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GW wrote:Of course, we know that all customers have choices - no one does business in a vacuum.

If this doesn´t hint to GW being aware of the market despite what Kirby has said in some pseudo PR statement then I don´t know what does. Maybe now that age old "weapon" of the anti-GW crew can be put to rest, since it was missing a blade and the handle had corroded in half ages ago.

This was ofcourse, obvious to anyone who has some common sense.

GW wrote:Well, we certainly do not shy away from contact with our customers - we see them face to face all the time in our stores around the world, at events and of course the thousands of visitors who come to Warhammer World in Nottingham every year. Our experience of the comment sections of, for example, Facebook, is that they are not very helpful to most of our customers as they simply become a place for trolling, spam or vitriolic opinion. This is to be regretted, but is a fact of the internet age. We are not alone in this opinion.

Most games forums turn into cesspools ( especially videogames. ) I can only imagine what the GW forums would be like if they allowed them. I can undestand easily why you wouldn´t want something like that existing and linking to your company. Also, so much for "GW doesn´t care about it´s customers."

Then again... just required common sense.

Got me thinking about the tournament angle again anyhow... certainly everyone loves a perfectly balanced game if one even exists, but if GW doesn´t even aim at a tournament oriented game, then why expect such a thing. Certainly they are not making an unbalanced game deliberately, as they are not evil like some want to think. But it must be admitted that they have taken longer than anyone else to come up with balanced rules...

Why expect product X when a company has declared they are going with Y.

All in all, pretty much what I expected as answers and what you would get as a response from most companies.

 Easy E wrote:
Yeah, they actually put some reasons for why they choose to act the way they do. Sure, I think their arguments are wrong, but at least I feel like they have thought through the justifications for thier actions.

That allows meto give them a bit mor ecredit thatn I did before.

I agree. The response makes sense if you think as I do that GW's main target market is young boys with no wargaming experience who won't know how expensive and (arguably) shonky the GW set up really is. Social media must be avoided because it would expose these HHHobbyists to contradictory views.

Personally I think their strategy has got way off the best track but as long as the financials are good it shows they know better than me.

 RunicFIN wrote:

GW wrote:Of course, we know that all customers have choices - no one does business in a vacuum.

If this doesn´t hint to GW being aware of the market despite what Kirby has said in some pseudo PR statement then I don´t know what does. Maybe now that age old "weapon" of the anti-GW crew can be put to rest, since it was missing a blade and the handle had corroded in half ages ago.

This was ofcourse, obvious to anyone who has some common sense.

GW wrote:Well, we certainly do not shy away from contact with our customers - we see them face to face all the time in our stores around the world, at events and of course the thousands of visitors who come to Warhammer World in Nottingham every year. Our experience of the comment sections of, for example, Facebook, is that they are not very helpful to most of our customers as they simply become a place for trolling, spam or vitriolic opinion. This is to be regretted, but is a fact of the internet age. We are not alone in this opinion.

Most games forums turn into cesspools ( especially videogames. ) I can only imagine what the GW forums would be like if they allowed them. I can undestand easily why you wouldn´t want something like that existing and linking to your company. Also, so much for "GW doesn´t care about it´s customers."

Then again... just required common sense.

Got me thinking about the tournament angle again anyhow... certainly everyone loves a perfectly balanced game if one even exists, but if GW doesn´t even aim at a tournament oriented game, then why expect such a thing. Certainly they are not making an unbalanced game deliberately, as they are not evil like some want to think. But it must be admitted that they have taken longer than anyone else to come up with balanced rules...

Why expect product X when a company has declared they are going with Y.

All in all, pretty much what I expected as answers and what you would get as a response from most companies.

Your definition of "common sense" needs some reworking.

 dakkajet wrote:

They did however had a strong point about the fact they do make contact with the customer through there stores.
Thanks for sharing!

Certainly does not address how they make contact with customers that don't go to the stores, which is far and away the majority of customers in the US.

T

 RunicFIN wrote:

Got me thinking about the tournament angle again anyhow... certainly everyone loves a perfectly balanced game if one even exists, but if GW doesn´t even aim at a tournament oriented game, then why expect such a thing. Certainly they are not making an unbalanced game deliberately, as they are not evil like some want to think. But it must be admitted that they have taken longer than anyone else to come up with balanced rules...

Why expect product X when a company has declared they are going with Y.

All in all, pretty much what I expected as answers and what you would get as a response from most companies.

While yes GW is very obviously moving away from competitive play for their games do understand that it wasn't always that way. GW actively supported tournaments and had GW sanctioned ones (remember Ard' Boyz?). So a lot of their customers may have bought into 40k when GW did support tournament play, and those customers may not agree with the "new" approach that GW had for their games.

I mean I still have my warhammer 5th ed box set manuals from when I was a kid and the last "mission" in the one of books is GW suggestion for tournament play.

 RunicFIN wrote:
Most games forums turn into cesspools ( especially videogames. ) I can only imagine what the GW forums would be like if they allowed them. I can undestand easily why you wouldn´t want something like that existing and linking to your company. Also, so much for "GW doesn´t care about it´s customers."

Then again... just required common sense.

Got me thinking about the tournament angle again anyhow... certainly everyone loves a perfectly balanced game if one even exists, but if GW doesn´t even aim at a tournament oriented game, then why expect such a thing. Certainly they are not making an unbalanced game deliberately, as they are not evil like some want to think. But it must be admitted that they have taken longer than anyone else to come up with balanced rules...

Why expect product X when a company has declared they are going with Y.

I don't think any of their answers about the forums are common sense. Yes forums can deteriorate, but most game companies not named Games Workshop are running thriving forums that only help the companies. Most game companies (and not just wargaming companies) are aware that an active, engaged community is integral to what they do. Of course, most game companies are fully aware that they are game companies and do not try to pass themselves off as collectible companies whose products happen to have game rules written for them. I have long played MTG and D&D/Pathfinder and these companies have managed to have long running forums and communication with the people making the games and make it work. As far as the ruleset, you are correct that it is folly to assume that gw will at any point in time admit that rules should trump fluff.

 Davylove21 wrote:


As regards international tournaments, letting fans break our rule sets and so on, our main thrust is not about competitive gameplay, but about the wonderful worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 and the amazing models which we painstakingly create for our customers to collect. Of course, if some of our fans wish to play competitive, 'hardcore' tournaments, then that is up to them - we wish them well and hope that they very much have a good time. We, however, do not seek to prescribe what anyone does with our models, rather we let our customers and collectors get stuck in to whatever takes their fancy from the broad and inclusive spectrum of collecting, assembling, modelling, painting and gaming. If collectors wish to write their own rules, or use no rules, paint their models, leave them unpainted - we are not precious! -'Everyone's hobby is not the same as mine' is something we take very much to heart.

Linked to that sentiment and principle is our belief that any 'cult of personality' is not helpful either. We do not wish to hand out official 'rulings' from 'personalities', and we see no need to - by and large our customers enjoy engaging with each other and making their own minds up about what rules (if any) to use, how to interpret a particular phrase or line and so on. Again, we do not wish to be prescriptive in that regard.

So with this statement, would this be legal to use old codices then if you so choose? Maybe even mix and match, use something in 7th edition codex and then what is not in the 7th edition codex use the 5th or 4th edition codex.

So now it would seem the only people who say you can't do it, is us. It is perfectly legal now to use old codicies.

Ironically it even lets us use anything else as well. We can use Privateer Press rules and minis as well. Now if people want to share the 40K experience make sure we include other companies miniatures as well now. GW just has given up permission to use anything and everything we like.

Davor wrote:

 Davylove21 wrote:


As regards international tournaments, letting fans break our rule sets and so on, our main thrust is not about competitive gameplay, but about the wonderful worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 and the amazing models which we painstakingly create for our customers to collect. Of course, if some of our fans wish to play competitive, 'hardcore' tournaments, then that is up to them - we wish them well and hope that they very much have a good time. We, however, do not seek to prescribe what anyone does with our models, rather we let our customers and collectors get stuck in to whatever takes their fancy from the broad and inclusive spectrum of collecting, assembling, modelling, painting and gaming. If collectors wish to write their own rules, or use no rules, paint their models, leave them unpainted - we are not precious! -'Everyone's hobby is not the same as mine' is something we take very much to heart.

Linked to that sentiment and principle is our belief that any 'cult of personality' is not helpful either. We do not wish to hand out official 'rulings' from 'personalities', and we see no need to - by and large our customers enjoy engaging with each other and making their own minds up about what rules (if any) to use, how to interpret a particular phrase or line and so on. Again, we do not wish to be prescriptive in that regard.

So with this statement, would this be legal to use old codices then if you so choose? Maybe even mix and match, use something in 7th edition codex and then what is not in the 7th edition codex use the 5th or 4th edition codex.

So now it would seem the only people who say you can't do it, is us. It is perfectly legal now to use old codicies.

Ironically it even lets us use anything else as well. We can use Privateer Press rules and minis as well. Now if people want to share the 40K experience make sure we include other companies miniatures as well now. GW just has given up permission to use anything and everything we like.

"We" have always been able to do that, and some of us have been for awhile now. It's not like the GW Stormtroopers are gonna bust down your door, break all your models, and burn all your books because you used other shoulder pads than GW's. It's nothing new.

 RunicFIN wrote:

GW wrote:Of course, we know that all customers have choices - no one does business in a vacuum.

If this doesn´t hint to GW being aware of the market despite what Kirby has said in some pseudo PR statement then I don´t know what does. Maybe now that age old "weapon" of the anti-GW crew can be put to rest, since it was missing a blade and the handle had corroded in half ages ago.

This was of course, obvious to anyone who has some common sense.

"Noone does business in a vacuum" isn't exactly some profound insight or newly discovered piece of lost knowledge, it's a trite, business school buzz phrase that just states the obvious. Just because someone makes some vague allusion to the fact that they're dimly aware that there are other companies out there doing the same thing they do, doesn't mean that they're connected to their fan base (hah!) in the meaningful way that a company of their ilk should be in the current day and age. If for no other reason than getting your customers to tell you what they want to buy from you is a no brainer when you have to invest capital in new product as often as GW do.

GW wrote:Well, we certainly do not shy away from contact with our customers - we see them face to face all the time in our stores around the world, at events and of course the thousands of visitors who come to Warhammer World in Nottingham every year. Our experience of the comment sections of, for example, Facebook, is that they are not very helpful to most of our customers as they simply become a place for trolling, spam or vitriolic opinion. This is to be regretted, but is a fact of the internet age. We are not alone in this opinion.

Most games forums turn into cesspools ( especially videogames. ) I can only imagine what the GW forums would be like if they allowed them. I can undestand easily why you wouldn´t want something like that existing and linking to your company. Also, so much for "GW doesn´t care about it´s customers."

Then again... just required common sense.

Yes, if a company takes unpopular actions or makes unpopular decisions then that is generally reflected in how they are discussed in online communities. Weirdly, most market leaders in consumer facing industries acknowledge that one still needs to maintain an online presence and a dialogue with it's customer base even if it is hugely unpopular with that customer base at the current time. The fact that they claim to prefer to interact in person if frankly terrifying. I have yet to turn my back on GW, or is that Warhammer now? completely, but I seldom set foot in the local store, and I sure as hell won't be spending the cash to cross the country and attend an event at Nottingham. Know who will? People who are happy with GW. Unfortunately, "everything is so cool! wow, look! Shiny!" is atrocious criticism if one is looking to improve how one does business, and certainly doesn't tell you why your revenue and profit is dropping by double digits at every accounting waypoint.

Got me thinking about the tournament angle again anyhow... certainly everyone loves a perfectly balanced game if one even exists, but if GW doesn´t even aim at a tournament oriented game, then why expect such a thing. Certainly they are not making an unbalanced game deliberately, as they are not evil like some want to think. But it must be admitted that they have taken longer than anyone else to come up with balanced rules...

Why expect product X when a company has declared they are going with Y.

All in all, pretty much what I expected as answers and what you would get as a response from most companies.

GW has never "declared Y" that is part of the problem. As others have mentioned, there was a good period when GW ran sanctioned events and supported others. It is only common sense to infer from that that they intended 40K to be played in tournaments. Now, it would also be fair, and common sense, to infer from the essentially unfit for purpose quality of the rules since 6th dropped that they have changed their attitude substantially in that regard.

But they never told us.

This loops right back round to the lack of communication issue. Somebody (*cough* Jervis *cough*) obviously decided we all needed to start playing 40K differently, whether we wanted to or not. However, nobody thought to tell all the players who bought in during the period when GW were at least pretending it was a competitive game. Subsequently you have a number of players with the rug pulled out from under them, who are no longer able to pursue an element of the hobby, perhaps the only element they enjoy.

Is it any wonder that those players are angry and frustrated, especially when nobody told them this was happening?

This is just one element that has caused dissatisfaction among the player base, there's probably any one of three or four other solid reasons why people are annoyed at GW.

In fact, when you stop and think about it, perhaps everyone should have a reason to be annoyed with GW, at least a little bit.

Only common sense really.

I find it funny they cited pewdiepie taking down his comment section as justification for why they took down theirs.

PewDiePie took down his due to the amount of vile and toxic comments that his fan base is NOTORIOUS for.

As we all remember GW closed down their facebook page due to the outrage they caused when they claimed to own "space marine" and trying to stop the sale of "spot the space marine".

 Pacific wrote:
This bit was interesting:

Well, we certainly do not shy away from contact with our customers - we see them face to face all the time in our stores around the world, at events and of course the thousands of visitors who come to Warhammer World in Nottingham every year. Our experience of the comment sections of, for example, Facebook, is that they are not very helpful to most of our customers as they simply become a place for trolling, spam or vitriolic opinion. This is to be regretted, but is a fact of the internet age. We are not alone in this opinion.

At this point, it would have been good to reply; why is it then, that every other major miniature and wargame producer on the market has a variety of social media inc. FB, twitter and forums, and is able to run them without them being overwhelmed by 'trolling, spam and vitriol'?

cottonelle bathroom tissue dose more to out reach with their costumers in social media then GW dose!
lol

Well said Azrael.

On a related note, please get out of my head.

I must get around to patenting the Insidaheadatron™ some day.

How do I make that TM symbol?

My Anti-GW Hate Spewing Vitriol Machine by Citadel is distinctly lacking without the sarcastic and liberal use of TM.

 Blacksails wrote:
How do I make that TM symbol?

My Anti-GW Hate Spewing Vitriol Machine by Citadel is distinctly lacking without the sarcastic and liberal use of TM.

On a PC, Alt+0153 ™

On a Mac, throw it out the window and go buy a PC.

I'm on ipad, I had to get a whole new keyboard installed can't remember where from, I just googled it. ™

0163 for me.

And it was "tin eared" guys. Jesus.

Hell yeah loved the reply by GW so that mean my Chaos Space Marine troops now get things like.

Heavy Flamer
Multi-Meltas and
Plasma Cannons
Drop Pods
Land Raider Redeemers/Crusaders
Land Speeders
Storm Ravens
Razorbacks

And anything in the inventory that the plethora of every space marine chapter gets.

Just have to write up the Codex and as GW says it's all legal.

Hell now my Spawn units get a ballistic skill level 3, shooty mindless with leadership 10 hell yeah.

Thanks GW for giving me that. Chaos is now invincible.

Codex: Sons of Achaylus (R)

Dear GW: Can I has my Lost & The Damned back? Muchthanx!

 Pacific wrote:
This bit was interesting:

Well, we certainly do not shy away from contact with our customers - we see them face to face all the time in our stores around the world, at events and of course the thousands of visitors who come to Warhammer World in Nottingham every year. Our experience of the comment sections of, for example, Facebook, is that they are not very helpful to most of our customers as they simply become a place for trolling, spam or vitriolic opinion. This is to be regretted, but is a fact of the internet age. We are not alone in this opinion.

At this point, it would have been good to reply; why is it then, that every other major miniature and wargame producer on the market has a variety of social media inc. FB, twitter and forums, and is able to run them without them being overwhelmed by 'trolling, spam and vitriol'?

Are you sure every other major producer utilizes it? Regardless, I'd also argue that if this forum is ANY indication, they would absolutely be overrun without constant moderation that then just makes people more angry since their rant was deleted. The community around GW is much to toxic, blaming GW for that is not the right mind set frankly.

I like the part where having the guys who write the rules answer questions about said rules would be creating some sort of 'cult of personality'...





No... wait... I don't like that part at all. It's one of the most ridiculous statements I have ever read.

Davor wrote:
So with this statement, would this be legal to use old codices then if you so choose?

There has never been anything in the rules (barring one or two exceptions - Craftworld Eldar, for example) requiring players to use the most recent codex.

 troa wrote:
The community around GW is much to toxic, blaming GW for that is not the right mind set frankly.

The community around GW is 'toxic' precisely because of their refusal to engage with it.

They could generate a huge amount of goodwill through simple things like previewing what army they are working on, and having the studio guys answer rules questions.

They choose not to. And so people have become progressively more irritated at being ignored.

GW's idiotic letter wrote:We do not wish to hand out official 'rulings' from 'personalities', and we see no need to - by and large our customers enjoy engaging with each other and making their own minds up about what rules (if any) to use, how to interpret a particular phrase or line and so on. Again, we do not wish to be prescriptive in that regard.

I was going to say that I'm shocked that a representative of a profitable game publisher could say something so unbelievably stupid and still (presumably) have a job, but then I remembered that we're talking about GW here. This of course doesn't make the stupidity of this position any better, but it does at least explain why it happened.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 insaniak wrote:
The community around GW is 'toxic' precisely because of their refusal to engage with it.

They could generate a huge amount of goodwill through simple things like previewing what army they are working on, and having the studio guys answer rules questions.

They choose not to. And so people have become progressively more irritated at being ignored.

And the proof: when GW still allowed FW/BL to run their own facebook pages they were fairly polite and reasonable places by the standards of the internet as a whole. It's no coincidence that these were the divisions of GW that had been guilty of far fewer offenses against their community.

 Peregrine wrote:
And the proof: when GW still allowed FW/BL to run their own facebook pages they were fairly polite and reasonable places by the standards of the internet as a whole. It's no coincidence that these were the divisions of GW that had been guilty of far fewer offenses against their community.

From what little I saw, the Specialist Games forums also seemed to tick over without too many issues.

 Davylove21 wrote:


Our experience of the comment sections of, for example, Facebook, is that they are not very helpful to most of our customers as they simply become a place for trolling, spam or vitriolic opinion.

Cracks me up. The people who whine and whine incessantly online about how 'their hobby' is being ruined by big ol' mean GW are so unpleasant that GW straight up wants nothing to do with them. People post these long-winded diatribes online about 'why I quit GW' or #iampartofthereason etc have been so openly unpleasant for so long, GW would rather go out of business than even try to communicate with them. Good work, guys!

Yes, GW refusing to acknowledge issues their customers have with their product is totally the fault of the customers...

But their customers are just so darn mean!!!

They say they removed some social media things because they descend into toxic abuse - which does happen on the Internet. But they don't acknowledge that the bulk of that which finally caused them to close was brought about by a justifiably negative reaction to their own obnoxious litigation practices.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
They say they removed some social media things because they descend into toxic abuse - which does happen on the Internet. But they don't acknowledge that the bulk of that which finally caused them to close was brought about by a justifiably negative reaction to their own obnoxious litigation practices.

And their "explanation" also doesn't exactly match with why they closed their Facebook pages for the Black Library and ForgeWorld since those pages had no abuse of any type on them...

Don't bring logic into it howard, the hobby is clearly too good for you . I hope you move onto the hobby of playing wargames instead of the hobby of buying games workshop miniatures, however i don't think you will find it as enjoyable.

I mostly play MtG and Wizards manage to run an informative events filled website, a forum and a card database. GW run an online shop. The comparison is embarrassing.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I mostly play MtG and Wizards manage to run an informative events filled website, a forum and a card database. GW run an online shop. The comparison is embarrassing.

Well, yeah, but it is a 5 million pounds online shop! We can't even begin to imagine how much Wizard's content filled site must have costed!