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 Pacific wrote:

 FarseerAndyMan wrote:
Fellas, ive said it before...
The only reason to publish a magazine in todays age is ADVERTISING.
Thats it.

I'm sorry, but I couldn't disagree with you more. Of course, the days of the magazine as our only source of information is long gone, but one edge they can (potentially) hold over the internet is the quality of their journalism and content. There is something to be said for someone who writes well and is paid for doing so.

Anyone who has read copy of Rolling Stone or Mojo, Total Film/Empire, New Scientist, Edge to name but a few- not sure if all of those are sold in the US, but I'm sure there are equivalents.
Sadly my two favourites have now passed (Hotdog movie magazine and The Word) but there is still lots of incredibly good stuff out there.

In the gaming world stuff like Wargames Illustrated (or even Ravage) have a lot of worthwhile content - believe it or not WD did at one point too, but you have to back to around issue 300 or so (before the fabled 'Giant Issue') or whatever number that was to find it.

Exactly. The reason I buy magazines (WI, WS&S, even Top Gear) is that it provides a coherent, edited source of articles along a particular theme which provided generally better and more interesting information than from the internet. Whilst the internet is good for news, it's generally pretty poor for decent quality reading. Of course, it was also the reason I bought WD religiously with my pocket money 15 years ago.

 BrookM wrote:
He's now known as Paulus Maximus and is quite happy working at Warlord Games with a few other ex-GW.

But yeah, I fondly remember their original take on a Tale of Four Gamers, complete with monthly expenses and other off-topic ramblings.

Those tale of four gamer articles were absolutely fantastic, I remember Paul Sawyer leaving a portion of his monthly budget out to buy bacon rolls with.

Every time they've tried to revive it, it's not been the same for me.

Paul Sawyer was over-rated. Robin Dews era is where it's at...

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I miss Fat Bloke..............not that (most) 40K gamers nowadays know who that is. But those were the days that White Dwarf shone.

+1 to this - WD was awesome back then.

I saw Paul Sawyer at the Warlord booth at Salute this year. He was eating a huge sandwich at the time, true story.

 His Master's Voice wrote:
Didn't the problem with WD start when they stopped taking in content from "third party" contributors not working for GW? I don't mean random pictures, I mean the real stuff. Tactica articles. Full army showcases. Tales of X gamers. Stuff like that.

I might be imagining things, but wasn't this the result of a change in regulations that legally prevented GW from paying out with merchandise? Like, they had to either get it for free or pay real money, and there weren't willing to pay so they just cut it down? Or did I just made that up?

WD stopped including outside materials when GW ceased to be a distributor of games and focus on their own games primarily in the burgeoning form of WHFB 3rd Ed and WH40K:RT.

At that point they did not have the need to capacity to carry on as a distributor. Of course this also means that WD was always a sales mag in a way but the articles were great and more often or not written by gamers.

Once WD when over to GW games only (circa WD #100) there were extensive articles on new units and the rules for them plus terrain and modelling. There was definitely more content than but to be fair GW have expanded their range of product to the point where they obviously feel these are not needed or in the case of the rule less chaotic to have it primarily in Armybook/Codex form.

Its a shame, there are certainly things we all think they could do to improve it but they have sort of painted themselves in a corner a bit.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I miss Fat Bloke..............not that (most) 40K gamers nowadays know who that is. But those were the days that White Dwarf shone.

Quoted for thruth.

I still read those bad boys from time to time.

 BrookM wrote:
He's now known as Paulus Maximus and is quite happy working at Warlord Games with a few other ex-GW.

But yeah, I fondly remember their original take on a Tale of Four Gamers, complete with monthly expenses and other off-topic ramblings.

Hehe. Good punny name there if I'm not mistaken. That or he's got a sex-change...

Fat Bloke was great and made WD worth reading. The battles between him and Adrian Wood were epic. The Zulu batrep is still one of the best ones ever. However, I miss the Citadel Journal more than anything else. Now that had some meaty content for all things GW.

NoggintheNog wrote:

garrapignado wrote:
I hope that means no more green-yellow nids every month.

I think it wasn't necessary to hire a new editor just to give WD some esthetic changes. No content change, no editor. Let's try another one.

I need (and I'm sure I'm not alone) tactical articles. I don't mind how Jervis plans a new rule, I need different ways to use it. And I don't need Jervis telling me the same month after month with slightly different words. We have tons of pictures on the internet, so we need useful text (notice the "useful" word).

I will still buy the WD (IMO it's not 100% crap after all) as I've been doing, but I want more real content.

The problem is, all those things you want, they have discovered they can sell on itunes for £2-99 an article. They will never go back to being free in the WD.

If white dwarf was actully free I'm sure no one here would be complaining about it's quality. The problem is we ARE paying for white dwarf, and we don't realy get much in the way of content to show for it.

Sorry not trying to pick on you for your word choice. Just highlighting the biggest problem with the whole white dwarf/ITunes content issue. It's like GW has forgotten people actually have to pay their hard earned money for that damn book. It feels like GW truely thinks putting stuff in WD is actually giving it away for free, when that couldn't be father from the truth.