internet has enough enthusiasts who do the same for free.

And then there are those decisions by GW that have to be made but will never be popular with everyone, no matter what the decision actually is, like whether Space Wolves should have actual wolf riders, or the design of the new race (eg Tau). If they were able to make something everyone likes, they'd have done so by now and every single ten-year-old boy in europe, australia and the usa would be collecting it. That'd also solve those money-issues, and we'd see every codex update every week and all specialist games and hobby zines continued. But alas, tastes tend to differ.


Yeah, well, as you can see, what really annoys me about GW - but the same goes for all kinds of SciFi and Fantasy gaming - is the hordes of people complaining about everything any company ever does, and that while though they don't even understand what a company as an economic entity is.

[/rant]

Army nerfing. Squats. Check. Dogs of War. Double check.
Rule/unit nerfing. Dwarves with spears no longer allowed. Check. Thunderers no longer Move AND fire. Check (they were in 6th ed.)
Ignoring cool specialist Games. Check.
Ignoring release of things they know people want. Chaos Dwarves. Check.
Insane prices. Check.

I could go on.
They could do better.

What annoys me about GW?

Price rises, reduced sales, price rises, reduced sales - *rinse and repeat*. How many times does this have to happen before someone at GW wakes up and 'gets it'?

Not seemingly listening to customers, engaging with customers or in anyway to acknowledging customers exist as anything but walking wallets. Take the hype around the BL HH novels - where' are the tie-ins for this, the conversion packs, rules, anything?

Inability to support more than 3 systems at once. They are supposed to be the big fish in the pond - let's see them prove it.

Lack of support for specialist games - personal gripe really, but I really loved these, they got me into wargaming. They could at least throw us a bone occaisionally, or at least release the full range of models.

The utter abhorrence that is WD - appart from the painting articles there is little in here worth bothering with these days. And they should quit with issues devoted to mainly one system, and stop the pathetic 'rehashed for the nth time'LOTR articles - either print something new or don't bother.

Lack of sales, offers, loyalty card, or anything that would make me want to buy from a GW shop rather than buy discounted online.

That's my £0.02.

The prices, the model-less units, the delay in updates which is compounded by all the IoM love.

Though tbh they don't bother me all that much.

Probably their paranoia surrounding 'IP' comes pretty high. Yeah they have to protect themselves and no one should have any sympathy for people recasting all their latest releases on eBay but their attitude in general stinks when compared to most hobby companies. They are paranoid and aggressive.

The australian dollar conversion rate. Our dollar is buying about the same as the US dollar, but a US battleforce costs $90 and the Australian one costs $150. Its seriously ridiculous. Apart from that nothing, sure it takes forever to update a codex (necrons....) but that doesnt really matter if you cant even afford to play in the first place! i should really get a job...

[IMPORTANT UPDATE!!!!!!] Dark Apostle 666's Furious, tireless, campaigning has TRIUMPHED over the Evil Games Workshop. 'Whats New Today' Was Skaven NO MORE! Well done Dark Apostle as a DIRECT RESULT of this thread GW now has a 40k related news story on their home page.

Marines getting far too much of the spotlight. I know DA and BT were hurting and good for them getting FAQ-updated, but seriously. The Necrons are hiding in their tombs and won't be getting a new codex until the endish of this year of the earliest.

Ascalam wrote:Cruddy codex writing (pun intended)

They are not the company I remembered loving 10+ years ago. Honestly whatever GW does affects me very little as I've slowed down my purchases and moved mostly to buying used stuff. I miss the company I remember them being. Some of that's probably nostalgia, I admit, but GW really was different back then.

Price hikes are definitely a big issue, as are options in the codex without models. Oh yea, and keeping all rumors under wraps: generating hype for their minis and books should be a positive thing. Don't treat your work as a redheaded step child and argue that it doesn't exist until you get around to feeling like finally saying "Ok, we lied. Here it is."

For me it all comes down to GW's inability to take a realistically critical view of themselves. Their reps call their models the porsches of miniatures while blithely ignoring the many inferior miniatures they peddle. This is especially irksome when a genuinely good GW model gets replaced by a new version that is widely thought by customers to be inferior to the old (Diaz daemonettes are a great example).

The complaints about pricing are IMHO a direct out-growth of that problem. Despite disappointing business performance over several years and almost constant complaints from customers about pricing, GW asserts that their "followers" will pay whatever GW decides to charge for the "privilege" of being involved in "the hobby".

The rumour situation is a smaller part of a much larger symptom- Mr. Mystery purports that GW employees feel anger because the public misrepresents what goes on behind the scenes at GW, but that misrepresentation exists entirely because GW is so tight-lipped about letting the public know anything, of course the public is going to respond by connecting the dots based off of what limited information they have. But GW doesn't treat this as the massive PR problem that it is; to them it's the public's fault. "Haterz gonna hate", apparently.

Specialist Games ties right in with blinkered approach to criticism. Many SG titles are widely known for being among the best examples of rulesets for their genres. People love these games, and while I know they may not produce the same kind of revenue that SPESH MAHREENZ do, the almost constant praise that these games elicit from the public shows there's something to them that GW shouldn't just ignore. But apart from a few blood bowl models, have there been any new offerings for any Specialist Game in years? I had a look at the GW website the other day and while Epic used to be a free download, those have all disappeared. Any of the Forgeworld Epic Tau that aren't flyers have disappeared as well, and I can't find the rules for Forgeworld's BFG Tau anywhere either.

GW's problems all stem from one thing- whoever is calling the shots in the company just isn't interested in what anyone else thinks. From product design to sales tactics to advertising/marketing to ongoing support, there is the constant sense that there is no internal criticism marking bad ideas, and no interest in hearing external criticism. The constant message I get from GW is they expect me to take what they dish out because they're the only game in town.

Except, they aren't.

Howard A Treesong wrote:Probably their paranoia surrounding 'IP' comes pretty high. Yeah they have to protect themselves and no one should have any sympathy for people recasting all their latest releases on eBay but their attitude in general stinks when compared to most hobby companies. They are paranoid and aggressive.

To be fair, they arguably stand more to lose. Think of the mediums the brand has been applied to in the past few years.

And in business, you need to be paranod and agressive, especially when you employ that many people.

What annoys me is all the vents they put on their metal models.

You see this model, Lilith for example. THe model looks fntastic in the mag or DE book.
So you buy it.

You open the blister and there are all these vent streamers on all the parts, ruining the fine detail in places.

Compare this to Wyrd, Reaper, or PP where there are barely even mold lines, let alone streamers on vital parts of detail.

Above all, Id have to say the exorbitant shelf prices

Price increases.

I think the part that annoys me is that they can't get their fluff right. Read the 2nd ed chaos codex they agree to the Horus Heresy novels. Then read the 4th edition chaos codex. Apparently, the Iron Warriors, World eaters, Emperor's Children and Death Guard were the one who drop podded in behind the Salamanders, Raven Guard and Iron Hands...

Ugh! Thats the stuff that annoys me. Other than that, I think its the fact that they don't make models for all of their codex items.

Hmm, let me count the ways;

1) The utter disdain GW seems to have for the players that want a game that is played both casually and competitively to have rules that actually facilitate it being played casually and competitively,

2) Their unwillingness to deal with the shortcomings of their rules, when they become blindingly clear, in anything like a timely matter,

3) The way their price structure is spiraling out of control,

4) The way they stagger their releases,

5) Their Luddite fear of the internet,

6) Their setting (there are some gems in the sewage, but for the most part I've come to find the "grimdark future" and "grimdark steam age" just... tedious),

7) Finally, their almost insulting cheapness, even as their prices increase and increase.

While most of those complaints are pretty self-evident, the final one has just been hitting me in the face more and more obviously recently. For example take the most recent Codex (Dark Eldar); $29 (US prices), 96 pages with 16 color pages and soft covers, the balance black and white. Compare to the Warmachine Prime Mk II book at $29.99, with 256 full color pages and soft covers, or the Dungeons and Dragons Player's Handbook (#1) at $34.95, with 316 full color pages with hard covers.

Now, what makes that even more hard to swallow is that the black and white "illustrations" in the DE Codex range from new, competent and well executed, to what is obviously legacy art from apparently someone's high school doodles. Seriously, if you have the Codex, turn to page 24 (the one facing the rules for Combat Drugs); this may be the most poorly executed piece of ink ever vomited onto the the page of a book.

Edit: Oh, and just because it irritates me even more, let me point out that the Warmachine book is printed on larger pages then the Codex is: 8.5"x11"; 93.5" square versus 715/16"x 10 13/16"; 85.82" square.That is, each and every page of the Warmachine book is just under 10% larger then the pages in the Codex. In addition, of course, to being in full color. And not having illustrations drawn by prison inmates.

Wouldn't it be quicker to list the things that don't annoy us?

Buzzsaw covered most of what I think already, so I'll just add to that:

1) Their seeming ignorance that there are actually problems with their rules (and I've got it on first hand basis that the dev team are actually quite perplexed by some of the problems we find).

2) Their inability to admit that they are part of the miniature gaming industry and their dogged and utterly brain-dead devotion to the nonsense idea that they are the miniature gaming industry and thus do not have to associate with all the hanger's on (ie. don't go to any trade shows).

3) The fact that sub-companies within GW (Black Library & Forge World) actually seem to understand their place in the table-top world and actually do all the things GW proper fails at day in and day out (what I like to call a case of the left hand not knowing that the right hand even exists).

4) Insane slow release schedules and the vagueness of the whole 'wave release' system.

5) Their totally unnecessary, draconian and, I have to say it, batsh!t insane levels of secrecy. Jesus Christ people - advertise. Yes, print and television media is expensive, but they don't even use their own magazine and website effectively. They act like children in this regard.

6) Prices, in general. Plus their CEO's statement that they can charge whatever they want for plastics now.

1. Failure to proof read their rules, despite a budget of over £100 million.
2. Codexes are too slow to be updated.
3. Power imbalances between factions, resulting partly from 2.
4. Too many SM releases, too few Xeno.
5. Too much Grimdarkness™.
6. Ever reducing support and consideration of veteran players.
7. Bullying small companies and fan sites.
8. Lack of innovation – a lost opportunity for such a large company.

I kinda find it annoying that when I go into the shop I get a great big "HI THERE WHAT CAN I GET YOU???"

Seez I just wanna walk in,not have the whole shop stop at look at me.

Also the double-ended sword of new codexs,when one you don't care about comes out,ITS EVERYWHERE,(Skaven).
But when one you like comes,it has no models and everyone starts collecting them too.

And they never have the model you want,I asked for the plastic Daemon Prince once,Guy opens storage locker,FOUR PILES OF GREATER DAEMONS,but not a single Daemon Prince.

Buying a rulebook that has a laminated errata sheet, on the release day of said rulebook