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Alot of.crap about what category people fit in going on here, I play the game for the fluff, it's all that's kept me in it, I love modeling and painting (as anyone who has seen my blog on here can attest) I also enjoy playing competitive and friendly/fluff games, what category does that fit into?


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As to what has helped this game go down hill?
It hasn't, it's still the same bag of cats that it has always been and I love it, something that does irk me though sadly is the players, we as a group are a fractured lot, not a true community like those who play in basements and the like, we also seem to refuse to take any blame for wrecking the game ourselves, I have seen people bitch about little Timmy... What about when you were little Timmy? I've seen people complain about the rules, what about these people who intentionally abuse the rules and those rules abuses filter down into standard play?
Do any of us try to get together and fix these apparent issues that we also helped become mainstream, no, all we do is whine and complain.

Untill recently that is, I watched something happen at throne of skulls that gave me hope that we as a community might actually one day have the clout to make gw listen, and listen at throne of skulls they have.
A person turned up with a titan, he plopped it down and his first opponent refused to play him, ok that's odd, then his next opponent refused, and the next, out of his 5 games he played 1, I was talking to an unnamed manager at the time and he also noticed these events, he has passed this on and apparently gw is taking notice that at there biggest in house tourny, escalation has been said no to by the British community, what if anything will come of this I don't know, but it's a good precedent

I restarted playing 40K in the autumn of 2004, when 4th edition was published. I joined DakkaDakka early in 2005. I was also a member of the GW official forums, which they closed down a few years later.

Other things that GW supported in 2004-5 which they have closed down since, are:

The Bitz service.
Chapter Approved.
Photocopy reprints from OOP White Dwarf articles.
Regional tournaments.
The national Grand Tournament.
Support for independent tournaments.
Worldwide campaigns.
Support for independent and school clubs.
Specialist games.
Veteran’s nights in shops.
Games Day (not closed yet, but clearly a shadow of its former self.)

All that is stuff you used to get from GW and you can’t get any more.

In addition to those moves, GW have made a number of actions that are hostile to fans’ interests, including:

C&Ds against fan websites and forums.
Distribution campaign to stop cheap sellers, especially targetting the USA and Australia.
Law suit against Chapter House.
Attempted closedown of “Spots The Space Marine” book.

To summarise, although I can’t say that 2004-5 was the start of the decline, it certainly has gone a long way downhill in the nine years since then.

The game itself hasn't changed nearly as much as you might think. The core mechanics in 6th edition are nearly all the same as 3rd edition. GW have tinkered with various details, largely with the object of selling larger armies.

 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.

I agree with this. I want more pocket money!
GW has really priced a lot of people out of the game and the hobby.
They really need to do something drastic with their prices in order to make the hobby more accessible again. Very few kids are willing to play a game you have to spend €1000 on in order to get a few decent armies. I mean; €35 for 10 little plastic figures? That is 3 months worth of pocket money! for 10 little figures!
Much better to get a new computer for that €1000.

The "golden age" of Warhammer is still in effect IMO. Games Workshop games are still the top dog in the miniatures world. Now new challenges have come out of the wood work in the last ten years Warmachine/Hordes and Malifaux being the top two I can think of. However Games Workshop still produces the best looking models, develops the more fun games, and has a great variety in it's models.

Lets look at what Warhammer/40K has inspired outside of the hobby. First of Warcraft was in fact suppose to be a WFB video game! Now Warcraft has become a household name thanks to it's MMO, but even still the idea a miniatures game can spark such a pop-culture event is mind boggling. A more recent example are the humans from Gears of War. The developer of the game has even admitted that Space Marines were one of the inspirations for the COG soldiers.

So I think were still in the "golden age." I will believe it's over when GW either stops making new well detailed stuff, or just gets lazy with the rules as opposed to trying new things.

I started playing back in early v3 late v2 (what 15 to 20 years ago ? I was a kid at the time).
Back then people were already saying that the game was going downhill, that the v3 was out of touch compared to the v2. And for every released I've lived almost every time people were saying that the new version was lackluster in comparaison to the previous one. So there have always been some kind of floating nostalgia in the W40k scenery.

On the other side, there is another matter and that's the fact that prices are going up, that GW doesn't make it easy for people to get into the game, that the game is not balanced at all and that GW seems to only care about selling figs since v5.

Well, if you are talking rules, we are n the golden age now.
if you re talking about prices and fluff, it was a while back before they started changing it every time they changed their underwear.
if you are talking about in terms of how fast releases were put out, we are in it now but if your talking about clerical errors in those releases, it was a while back.

The rules have been going downhill fast ever 6th ed hit. Now they are such a confusing, ill-balanced mess that its almost more frustrating than enjoyable to play.

As for prices, things have been going downhill fast for several years, but I'd say things have reached retardo levels over the past 3 years. 70$ Canadian for 10 DE witches lol.

There wasn't a single point, but ever since I started playing halfway through 5th I can't think of a time that the game has gotten better.

The prices don't help. The mess of expensive supplements like Escalation don't help. The day 1 FAQs and dataslates don't help.

Just not a fan of the direction.

 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 didn't say it was true. I said the first two groups believe it is true.

Kilkrazy wrote:I restarted playing 40K in the autumn of 2004, when 4th edition was published. I joined DakkaDakka early in 2005. I was also a member of the GW official forums, which they closed down a few years later.

Other things that GW supported in 2004-5 which they have closed down since, are:

The Bitz service.
Chapter Approved.
Photocopy reprints from OOP White Dwarf articles.
Regional tournaments.
The national Grand Tournament.
Support for independent tournaments.
Worldwide campaigns.
Support for independent and school clubs.
Specialist games.
Veteran’s nights in shops.
Games Day (not closed yet, but clearly a shadow of its former self.)

All that is stuff you used to get from GW and you can’t get any more.

In addition to those moves, GW have made a number of actions that are hostile to fans’ interests, including:

C&Ds against fan websites and forums.
Distribution campaign to stop cheap sellers, especially targetting the USA and Australia.
Law suit against Chapter House.
Attempted closedown of “Spots The Space Marine” book.

xttz wrote: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::


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.

Perhaps it wasn't a single, or multiple mistakes, but their change in how they approached the game. I picture a fun new guy wearing a GW pin, just chargin' $5 for all these cool things of his. Then slowly overtime, he becomes less fun, and more of a corporate drone, reciting policies and rules. Maybe their early success went to their head. They wanted to expand, and to expand they needed monies, and to get the monies, they need to charge/cut. Sounds like a cycle that'd eventually result in what we have today.

There never was a golden age and the internet placates those who want to whine their hearts out.

I started in the days of 2nd edition. For me things started going downhill when they started pushing sales versus the game. Things like the codex creep of 3rd edition, where almost literallye very new codex (barring some exceptions, Chaos springs to mind) came with a bunch of overpowered units to promote buying them, and when they had the Index Astartes articles that gave each SM Legion different rules, some outright broken (Iron Warriors) for seemingly no reason.

For the company as a whole it was when they started to become soulless and kill off anything that wasn't directly promoting sales. So you went from having terrain articles about how to make cool-looking terrain cheaply from household items to "Buy our overpriced plastic terrain", you went from having both 'Eavy Metal masterclass articles showing how to pro paint things and "Here's how I quickly painted an army" articles from staff members that talked to you like regular gamers to what's basically paint-by-numbers articles designed to sell their paint and brush ranges.

Just everything about the company has become soulless. Plastic board, plastic terrain, plastic figures. You can't go into a store anymore with let's say $15 and, while you can't buy a whole unit, pick up a blister pack or two for that unit and have a starting point for it later, and make a note to pick up the rest the following week. Games in general have degenerated to using the latest net lists, and punishing people who pick a unit or theme to an army because they think it's cool as fun erodes when you always lose.

 Guardsmen Bob wrote:

 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.

Its like any art form, the second you seek the money first then the art declines. Its why movies like the Robocop remake are going fail, its soulless cash grabbing.

It was 4th edition that did it for a lot of people, there was a mass exodus and that's when GW started cutting everything and attacking its own customers. They've only gotten more desperate over the years, like cutting indys from selling online then blaming them for low sales.

 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.

Lets face it, GW is a British company, and if there's one thing we like better than our hobbies, it's complaining.

obithius wrote:
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.

Funny. My army has only doubled in price since 1998. I have a picture to prove it.



I think you had more pocket money as a child than you remember.

Jimsolo wrote: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.

Aye. 40k isn't like aviation. I mean, the Eurofighter was a cute idea, but it's no Spitfire or Mosquito... (in case it's not clear, I'm being facetious)

Blackhair Duckshape wrote:Roughly 6-8 months after the person you ask started playing.

Sounds about right.

Yeah that's when the newbies discover the Internet forums and blogs.

I would say, since I played since 1990, I miss the citadel journals that contained special army lists and special rules to add to games back in the 90's, that went away.... I miss that letters from fans were stopped being put in WD in the late 90's early 2000's, and now no physical white dwarf starting 2014! I miss that GW took down it's dedicated blog on it's own website in the 90's early 2000's, these moves are kinda insultive to gamers that the very company they supported stopped listening to them... Those were foreshadows to greater changes to come...

Another thing many gamers will say is they liked the X (put number here) edition rules/codex over the current rules/codex.... And I agree there were better rules in older books....

I used to be able to bring serious conversions (other game system minis, toys converted, etc...) to GW to play, but now they will actually ask you not to use them if they see them....

GW stores have become more & more salesy since 2007ish IMHO, maybe sooner for others....

I can see how some say the "fun" as taken from the hobby, but do not go into this hobby with an illusions... Like the corporate world, you are expendable & easily replaced in their (new) corporate eyes....




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Oh, and also (side note here) I was in the military (and got into 40k like many others in the military), and after the military I worked for them (as a civy) by producing the bases one and only official guide books (we did it nationally, 300+ books). I had hundreds of businesses that advertised in each of these, and GW was no exception (in the early 2000's). They showed support to the military, but in 2006 they pulled all ads! They decided "word of mouth" was better & no ads were needed anymore. Hm, besides insultive to the military, and the fact McDonald's has never slackened from their advertsising for example, I found this a bad move in many ways, and in poor taste.... IMHO

I find it impossible to set a firm date, but in my opinion is that after 2000 things started to go wrong faster.

The price raises, degredation of the DIY aspect of the hobby and dumbing down of white dwarf had always been a slow creep, I'd noticed them all even as I got into the hobby in the early 90's. However, in the early '00's, it seemed to accelerate.

Price raises became larger and more frequent, DIY articles began to be less and less prevalent in WD as GW scenery kits became the order of the day. The hope that plastic kits would make the hobby more affordable evaporated as plastic kits skyrocketed to heights at-or-more expensive than the metal kits they replaced.

It's also, that GW seemed to try to find lots of little ways to squeeze money out of it's players. New Codicies arrived that completely invalidated entire armies. Game boxes after 3rd edition don't actually give you any kind of useable, pointed, army lists. The removal of allies rules (rectified recently to be fair) and attempting to more fully segregate certain armies. Things that just made you think, these guys don't want to throw me any bones, they just want to squeeze me for whatever they can.

I think early 2000s, not with a single event, but multiple events that show they don't want to be engaged with their communities.

- Removal of GW forums
- Reduction in Games Day
- Suppression of online retailers
- Continued and frequent price increases
- Reduction in tournament support
- Making the game worse, not better
- Invalidating armies
- Pushing new large models via OP rules
- Vaselating on how GW stores will be run
- Direct only models
- Ignoring all forms of social media, suppressing where they can

When I started 40K in 1998, there were no options for the most part other than 40K. Other companies have now successfully entered the market, which means a decrease in service/value is not going to be tolerated like it was originally. WHFB shows that in the drop off it has seen with it's most recent edition.

 Guardsmen Bob wrote:

 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.

It may be, but if that is the case, this began long, long before you started playing, so it would seem weird to you to "go back" to this (mostly nebulous, partially fictional) era.

Speaking for myself, I actually stopped giving a feth about the rules of the game somewhere around 1995 or 1996, and only bought books for art and fluff. The rules of the game have always been a bit naff, but the fluff and story have generally been pretty good.

It started whenever the culture of complacency and general apathy towards their own customers set in at corporate. Also when they started chasing the fever dream that is Lord of the Rings.

I think it is absolutely a matter of perspective.

I was into GW at the very start with the first RPGs, etc. I remember times pre 40K, etc.

Some would vehemently argue that GW went to pot then, when they dropped reprinting imported RPGs (Stormbringer, etc) and started uniquely making their own products.

Others would point to when Ansell sold out to the company accountants and they dropped GW's own RPGs, board games, etc, etc and moved into uniquely making Citadel products.

At that point I dropped out because I worked for them and I saw changes which made the company seem plain cruel, terrible employment practices and treatment of staff. It went from a pretty family oriented company where staff were encouraged to cultivate customer relationships and the management acted as benevolent types into a hard-driving sell or be fired firm with secret shoppers, etc.

I did not get back for years and years but I could see another point to feel it went wrong, when they shut Black Industries straight after releasing Dark Heresy. Luckily FF picked up the brand and pushed it on but at the time it looked like a terrible blow, not to mention a stupid decision. A game which sold out its whole run in days and was going great guns got canned, along with the wonderful WFRP second edition.

I think it depends on what you like and value.

From my personal perspective current GW is a much nicer place than it was in 1992. Shops are much friendlier, the range is far, far better. I now have a good job and the ready cash to build armies I couldn't back when I was 18, etc. The current models are (mostly) excellent. I think they may have peaked with the Dark Eldar in pure quality of sculpts, a lot of the most recent stuff is more cartoonish and has much sharper and inorganic edges like the most recent chaos warrior models for WFB.

I'm happier now than I have ever been with them, but I absolutely respect anyone's right to be annoyed. They have certainly made a series of what I think are foolish decisions at best and I fear they are locked into a long term spiral of decline, with a shrinking customer base and permanent upward price moves that further shrink the fanbase. I am, however, hopeful that they can bring in a fresh approach and a fresh team. Also being British I'm proud of them as a big national success story.

Right, I'd agree that the game has sort of more or less trundled on the same for most of its history. It's always been about high-price, high-value durable good sales, and a complicated rules set that requires a certain amount of player agreement about how the game they're about to play should be played.

If I had to pick a golden age - and I would say it was more of a high point than something particularly special - I'd say it was early to mid 5th edition. Like 2008 to 2009. 5th ed changed the worst of 4th edition's rules, and orks and imperial guard got new codices (which are generally considered the most fun to play against), and space marines got their 5th ed codex, which I still think is the best codex GW has put out. This peak waned around 2010 once guard players figured out how to run leafblowers, and once the absolutely wretched BA and eventually GK codices came out. With a few good codices in a row, it felt like there was a brief period where people weren't quite so loudly screaming about cheese and spam.

I would agree that we're at one of the lower points in 40k at the moment, but that's because what's going on is the opposite of what happened during good times - they've released bad codices. They were doing all right, mostly, this time last year, with DA and CSM, which weren't great, but weren't bad either, but then they followed it up with tau, which was a complete disaster, which was then followed by eldar, which was only slightly better, and then they followed it up with escalation... 'nuff said.

This loss of quality in recent content didn't create problems, so much as exacerbated problems that 40k already had (especially after 6th ed slow-pitched a bunch of problems-to-be), like mismatched rules, and needing to spend more time talking with opponents before the game begins about just what you're doing, etc. Also, of course, their fluff has taken a disastrous nose-dive, once again starting with that BA codex and their necron fist-bumping, and then sliding to draigo, and then sliding to newcrons, and then stripping a lot of the fluff out of the CSM codex, etc.

The only way to correct this, really, is to just start doing things better. GW will have plenty of opportunities to do this. They seem to have done a fine job on the recent SM codex, and both orks and imperial guard are back on the docket for new codices. Not to say that they'll do a good job, but those are things that are relatively easy to not screw up.

In a way, GW is no different than any other content producer. SNL goes through periods of being better and worse depending on who they have as their writers, just like any other long-running television show.

I guess if I was forced to pin down something acyclical, I guess I'd have to say that the seeds were planted during that same time I said was a non-golden-age, of around 2009-2010, and for one reason - 'ard boyz. Yes, the tournament existed before 2009, but it wasn't as well publicized or attended for its first year or two. By 2010, 'ard boyz had replaced the relatively benign games days as "the meta", and things began to slide. You had a new group of players that were invited and then carefully fostered into believing that 40k was a strategy game where you pushed around grey pieces of plastic to show definitively who was smarter than who.

The process is starting to heal as 'ard boyz is now no longer, and its replacement tournaments are starting to get softer. Plus, 6th edition did a decent job of giving the middle finger to serious 40k players. I guess time will tell on that one.

To me, it was when the change from 2nd to 3rd happened. I still worked for GW then and the whole attitude seemed to shift (at least in my store). I still recall my boss telling me how the game was being streamlined for younger players and our new sales targets. For me at least, that's when my perception of GW started to shift and it has never fully recovered.

Personally, I don't mind the prices for models. It forces me to pace myself and prices many undesirables (kiddies) out of the game.

Codecies are another story. I should not be forced to pay $83 for a 100 page book.

Don't forget the GW lawsuits that cropped up everywhere starting en masse about 2008ish... sueing for use of "space marine" and other such nonsense.....

One of the big changes was 2nd edition to 3rd. While the game remained completely playable, there was a very obvious move made when units suddenly started going down in points cost- fast. It was an obvious grab for more money by making consumers buy many more models for the same standard gaming level.

Games remained at the arbitrary setting of (1500/2000pts), but suddenly Space Marines were half the points for an ever increasing cost in the real world. In 2nd edition a Space Marine squad of exactly the same composition as nowadays was 300pts, for just 10 men with bolters.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I restarted playing 40K in the autumn of 2004, when 4th edition was published. I joined DakkaDakka early in 2005. I was also a member of the GW official forums, which they closed down a few years later.

Other things that GW supported in 2004-5 which they have closed down since, are:

The Bitz service.
Chapter Approved.
Photocopy reprints from OOP White Dwarf articles.
Regional tournaments.
The national Grand Tournament.
Support for independent tournaments.
Worldwide campaigns.
Support for independent and school clubs.
Specialist games.
Veteran’s nights in shops.
Games Day (not closed yet, but clearly a shadow of its former self.)

All that is stuff you used to get from GW and you can’t get any more.

In addition to those moves, GW have made a number of actions that are hostile to fans’ interests, including:

C&Ds against fan websites and forums.
Distribution campaign to stop cheap sellers, especially targetting the USA and Australia.
Law suit against Chapter House.
Attempted closedown of “Spots The Space Marine” book.

To summarise, although I can’t say that 2004-5 was the start of the decline, it certainly has gone a long way downhill in the nine years since then.

The game itself hasn't changed nearly as much as you might think. The core mechanics in 6th edition are nearly all the same as 3rd edition. GW have tinkered with various details, largely with the object of selling larger armies.

I'm glad that KilKrazy made this post as it has saved me typing out basically the same identical thing! I think in terms of the game then as long as you have a decent opponent the game is fun no matter what Edition you play and I do think that the models are pretty damn good even if by personal economic situation means I can't buy as many as I would like (or any most of the time unfortunately).

I think that what KilKrazy has outlined above pretty much sums up what Games Workshop has done, or stopped doing as the case may be, that has diminished the company and by extension the game in so far as those corporate decisions closed down various avenues that could be explored as part of a wider hobby.

For instance, I really, really like reading up on the 40K background and playing Space Hulk, Necromunda, GorkaMorka, Inquisitor and Battle Fleet Gothic meant I had book after book to read along side the opportunity to make pretty cool models that just don't work in regular games of 40K which naturally meant I was often ordering up random bits from across the whole range of Citadel models. Then they made Specialist Games and then they stopped supporting it as well as cancelling the bits service which in turn gave rise to companies which Games Workshop has sued with fairly dismal results all round.

With no more world wide campaigns (with their associated background books) it has narrowed the 40K hobby to just the core game. I think that helps to explain why they've made lots of changes to the core game and brought out so many new kits at a very fast pace and yet, because they only have the one game, some players still have to wait years at a time for an update! They've had to cater for all those hobbyists that enjoyed the peripheral 40K games within the core game but the core game is too generic to truly cater to those people and the result is that a lot of people feel that the game just isn't as good anymore.

You can count me as another Kilkrazy echo. I have been with 40K through every bit of that list, all the way back to 1995.

My personal biggest annoyance is the lack of DIY stuff in the books. The books are more theatrical and that's cool, but I really like busting out the old 3rd edition rulebook or space marine codex and reading through all the: "this is how you build your own scenery" and "this is how you paint your guys" sections.

I feel like the shift from that DIY mindset is slowly poisoning the waters. That could be why there is a mindset of some gamers that its not a hobby its a super competitive game.

 Guardsmen Bob wrote:
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?

Don't buy into the hype - the game is still loads of fun and great. It can seem otherwise when you are assailed with negativity on forums sometimes.

Enjoy the game for what it is. Never before have we seen as much 40k (and 30k for cryin out loud) material produced. Are there problems? Sure. But a lot of people are looking through rose-tinted glasses when they tell you how great things USED to be. (Though I agree wholeheartedly that White Dwarf was incredible around the Eye of Terror Campaign period!).

People want to see WD produce DIY articles and such - but to be honest there are SO many blogs and forums with ideas on what to do with this kind of thing... just look around. We are able to share ideas more than EVER before. There are Podcasts (self plug), blogs, forums, Facebook groups....

Learning to paint is easier than ever.

We have game stores you can play in, that typically support multiple tables. When I was younger there was ONE store and it had ONE table in the back with an incredibly lack of terrain. It was primarily used by Role Players.

The models are better than ever (and true.. more expensive). Forge World has become more "mainstream" than it was even 4 years ago, and they have ramped up model production to incredible levels. Black Library is releasing QUALITY books which are written by decent authors....

Honestly there is so much good going on... for me it still outweighs the bad. I know people will disagree with this opinion. *shrug* I have enjoyed 6th edition more than any other version of the game so far and I am playing regularly with a large group of people. Surround yourself with people who's interests are similar and you will see how much you can enjoy this hobby.