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ShumaGorath wrote:I can never read reddits format. It's meandering and difficult to follow.

I find it's easier to read once the post has been up for a few hours, the good stuff tends to rise towards the top. What I find hard to read is checking it, and then going back to see if anything new is up.

spireland wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:I can never read reddits format. It's meandering and difficult to follow.

I find it's easier to read once the post has been up for a few hours, the good stuff tends to rise towards the top. What I find hard to read is checking it, and then going back to see if anything new is up.

You can also click on someone's name and follow their newest posts, then click the 'context' link to see what they're responding to.


I hope he hasn't finished responding...

Why is it so hard to believe that NLC would have that much influence over GW?

I mean, yeah, when Fellowship was released, Privateer Press was in its infancy, so it's not like there was much in the way of competition for GW when NLC decided that they wanted a tabletop miniatures game as part of their merchandising.

But now, GW has made a huge capital investment in LotR production and Privateer Press and other up-and-coming game/mini companies are putting pressure on GW. Consequently, it's all the more important for them to keep the LotR license. And since it's not like it's GW's 'verse, it doesn't really matter to NLC who makes the game, as long as it makes them money and keeps to NLC's standards. NLC has the leverage in this relationship now. And if they were pissed about GW leaking pics in the past (particularly of things that weren't originally in the books, but are in the movies), then you can bet they'd require GW to tighten up for release of the Hobbit movies (particularly considering the movies will include things like driving Sauron from Mirkwood). Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if it was GW who offered to tighten promotion down on all of their lines as a show of trust to NLC. Or maybe this is a punitive action on the part of NLC because of what happened before.

Regardless, GW is making a bunch of money thanks to NLC licensing the LotR/Hobbit property to them, and they obviously want to keep making that money. It shouldn't be surprising that they'd be willing to make procedural changes for all of their business based on a relationship like this.

And as far as comparing GW to Microsoft, I think that's pretty ridiculous. You're talking orders of magnitude difference in the scales of the companies. Expecting GW to run anything like Microsoft is pretty naive.

Remember that this is a non-necessary inelastic commodity. There is no earthly reason that you need to buy more Bloodthirsters. But they're cool, and you want more, right?
The cost of entry is part of the panache of the whole thing.
I understand your point, but I also understand the company's point: they don't want everyone to be playing.
They want it to be a prestige game. And, quite frankly, take a look at the new plastics. It IS a prestige game.
I am not shilling for their business model (I got out a long time ago), but I do think it's the right thing to do for their profit margin, which lets them pay the best artists around. I dig that.

Someone's been drinking the kool-aid!

revarien 2 points 1 hour ago

For the love of all that is holy in gaming: Why oh why did they WD update Sisters of Battle like they did, and not give us SoB players a proper release?! I really must know! Thank you!

VladTheEmailer 1 point 12 minutes ago

For the lulz?

No, I honestly don't know the why behind that one. Sorry!

:(

Kanluwen wrote:I think he's referring to when they released the updated Griff Oberwald, Zug, and the two "new" Human and Elf teams.

To no fanfare and no promotion.

Hmm... I wonder what was to blame... must be the players who owned teams already. Yeah. Only logical explanation.

Well I have always thought about that is the reason why they made models so expensive it was because how much we value them.

I think I Have never heard something so bleh in my life.

But it is good to see people answering our questions.

Though one I think should be raised who makes the decision to raise prices on plastic as well.

Death By Monkeys wrote:Why is it so hard to believe that NLC would have that much influence over GW?

I mean, yeah, when Fellowship was released, Privateer Press was in its infancy, so it's not like there was much in the way of competition for GW when NLC decided that they wanted a tabletop miniatures game as part of their merchandising.

But now, GW has made a huge capital investment in LotR production and Privateer Press and other up-and-coming game/mini companies are putting pressure on GW. Consequently, it's all the more important for them to keep the LotR license. And since it's not like it's GW's 'verse, it doesn't really matter to NLC who makes the game, as long as it makes them money and keeps to NLC's standards. NLC has the leverage in this relationship now. And if they were pissed about GW leaking pics in the past (particularly of things that weren't originally in the books, but are in the movies), then you can bet they'd require GW to tighten up for release of the Hobbit movies (particularly considering the movies will include things like driving Sauron from Mirkwood). Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if it was GW who offered to tighten promotion down on all of their lines as a show of trust to NLC. Or maybe this is a punitive action on the part of NLC because of what happened before.

Regardless, GW is making a bunch of money thanks to NLC licensing the LotR/Hobbit property to them, and they obviously want to keep making that money. It shouldn't be surprising that they'd be willing to make procedural changes for all of their business based on a relationship like this.

And as far as comparing GW to Microsoft, I think that's pretty ridiculous. You're talking orders of magnitude difference in the scales of the companies. Expecting GW to run anything like Microsoft is pretty naive.

Two reasons:

LOTR is still a very small part of the portfolio, small investment or not. It would be insane to let such a small part of your business dictate what you do in unrelated brands.

There is no indication of this, apart from someone in a GW shop (who, by all standards doesn't necessarily have this knowledge). If there was some drastic 180 in communication strategy when they re-launched LOTR? Sure. But there wasn't, this is how GW does business, it's how they've done business for a long time and and this claim just doesn't seem co-herent with how GW act as a whole.

The company LOVES and listens to the online community

Stopped reading right there.

Stoffer wrote:LOTR is still a very small part of the portfolio, small investment or not. It would be insane to let such a small part of your business dictate what you do in unrelated brands.

Can you say definitively that it is a small part of their portfolio? Looking through their financial statements, I don't see any breakdown by game line. It's obviously a large enough portion of their portfolio that they're willing to make it one of their core games. I've heard fairly contradictory anecdotal evidence of LOTR's popularity, so I'm not so willing to believe that it is such a small part of their portfolio. I mean, how does it compare to Black Library or what were the Specialist games?

Stoffer wrote:There is no indication of this, apart from someone in a GW shop (who, by all standards doesn't necessarily have this knowledge). If there was some drastic 180 in communication strategy when they re-launched LOTR? Sure. But there wasn't, this is how GW does business, it's how they've done business for a long time and and this claim just doesn't seem co-herent with how GW act as a whole.

Actually, the rumors of the clamp-down on promotion being linked to NLC extend back quite a ways before this. As far as the timing goes, we don't really have a good look into the production timeline inside GW, so it may not have made sense. I'm not sure I understand what you're saying in the last part of that - there was a pretty drastic change in GW's communication strategy - remember not too long ago when GW said, "Yeah, we're not going to provide information on stuff until it's released."? Yeah, that's new. It's not how they've always done business. What's consistent is GW being inconsistent about how they do business. What's consistent is GW not really listening to their consumer base.

Interesting read, but some of the views are probably out of date given both employee's have not been with the company for almost half a decade. Agree that some of it comes off as having drunk the Kool-Aid, but still some interesting points. Surprised with the failure of Blood Bowl and why they gambled with a totally new game like Dreadfleet instead of re-releasing one of the previous games.

As for NLC dictating information releases, I can see them forcing it on all their lines. Ultra paranoia that someone leaks a new plastic dragon for Fantasy and turns out to be Smaug. And Smaug is suppose to the big "wow" factor for the Hobbit movies. Was a very interesting interview with Del Toro last year in the New Yorker. While he was working on the Hobbit, he wanted to make Smaug a very non-traditional dragon. The studio heads hated it and was one of the bigger points of friction between him and the studio. I suspect Smaug now is going to be very vanilla in his design. Wonderfully animated, but still nothing that makes you rethink what a dragon should look like.

For those interested in the Del Toro article, it is here:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/07/110207fa_fact_zalewski?currentPage=1

Death By Monkeys wrote:

Stoffer wrote:LOTR is still a very small part of the portfolio, small investment or not. It would be insane to let such a small part of your business dictate what you do in unrelated brands.

Can you say definitively that it is a small part of their portfolio? Looking through their financial statements, I don't see any breakdown by game line. It's obviously a large enough portion of their portfolio that they're willing to make it one of their core games. I've heard fairly contradictory anecdotal evidence of LOTR's popularity, so I'm not so willing to believe that it is such a small part of their portfolio. I mean, how does it compare to Black Library or what were the Specialist games?

Stoffer wrote:There is no indication of this, apart from someone in a GW shop (who, by all standards doesn't necessarily have this knowledge). If there was some drastic 180 in communication strategy when they re-launched LOTR? Sure. But there wasn't, this is how GW does business, it's how they've done business for a long time and and this claim just doesn't seem co-herent with how GW act as a whole.

Actually, the rumors of the clamp-down on promotion being linked to NLC extend back quite a ways before this. As far as the timing goes, we don't really have a good look into the production timeline inside GW, so it may not have made sense. I'm not sure I understand what you're saying in the last part of that - there was a pretty drastic change in GW's communication strategy - remember not too long ago when GW said, "Yeah, we're not going to provide information on stuff until it's released."? Yeah, that's new. It's not how they've always done business. What's consistent is GW being inconsistent about how they do business. What's consistent is GW not really listening to their consumer base.

The simple way of telling how important a product is can be done by looking at how large a part of their business is dedicated to the product. I've yet to see a store where LOTR take up even a third or 40k or Warhammer. If this is really one of their biggest products, why don't they treat it that way then?

Is it a product that's getting a lot of hype and community backing? Probably not. It's more likely a product that they're hoping to leverage because of the Hobbit coming out, but not something they'll put as much attention into as 40k or Fantasy.

I guess I've missed the open development GW you talk about, do you have any developer blogs etc you could link me to?

Fafnir wrote:

The company LOVES and listens to the online community

Stopped reading right there.

Ditto.

I'm guessing this guy is a "former" employee due to his inability to grasp reality...

He actually said that he is a former employee.

So is Dirty Steve.

If you feel the need to comment on another poster, you might be better-served to hit the yellow triangle. -Mannahnin

Stoffer wrote:The simple way of telling how important a product is can be done by looking at how large a part of their business is dedicated to the product. I've yet to see a store where LOTR take up even a third or 40k or Warhammer. If this is really one of their biggest products, why don't they treat it that way then?

Is it a product that's getting a lot of hype and community backing? Probably not. It's more likely a product that they're hoping to leverage because of the Hobbit coming out, but not something they'll put as much attention into as 40k or Fantasy.

I can certainly agree that that's the way it is in most non-GW stores, but all the GW retail stores I've been to have solid parts of their shelf space devoted to LotR. And just look at how much space they're willing to devote to White Dwarf for LotR. Again, I haven't seen any numbers on this, so I don't know how big or small it is, but if it's big enough for them to pimp all the time in WD, then it's big enough for them to change other things in the company for it. GW is certainly hyping it. As far as community backing goes, well, all I see of that is anecdotal evidence again.

Stoffer wrote:I guess I've missed the open development GW you talk about, do you have any developer blogs etc you could link me to?

I never said anything about open development at GW. I said that they've pretty much always ignored input from the community. What is new is the way they've clamped down on promoting products before the release date. Prior to this fall, at least we got a 6-month preview window. Now that is gone. That's all I was saying.

This idea that the game is supposed to be exclusive is pretty silly. How are you supposed to turn a profit if you exclude a bunch of potential customers?

Oh right, by charging obscene prices for so so products.

If I wanted to talk to a former Redshirt, I would talk to Rimmy.

Fafnir wrote:

The company LOVES and listens to the online community

Stopped reading right there.

And so you missed a lot of pretty interesting perspective because you didn't hear what you wanted to hear. Granted, this fellow has not worked for GW the past few years, which he was open about and was quite obvious from what he admitted to knowing and not knowing.

The fact is, you didn't get the answer you wanted, so you stopped listening to an employee who has genuine insight into how the company operates. GW is pretty tight-lipped, and I personally find info like this pretty interesting. I don't expect all my questions to be answered as I expect they will, or hold to pre-conceived notion of how it operates its business. I think there are a lot of people like you who think they know GW pretty well, and are probably pretty far off the mark. When they hear something that doesn't fit that pre-conceived notion, they stop listening.

I think this ties into the fact that people want GW to be something it is not. Whether that be a company that runs a games with a really tight ruleset for competitive play, or a company that is active in communicating with it's fanbase, Like it or not, that's not how GW is, and expecting them to change to fit your view, or my view, of what I want them to be isn't going to happen. I just find it ironic that you won't even read the entire thread of a GW employee explaining some aspects of the company, but you apparently expect GW to sift through all the online forums and listen to every opinion that is given on their business and how they operate it.

H.B.M.C. wrote:It’s ok Kan. You can stand down. Your defence contract doesn’t require you to protect former employees.

Well it did state in that he was a former employee in the title of this thread, and in the title of the Reddit thread. It's not exactly white-knighting to point out something so obvious that someone clearly missed.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:I think he's referring to when they released the updated Griff Oberwald, Zug, and the two "new" Human and Elf teams.

To no fanfare and no promotion.

Hmm... I wonder what was to blame... must be the players who owned teams already. Yeah. Only logical explanation.

If it sold well enough to run as a main game they wouldn't of dropped it in the first place. A full rerelease likely wouldn't see more than a momentary upsurge of sales and that's only in the event that they resculpted everything. It's not a hot commodity and they probably mistook a diehard vocal internet minority for a more sizeable and useful playerbase.

If they supported blood bowl through forge world in the exact same fashion that forgeworld pushed things like Aeronautica Imperialis then it could serve as a small buffer to their bottom line. Hell, they could of released a small boxed version of it with four teams instead of Dreadfleet and it probably would of sold like hotcakes. It'll never be the game that it's old stalwarts want it to be though. Those days are gone.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

CT GAMER wrote:

Fafnir wrote:

The company LOVES and listens to the online community

Stopped reading right there.

Ditto.

I'm guessing this guy is a "former" employee due to his inability to grasp reality...

People on this forum are pretty hardcore about their GW hating. No modern company is oblivious to the opinions of it's customer base. Not even GW. If it was it wouldn't be in business still.

Remember that this is a non-necessary inelastic commodity. There is no earthly reason that you need to buy more Bloodthirsters. But they're cool, and you want more, right?
The cost of entry is part of the panache of the whole thing.
I understand your point, but I also understand the company's point: they don't want everyone to be playing.
They want it to be a prestige game. And, quite frankly, take a look at the new plastics. It IS a prestige game.
I am not shilling for their business model (I got out a long time ago), but I do think it's the right thing to do for their profit margin, which lets them pay the best artists around. I dig that.

Around the world, thousands of economists committed suicide. I'm only here because my window wouldn't open...

I just find it sad that British Economics/Business policies are a huge joke in my Economy classes. This like this don't help change my mind. So the plan is to make it a prestige game so they can justify raised prices. Instead of expanding, advertising and actively trying to bring in new players in which would provide more competition against competing war games like WarMachines. And people wonder why I don't collect another army besides Tau, because I'm not buying into this crap. Spending anymore money than is necessary allows GW to make these policies and ideas to work.

Ahtman wrote:

Obsidian Raven wrote:

infinite_array wrote:

VladtheEmailer wrote:The cost of entry is part of the panache of the whole thing.

I understand your point, but I also understand the company's point: they don't want everyone to be playing.

They want it to be a prestige game. And, quite frankly, take a look at the new plastics. It IS a prestige game.

Ugh. Really? Who the hell are they trying to keep out? It's not as if wargaming only attracts the model citizens. See the 'GW horror stories' thread for proof. What a load of gak.

The whole "prestige game" angle really makes no sense to me.

Someone help me out, whats the line of thinking here?

How can a rather niche game be a prestige game? (its very niche in my country, at least)

It isn't in reality a prestige game, they just want it to feel like it is by making it more and more expensive. If they make the hurdle to play the game money they feel it will make the game seem more exotic and hard to obtain, giving the consumer a sense of exclusivity. I suppose it is the opposite of the idea that people don't appreciate something that is free, therefore the opposite must be true. If a thing is to expensive you'll feel a sense of accomplishment just in obtaining it, as well as feel those around you are just as accomplished. It doesn't make sense unless you really want it to, and it made a bit more sense when there wasn't as much competition I suppose. I always thought that Warmachine and Flames of War would have made companies more competitively priced but it seems like they are just going up in price to match GW, so I guess there must be something to it.

In marketing their is this wired thing that can happen. You don't want you product to be too cheap! If it is, people will think it's of inferior quailtiy to other products. You see this in the electronics industry with computer accessories and cables. It's how Monster Cables exist as a company. Because their cables are exactly like everyone else sept twice the price.

I think because the guy was employed by GW some time ago there has been some confusion. I am pretty sure the blood bowl relaunch he is referring to happened ~2002 and had some decent WD coverage, think it even had an AAR in one issue.


Good read btw, thanks for the share.

LotR did make GW a ton of money the first time around, even of most of us hardcore WHFB & 40k players weren't that into it.

It is absolutely accurate that New Line was extremely angry due to a leak from GW of a surprise image from The Two Towers, and IMO it is absolutely plausible that their current tightness on rumors is related to a desire or requirement to placate and/or demonstrate tighter security to New Line so they don't risk the rights to The Hobbit.

What Two Towers image leaked?

The berserker/bomb carrier, to my recollection.

Really? That's it? Not something like Gollum?

Gollum was in FotR and wasn't a surprise/secret. The bit with (what was possibly a) bomb was purely "off-camera" in the books and the whole sequence was new for the film.

Gollum was not seen in FotR (only glimpsed), and was not part of the FotR game. I remember the first GW Gollum mini. It was a Two Towers release. The picture was Sam, Frodo and a big black 'censored' over the Gollum model, because it was a secret (at the time).

Hmm. Maybe so. The bit I remember hearing about was an image of the berserker/bomb carrier (and/or a mini for him) leaking.