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Posted By carmachu 08/16/2006 1:57 PM

I just can't figure where the money is all going.

Share holders, duh.....

More like right into Kirby & Company's pockets. Afterall, GW had to borrow to pay dividends on the shares...


And Chuck, you're nuts if you think no other company can produce better miniatures than GW. You make a broad claim that no single Reaper figure could beat any single GW figure, something we all know not to be true, and then backtrack to saying nobody does the "big" vehicles like GW. Bollocks. Try Tamiya, Dragon, Italeri, Wave, Bandai, or Nitto. Those last three have well developoed sci-fi lines that provide more detailed, better engineered, and more economical plastic kits than GW could ever hope to provide. Carnifex? Well, glad you asked, as soon Rackham will be providing large plastic kits as well , the first which could make a better 'fex than GW's kit (clicky here), and at 25 euros, cheaper too. As Carmachu said, plenty of manufacturers out there make better looking figures, just so long as you look for them.

Posted By dienekes96 08/16/2006 1:39 PM

You can't do scale...no one else does the bigger vehicles like GW.  No one does anything remotely near the Carnifex.

I don't care enough to compete in Discussions, ik.  Chalk it up to apathy, and notch yourself a win if it's important to you.  I simply think pretending GW isn't the premiere miniature company because you don't like their business decisions is silly.  Call me when any of the other product lines have 10% of the flexibility of the Marine Infantry plastics.  They don't, and they won't.  That isn't to say there aren't lovely non-GW sculpts out there by non-Rackham companies.  Certainly there are...many better than GW's mid-tier figures.  But to claim GW's best figure isn't better than any other companies is mind-blowing.

dienekes96: If you won't back up your statement with anything other than more wild statements, then any argument you make is bunk.

Croc has a few figs on the Carnifex scale, and Tamiya has a small line of tanks and vehicles that I've heard are decent. 

I never stated that GW wasn't a premier company, just not "the premiere miniature company".  There are plenty of companies that scuplt up to GW's quality and don't charge as much or feel the need to raise prices semi annually all the while disregarding the community's cry for better support on the rules end. 

How can I back up a subjective opinion?  With more opinions???

We can argue sculpt quality all day.  It's SUBJECTIVE.  Which is why I brought out the versatility argument.  I've yet to hear word one on refuting that.  Because it's impossible.  GW's plastics are very friendly (not in price terms) to the modeler.  Nothing any other mini company has done BEGINS to approach what GW has done with it's core lines in terms of versatility. 

Sorry I won't have a subjective poll on Dakka Discussions with you.  Like I said, if your ego needs that as a win...take it.  What I stated was hardly "wild", and it's already been misconstrued by half of the trogs on this board ("but the Treemen suck, but the Chaos Possessed suck...").  Such is Dakka these days.

Posted By Blackmoor 08/16/2006 2:07 PM
I thought we were discussing price, not quality.

Yes, some of their sculps are nice, but does that justify having to pay $50 for a box of 5 plastic terminators?

And GWs quality is not as great as everyone keeps saying it is. For example, take a look at the new chaos possessed, and venrable dred and tell me those are some of the best minis on the market.

While we're at it, the SM Scouts (which replaced some vastly superior cast metal figs), the upcoming Autarch (in that ever classic GW pose: legs planted in an inverse 'v', head staring forward, and arms waving in the air like the fig just don't care), the aforementioned thick-legged Black Templars and chaplains (also with same classic GW pose with the marine twist: bald head, screaming and too, too much bling). Swtichng to Fantasy there are the OK special characters (oh, look, they discontinued them! hahah!), the comical OK maneaters, Wood Elves, well, at least they got the plastics (mostly) right, cuz most of their metals make me a sad panda (Spellsingers, Warhawk riders, Treekin, Treeman, yet another Orion when the previous version was excellent, etc...) I could go on and on...


If GW is the "Porsche of Miniatures" then it must be a Kia with a new paintjob and a Porsche hood ornament, cuz I sure ain't seeing it. Not for a few years at least. This is what happens when you gut your design studio: they go to the competition, who improves while you start to backslide. Hmm..

I have 2 serious and failry objective problems with GW quality.

The first is the significant decline in flexibility and convertability. Plastics are no longer compatible and no longer have seperate arms and interchangable heads. Minor changes like joining arms at the elbows rather than the shoulder or flat neck joins vs rounded ones and simple scale mean that a lot of the new plasic sets are almost useless for conversion. THe Bret men at arms are gorgous sculpts but not compatible with any other plastic sets. I know that some of the early 2000s plastics had more parts than needed (dwarves and goblins) but it's really gone too far. Plastics that are more expensive than metals AND not convertable are a waste.

The second is in order to get my money GW has to release products I am interested in. Their continuing habit of only releasing 1 army at a time, 4 or so a year (only 2 for 40k) means whole months can go by when I have no interest in anything GW is putting out. The end of specialist games makes things much worse.

And third is the games have to worth playing. I've still not played 40k v4 despite being home for 2 months and still have little desire to.

Posted By carmachu 08/16/2006 1:57 PM

I just can't figure where the money is all going.

Share holders, duh.....

apologies in advance for up coming sarcasm

yeah urrmmmm thats right! us share holders are taking it all! lets see how much was the huge amount of dividened i took home for my 9 shares???? oh thats right......... 46pence for all 9, not 46p times 9 but 46p total!!(thats 87cents to americans). im really the cause of the models been so huge, you know the cost of using my share dividend to bathe in champagne is amazing!!

its not the share holders its that prat in charge "re-directing funds in to new equipment" ie new company vehicles!!!

the share holders actually have little opportunity to hae a say in how GW is run! in fact i think its about 2 years since we could last vote on anything. share holders my little fellow plastic crack addicts are getting shafted just as much as everyone else! me doubley so been a share holder and hobbyist - seriously considering selling my shares as they are actually more trouble to have as i dont get any return on them

This is probably common knowledge but everyone mentions gw's rubbish support ect ect, not why.

Gw has now changed their taget market to 11+. This is why they are trying to sell sell sell and no support, because 7/8ths of all 11+ kids will get bored and throw their figs away or other such atrocities.

this change in target market seems odd to me, when it takes a sensible mind of at least 14+ to do any decent moddling or gaming.

Another wise kkirby influenced descision no doubt. This company should be run by the hobbyists. GW is not another buisness, it's very different.

Posted By warlordty 08/16/2006 4:50 PM
...

Gw has now changed their taget market to 11+. This is why they are trying to sell sell sell and no support, because 7/8ths of all 11+ kids will get bored and throw their figs away or other such atrocities.

...

...

As a long term observer of GW (25 years) it seems to me they have focussed on the 11-15 year olds since the mid-1980s.

There have been occasional concessions to mature gamers, such as Epic, but generally their games with mature appeal have been by accident rather than design.

More like right into Kirby & Company's pockets. Afterall, GW had to borrow to pay dividends on the shares...


I thought all the money they are not makeing went into recent rules clarification.

That too. I mean, with all of these long and lengthy FAQ's, free errata and other forms of customer service that GW provides to it's demanding consumer base at no charge at all, a little price hike is justified. Right? Right?

They had a price rise in the UK, and I said nothing...

You guys are priceless.

Posted By dienekes96 08/16/2006 2:27 PM

How can I back up a subjective opinion?  With more opinions???

We can argue sculpt quality all day.  It's SUBJECTIVE.  Which is why I brought out the versatility argument.  I've yet to hear word one on refuting that.  Because it's impossible.  GW's plastics are very friendly (not in price terms) to the modeler.  Nothing any other mini company has done BEGINS to approach what GW has done with it's core lines in terms of versatility. 

 

Well Hasslefree has a very versatile line of metal minis. The sculpts are very high quality and they have several conversion sprues (they have alternative heads for several races and sexes and equipment sprues for the sole purpose of conversions). 

Alpha Forge Games also has head sprues for conversions.

So I'd say your statement has been refuted.

 

Man this is getting pretty good, A little bit of harshness here and there but lots of good points going around. Let me point out some thing else I did not see in there.

Several years ago GW claimed they were re-tooling their standard mold process to the stainless steel or similar type metal models. This would result in a higher quality plastic mini and a faster production rate and eventualy great deals on their figs. They, in a round about way ( red shirts, store reps) informed us that this would cost a little more to get things up and running. I was totaly good with that at the start, but where is the great deals? Yes theit stuff is heads and tails above the 2nd plastics, and things like the land raider and carnifex are awesome but the new stuff for what ever army is in a price band with the exsisting ranges, and stuff just keeps going up,( and NO dropping all the battle force box sets all to $90 isnt doing it) all thats doing is, MAYBE helping out the new guy, but what they need to do it keep the old guy.

I have been working in theses stores for a decade now and I have NEVER seen a new guy come in totaly by him self and start the game and stick with it all by him self. There is ALWAYS the buddy who, helps him out, throws him some of his old figs etc. GW can not continue to expect that guys who paid $200-250 for a full army when he started to accept that the same type army today will cost him closer to $400 or more and honestley expect him to pay for that 2 or 3 times over like there projections for the average gamer in a set time frame. We bought the steel models line for what reason again?

I will tell you at least in the US it looks like things are getting better for the brick and mortar stores. The ones that can stay open that is. GW brought in a new guy to take over the job of getting stores more on board with GW. Here are some of the things they are doing, free shipping, no minimium orders and they have a 4 step stocking program that is the best idea I have ever seen from them. I also understand ( cant seriously conferm this) that they are no longer giving sales rep the ax for not hitting pre set numbers on their accounts. Now this might not mean anything to some of you, but to those who work in Brick stores and play in them that the store can now stock their product as their local area dictates rather than what GW dictates much easier. This could mean you may see it showing back up in stores who dropped it because they could not afford to stock it, or could no longer take the over aggressive rep and policies of the past. More local shops carrying the stuff could get you a deal here or there, and also could result in a better chance for you to play on some good game tabels and meet more guys in the area to enjoy yhte hobby with rather than worrie about the prices all the time.

I'm also under the impression that bits will soon go to a no minimum for free shipping system, so you give your bits order to the store and they can fax it in right away.

Now if Brick and Mortars could just get FW from GW US.....

Hi,

My name is Patrick from Holland and i've been a quest of this forum for quite some time. I liked  this discussion so much i decided to join   So here's my thoughts;

GW is the one company responsible for introducing miniature gaming to a great audiance. Nevertheless they are one of the best examples of a company that has grown to big to fast. I'm getting the fealing, where i live the nearest GW store is more than 50km away and i don't know anyone who works there so i'm kind of unbiased, they want to do more stuff than there's actually time to do. For example the Possessed Chaos Space Marines, they are so bad i was actually thinking of quiting 40k and i've been playing 40K Chaos Space Marines ever since 2nd edition was released. (i was thinking it once before though, back when the first Obliterators came out) Guess they needed the models to keep the production lines running and/ or pagefiller for the WD. Which is another example, every month the WD has less articles and more adds. Occasionally they make great models, but it is making me wonder why everyone in this discussion names but two, the Carnifex and the Giant (who, by some mysterious rules change, can now be used by every army).

If you like the looks of a model is simply a matter of taste. But the quality of a model depends on how much flash you need to remove, if there are many gaps to fill in the case of multi part models, are all the parts in the kit etc. I had my share of mutilated models, missing parts and enough flash to make the model XXX rated.

Considering all the above (which is just the tip of the iceberg concidering the occasional hostility towards GW on this forum) it makes me look for alternatives. 

There are a lot off decent alternatives, for me the Iron Kingdom miniature games an the Rackham games are great, although i also like the look of the Dark Age miniature line. In Holland and Belgium (where i get the major part of my miniatures) these miniatures are the same or better priced than comparible GW products and the quality of the models is much better although the little parts on the Rackham models are sometimes a bit flimsy.

I wonder if dicussions like these ever make it to GW. I once complainded at a GW store back in the days of the first boltershell shaped paint bottles about my paint drying in the bottle and got kicked out. ( and i was being very polite all the time)

 

Well GW seems to be aware of the competition, we heard rumours a while back about a big meeting where the heads of the bean counters talked about the rising competition and showed some of the other companies' models off. But I've yet to see anything that indicates GW is serious about fighting off the competition. In my opinion we'll continue to see the reckless policies and prices for a while longer until a critical point is reached and another game company rises above GW in overall sales or at least shows such steller growth that the bean counters can't ignore the situation any more. At that point we'll see something drastic. Maybe we'll see heads roll and nothing else change, or maybe we'll see the company completely restructured and see it go back to the attitude of the golden age GW (which in my opinion was the late nineties and a little while in to the early part of this decade). Hopefully this will pull some old gamers in and quiet down the cynics. If not we may see the company sold and see that same senario I just talked about happen.

None-the-less, I don't foresee this "crisis" going on too much longer- eventually the critical point will be reached and something big will happen. Customers can either help be a catylist for that change or can continue on as they've been doing, but it's sure to happen eventually.

Posted By Drake_Marcus on 08/19/2006 3:12 PM
None-the-less, I don't foresee this "crisis" going on too much longer- eventually the critical point will be reached and something big will happen. Customers can either help be a catylist for that change or can continue on as they've been doing, but it's sure to happen eventually.

I'd actually say customers have already started to become a catalyst for change, just look at GW's plummeting profits the past two years. If it wasn't for the short term boost the company recieved via the LotR license, said plummet would have happened even sooner as their arrogant and generally unfriendly business practices were already hemorrhaging customers. It is no coincidence that Flames of War, Rackham, Warmachine and other games started to gain serious traction at that time as huge numbers of GW vets finally had all they could of the same backassward policies and left for game companies willing to listen to their customers.

As an aside, I find it amusing that he says he's been all about long term profitability yet his actions point to quite the contrary. This price hike is just yet another example in a long list of examples of how out of touch they are with their consumer base. Someone mentioned it before, but their utter disdain for the internet is really killing them. Battlefront is a great comparison here, as their own forum for Flames of War is the ultimate online forum for all Flames of War information, rules and discussion, while also being attractive, functional and easy to use, as well as a place where their own games developers and sculptors freely interact with the public at large without putting themselves on some pedestal. GW's Eye of Terror is, well, the Eye of Terror: clunky, impossible to use interface, pages upon pages of munchikin drivel, unevenly moderated, rarely visited by the studio (if at all these days) and generally illustrative of GW's disdain of it's very own customers.


Anyhow, I've been doing my part: for the past two years I've spent no more than $200 US on GW product (and never, ever direct through GW, always at a discount!), while in the same timespan I've easily spent $2000 on Battlefront, Reaper, Old Glory, Quality Castings, West Wind, and Rackham figs and rulebooks. That was money that used to go to GW, but no more!  Even for the one GW game I still play, WHFB, I try to use other mfgr figures just about anytime I can because of GW's infuriatingly overpriced figures. They reap what they sow.

Yeah- I've spent easily 6 times more on Rackham then on GW stuff. My hope is that GW discovers they've screwed up soon and doesn't slowly bleed away everything that makes the business profitable over a long time span and as such makes any recovery unlikely.

I hope the FoW forums aren't fanboy drivel like the PP forums. I just couldn't post there anymore after a while- it's too mind-numbingly stupid and fanboytastic over there It's too bad because that's contributed to me losing interest in PP as well.

There is a degree of fanboyism there, though it is generally not noticable. Aside from Battlefront's understandable requests not to post/link to other mfgrs figs (it is their site, after all), and the over exhuberance of a handful of people, it's pretty tame. They don't even care if you post ASL scenarios and what not. Try posting a Stargrunt or bastardized DBM scenario in the Eye of Terror and see what happens! FoW has a significant advantage in that it's based on historical fact and is able to draw upon a huge wealth of information and documentation as well as an existing community of historical gamers and a much, much larger community of military historians. Add to that the designers willingness to freely divulge why they did certain things in the rules (from historical reasons to absrtaction requirements), as well as a very well written ruleset that is constantly scrutinized and updated (ie: "Letters from the Front) and it minimizes the munchikinization of the website. That and the history part.