Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I play 40k
I enjoy the hobby, i enjor the game to a degree, and i play CSM in 40k; is that enough to explain how i feel about GW?
maybe, probably.

Either way, I am a very politically minded person and I have attended all sorts of events and participated in sending letters to people who hold office, petitions, etc. I understand GW is a public company and well, in another thread I read this:

SoloFalcon1138 wrote:Maybe this is how they burn off some steam because all they are hearing from the gaming community is that the company and the game sucks, yet people still buy it and play it. Maybe they are just trying to express the frustration of a game whose discussions reach a passion level that many games can't hit.
Or maybe, they're just being goofy...

Thanks SoloFalcon1138, you make an excellent point, we all play and buy GW products but when i talk to friends or locals who badmouth the game and go to another company i want to shake them and say no warhammer is so much cooler! but..... I find myself complaining about GW too i've tried not to as often as i used to but nobody's perfect right?

I digress, What i mean to get across to you fellow dakkaites is this: Why don't we unite? Can't be that hard although we may be ideologically diverse in fact, i wouldn't be surprised if my post is either dismissed or ridiculed but either way, Why not get out point across en masse? I believe that GW can make rules faster than they are already doing but i also understand codecies come out with new models and sculpting GW quality mini's surley takes a long time, but i'd rather have less releases and more rules, i can wait a tad longer for somesweet new mini's. I would like to see if anyone in the community would like to gather all the GW gripes, sort through the acceptable and unacceptable demands, then spread a petition among the community and send it GW's way? Now many people have pessimism with petitions assuming they mean nothing, but remember how strong a following on the web can be and also remember how incredibly vast the warhammer (and other GW gamesystems) fans are. I think if we got all the people who have gripes wether they speak them or not, all at once signed a petition and we sent it to GW they may think a bit more and re-evaluate the way they run thier company. I would like to personally see an improvement in how some of the stores are run, events, selling points, releasing codecies/rulebooks, having community based programs or recruitment are jsut some of the many ideas i have based on my gripes (which you could write a book on).

thoughts? I am ready for a lot of flack but i have some faith my words won't come across deaf ears...erm seen over blind eyes? damn internet!

I think you will find that the internet =/= a balanced overview of tabletop wargamers.

The loudest voices often overpower the silent majority and people often shout the loudest when they complain.

While all people like to grumble, I don't think there is enough spirit behind it to motivate people to actually do anything.

Just like in the world of politics, apathy is your greatest enemy (if you are trying to change something, or ally if you want things to remain the same).

IronfrontAlex wrote:remember how incredibly vast the warhammer (and other GW gamesystems) fans are

Did you just call me fat?

SilverMK2 wrote:I think you will find that the internet =/= a balanced overview of tabletop wargamers.

The loudest voices often overpower the silent majority and people often shout the loudest when they complain.

While all people like to grumble, I don't think there is enough spirit behind it to motivate people to actually do anything.

Just like in the world of politics, apathy is your greatest enemy (if you are trying to change something, or ally if you want things to remain the same).

Yeah, I'm usually the one person in my circle of friends who jumps up and down trying to inspire the apathetic to rally and change situations they don't like, alas i hope i haven't found another dead end. Think of this my fellow wargamers, how can revolutions spark via twitter but we can't even get what we want, or at least some compromise, with something which is rather trivial in comparison?

lord_blackfang wrote:

IronfrontAlex wrote:remember how incredibly vast the warhammer (and other GW gamesystems) fans are

Did you just call me fat?

...maybe, jk!
My mistake, im sure oyu understood i meant the population is vast, not waist size

IronfrontAlex wrote:Yeah, I'm usually the one person in my circle of friends who jumps up and down trying to inspire the apathetic to rally and change situations they don't like, alas i hope i haven't found another dead end. Think of this my fellow wargamers, how can revolutions spark via twitter but we can't even get what we want, or at least some compromise, with something which is rather trivial in comparison?

Because 98% of twitter users are idiotic sheep?

Invalid argument is invalid. I don't mean to bring up current events like a tv pundit, but the facts are there and the internet can be used as an incredibly powerful tool to help one another. Im not saying oh hey like have a nerd revolt against gw, thats just silly, I simply want to know if there are any other like minded people here on dakka? I know there are but i'd like to see who would be willing to make a list and release, then spread a petition with me? Im not saying we should make demands to GW or anything but i'd like to see more customer recognition.

hell i work at trader joes, we're known for our customer service and rake in much more $ than GW, then again we are a private company and a grocery store at that, we still take customer suggestions very seriously no matter who they are. We've consistently been ranked one of the best companies in the US with customer service, and that certainly helps sales.

I'm not arguing with you, I'm just saying that wargaming is not exactly an important issue for most people, and there are no clear goals or directions that everyone can pull for.

Any attempt to unite the community would be like herding cats.

If you want to try, decide on concrete goals (not nebulous things like "cheaper kitz please" or "more stuff please"). You need to be specific so that you are not just shrugged off both by the community and by GW/insert model company here.

GW have made it clear many, many times that they don't want to listen and are content to do their own thing so you will need to have simple, obvious and well supported suggestions/demands that they can't simply dismiss as impractical, or not representetive of the market (ie the wargamers), etc.

SilverMK2 wrote:I'm not arguing with you, I'm just saying that wargaming is not exactly an important issue for most people, and there are no clear goals or directions that everyone can pull for.

Any attempt to unite the community would be like herding cats.

If you want to try, decide on concrete goals (not nebulous things like "cheaper kitz please" or "more stuff please"). You need to be specific so that you are not just shrugged off both by the community and by GW/insert model company here.

GW have made it clear many, many times that they don't want to listen and are content to do their own thing so you will need to have simple, obvious and well supported suggestions/demands that they can't simply dismiss as impractical, or not representetive of the market (ie the wargamers), etc.

Well good sir we are in agreement! the exact reason why i posted this thought was to have some rational people to communicate with and come up with spesific and reasonable suggestions, many of mine include social things like voluneteers and programing but it goes into a little bit of everything else too. I am a poor college student and although i would like to see "cheaper kits, PLZ!" i know how S&D works ha .

Although I also thought of this idea once i realized that GW does listen to a degree, wether its these "leaked" rumors and rulebooks they just have nooooo idea where people get them from, or the fact that their plastic kits come with so many more options now giving customers much more for their money; even with that look at that new giant spider for orcs and goblins in WFB, that thing is absolutley huge and its nowhere near land raider price.
Would you like to be a willing colleague in this matter?

IronfrontAlex wrote:Would you like to be a willing colleague in this matter?

I'm not really sure what I can contribute since I don't really belong to the wider wargaming circle (I virtually never play or go into any GW/FLG stores). But sure, I can give it a go.

If you were to send a letter, i wonder what they would pay more attention to.

One letter with hundreds of names on it.

Or hundreds of identical letters with hundreds of different origins.

Either way, depending on the contents of that letter, i could proberly add 10+ names to it.

SilverMK2 wrote:

IronfrontAlex wrote:Would you like to be a willing colleague in this matter?

I'm not really sure what I can contribute since I don't really belong to the wider wargaming circle (I virtually never play or go into any GW/FLG stores). But sure, I can give it a go.

Honestly, I don't even think that's an issue. I mean beacause of my academic studies i can only commit about one day a week to actually gaming, though i've been trying to squeeze in more time to paint an model (random and shameless plug for my P&M blog everyone check it!). Even so, anyone with reasonable suggestions would greatly be accepted into this little group i would like to start up, it doesn't have to directly involve your local community, thought if you'd want to recruit others from them then i would support that; mind you managers at your local GW's have absolutley no say in how the company is run. this petition would also not be going to them and probably not the regionals but rather the corp section.

If we can get a collated list of all the main gripes, then a poll can organise which the biggest issues are.

I'm wondering whether an old codexes is still really valid and balanced with the release of later rules books. With points values for tanks and transports being what they are, and people mentioning that tanks are in favour in V5 rules, do codices still reflect this properly? Are armies such as Tua overpowered based on their points setup?
If not, they need to get each codex rereleased as soon as a rules are updated.
Just publishing a revised points list might do the job.

You seem to say that everyone wants more rules, less miniatures. Not the case. I am content with how it is, and I'm sure other people are, too. The only gripe I have is that every army should be bought up to date before the next Ed. comes out, so we don't have a generation gap with out armies.

As has been said, you need to decide some concrete goals. Companies will listen (contrary to popular belief) if enough of their customers demand certain things, but they have to fulfill the following criteria:

1: Demands must be practically achievable - if doing something would involve more time/staff/investment than a company can easily support, then your ideas will be dismissed.
2: You must not affect the short-term bottom line - any changes (especially the kind of sweeping changes many in the gaming fraternity would like to see in GW) can have a negative impact on the silent majority of regular customers. Publicly traded companies will rarely (if ever) be willing to risk short term profits for long term improvements, particularly when the majority shareholder is a holding company as with GW. Remember they are interested in money, not the happiness of hardcore gamers.
3: It must have a demonstrable long term benefit - we would all like to see tighter rules, reduced secrecy, more regular updates to rules/models, better sculpts, cheaper models and so on, but you must be able to prove at board level that any suggestions you may have will improve profitability over the long term.

Now, if you (or anyone else) can come up with proposals to get what we as gamers would like to see happen within these criteria, I'll happily get on board with the campaign, but anything less than a commercially watertight proposal and GW will - perhaps rightly from a business point of view - ignore you.

@Skinnereal

Are armies such as Tau overpowered based on their old-edition points setup?
Answer- No; Tau, Eldar, and other older codices are NOT overpowered because the costs of vehicles for new codices tends to be less expensive. So while Tau/Eldar got a boost to their vehicles, 5th edition codices got the same bonuses but also significantly lower costs (except for the star-crossed Tyranids, who lack vehicles altogether). All that said, Tau and Eldar certainly can be competitive. They just face a slightly uphill battle because of their age.

Skinnereal wrote:Are armies such as Tua [Removed: overpowered] overrun based on their points setup?

Sorry, I didn't mean that the armies are overpowered. It was that people seem to say Tau are often out-gunned.

dayve110 wrote:If you were to send a letter, i wonder what they would pay more attention to.

One letter with hundreds of names on it.

Or hundreds of identical letters with hundreds of different origins.

Either way, depending on the contents of that letter, i could proberly add 10+ names to it.

The former, much much more so, in my opinion of course.

Skinnereal wrote:If we can get a collated list of all the main gripes, then a poll can organise which the biggest issues are.

I'm wondering whether an old codexes is still really valid and balanced with the release of later rules books. With points values for tanks and transports being what they are, and people mentioning that tanks are in favour in V5 rules, do codices still reflect this properly? Are armies such as Tua overpowered based on their points setup?
If not, they need to get each codex rereleased as soon as a rules are updated.
Just publishing a revised points list might do the job.

a list of gripes, this is exactally why i posted this thread! i'd like to get an braintrust together for just this reason! and I can kind of agree with you army wise. Not that older armies are unplayable. but... well... that's another thread.

Doop Dude wrote:You seem to say that everyone wants more rules, less miniatures. Not the case. I am content with how it is, and I'm sure other people are, too. The only gripe I have is that every army should be bought up to date before the next Ed. comes out, so we don't have a generation gap with out armies.

I am in no way trying to over-generalize and apologies if it came off as such, That's just one part of my opinion is all. I know that that's not a general thought and may not even be a good proposal to GW, but that's also why i posted this thread! so some of us can get together and make a suitable list that comes from a variety of customers globally.

Chimera_Calvin wrote:As has been said, you need to decide some concrete goals. Companies will listen (contrary to popular belief) if enough of their customers demand certain things, but they have to fulfill the following criteria:

1: Demands must be practically achievable - if doing something would involve more time/staff/investment than a company can easily support, then your ideas will be dismissed.
2: You must not affect the short-term bottom line - any changes (especially the kind of sweeping changes many in the gaming fraternity would like to see in GW) can have a negative impact on the silent majority of regular customers. Publicly traded companies will rarely (if ever) be willing to risk short term profits for long term improvements, particularly when the majority shareholder is a holding company as with GW. Remember they are interested in money, not the happiness of hardcore gamers.
3: It must have a demonstrable long term benefit - we would all like to see tighter rules, reduced secrecy, more regular updates to rules/models, better sculpts, cheaper models and so on, but you must be able to prove at board level that any suggestions you may have will improve profitability over the long term.

Now, if you (or anyone else) can come up with proposals to get what we as gamers would like to see happen within these criteria, I'll happily get on board with the campaign, but anything less than a commercially watertight proposal and GW will - perhaps rightly from a business point of view - ignore you.

get on board now then! you seem like a perfect canidate! I actually know someone who owns quite a majority of GW's US stock, idk if that helps at all or not, we're on good terms as well (goes to my local gw, highly doubtful he is a liar since a few people have backed this up). Also, this somewhat stems from rules and how long they take to playtest etc, those revisions to the older SM chapters could have easily been made in a weekend and released within a week from start to finish. I'd like this thread to be my mobile platform to launch a larger campaign through.

Also, I don't think polls will be suitable. If i can find some scholarly dakkaites then we can scour the vast ammount of LOTR, WFB, and 40k forums as well as personal interactions with local customers to jot down all (and i mean ALL) the gripes, from there we can filter the silly/rediculous gripes and create a list of solid and legit proposals to send their way.

Not to be the proverbial dark cloud about to rain on your parade, but this won't go anywhere. This will end up as nothing more than a big debate over several of pages on the forum. To be perfectly honest, I only skimmed your post, but it sounded like a "let's band together and petition GW to ___________" thread. This type of thread has been repeated over and over almost as often as, "how do I strip paint?" threads. Ok. Not really as often, but I hope you get my point.

No matter how well thought out and verbose your posts may be, however apathetic-stirring they may be, this is the internet. The only thing that is proven to work regularly is flaming and trolling. To that end...

You're stupid and WoW was the first MMO!



King Ghidorah

IronfrontAlex wrote:

Doop Dude wrote:You seem to say that everyone wants more rules, less miniatures. Not the case. I am content with how it is, and I'm sure other people are, too. The only gripe I have is that every army should be bought up to date before the next Ed. comes out, so we don't have a generation gap with out armies.

I am in no way trying to over-generalize and apologies if it came off as such, That's just one part of my opinion is all. I know that that's not a general thought and may not even be a good proposal to GW, but that's also why i posted this thread! so some of us can get together and make a suitable list that comes from a variety of customers globally.

I see. Sorry if I seemed a bit catty.

I will tell you one thing I'd like too see - more plastic terrain!

Ghidorah wrote:Not to be the proverbial dark cloud about to rain on your parade, but this won't go anywhere. This will end up as nothing more than a big debate over several of pages on the forum. To be perfectly honest, I only skimmed your post, but it sounded like a "let's band together and petition GW to ___________" thread. This type of thread has been repeated over and over almost as often as, "how do I strip paint?" threads. Ok. Not really as often, but I hope you get my point.

No matter how well thought out and verbose your posts may be, however apathetic-stirring they may be, this is the internet. The only thing that is proven to work regularly is flaming and trolling. To that end...

You're stupid and WoW was the first MMO!



King Ghidorah

This is to be expected, this is why im not looking for a community action, im looking for a crack team of intellectuals who can work with me to make a tight set of...sugestions to GW, these would no doubt be simultaneously posted on dakka once released. But im not going into this blind. May i also remind you i do know a major shareholder, he and i have talked a few times about this, not about my idea but rather about things he's spoken up about in the past and thing's he has had an effect on, which may be minimal to some but if added to this would be massivley convincing.

Doop Dude wrote:

IronfrontAlex wrote:

Doop Dude wrote:You seem to say that everyone wants more rules, less miniatures. Not the case. I am content with how it is, and I'm sure other people are, too. The only gripe I have is that every army should be bought up to date before the next Ed. comes out, so we don't have a generation gap with out armies.

I am in no way trying to over-generalize and apologies if it came off as such, That's just one part of my opinion is all. I know that that's not a general thought and may not even be a good proposal to GW, but that's also why i posted this thread! so some of us can get together and make a suitable list that comes from a variety of customers globally.

I see. Sorry if I seemed a bit catty.

I will tell you one thing I'd like too see - more plastic terrain!

Well i'll certainly record that one!

Your friend the shareholder - what sort of % are we talking here?

Bear in mind that applying pressure on a company via community action and doing so via 'friends in high places' are two completely different things.

The majority of GW shares are held by a holding company so no one person (unless they happen to have £150,000,000 on hand to buy the company lock stock and barrel - anyone got a number for Bill Gates or the Sultan of Brunei?) can make a decision. If you're talking about someone with a 5% stake or higher then they (or ideas they sponsor) will be actively listened to by the board because that person has some genuine influence.

@ Doop Dude - Well I'd like to see the opposite. More hobby articles to create your own terrain not using plastic kits

Chimera_Calvin wrote:Your friend the shareholder - what sort of % are we talking here?

Bear in mind that applying pressure on a company via community action and doing so via 'friends in high places' are two completely different things.

The majority of GW shares are held by a holding company so no one person (unless they happen to have £150,000,000 on hand to buy the company lock stock and barrel - anyone got a number for Bill Gates or the Sultan of Brunei?) can make a decision. If you're talking about someone with a 5% stake or higher then they (or ideas they sponsor) will be actively listened to by the board because that person has some genuine influence.

Were talking US GW stocks, and we're not talking 5%, we're talking around 50%+/- only a few percentages.

you seem very objective-minded, would you like to be a part of this committee?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
and yes i know there's a difference, but the former supported by the latter couldn't hurt right?

I am reminded of the movie 'The Trotsky'.

Anyways, though the intention is there, I can't help but feel this will go anywhere. Maybe I'm pessimistic and jaded, but it will probably fall short without ever sorting out what it is the community wants.

*Shrug* I do wish you the best of luck in your endeavor nevertheless.

The wargames community and those that are solely into GW are not uniform in their opinions. They all have different opinions, and there are many demographics within that. Dakka is a small slice of the GW community and you struggle to get agreement on anything among even half the users participating in any one thread. Even when you have GW carrying out actions like price increases, 'squating' ranges or taking legal action against companies and online groups which only harms the community from a gamer's point of view, you don't get anything like a consensus. Even among those that say "GW are wrong" or whatever there's a spectrum of people saying how wrong and on what things and how to react appropriately.

Dakka, and the internet in general doesn't reflect GW's customer base. A few people shout loud and drown others out, and also the sort of person participating in online forums is a type of gamer probably not like your average GW shop user. Loads of people on this forum hardly play GW games or use a lot of miniatures from other ranges. Walk into an average GW and many, particular younger players (GW's favourite market) will not own miniatures from other games or barely acknowledge their existence.

GW mainly sells to newer gamers, the majority of the disgruntled people are older and more invested in the hobby. It seems to me that GW don't care about veterans because, rightly or wrongly, they don't think they take that much money off them.

It is often argued that 'veterans' provide inspiration to new players and encourage new players to enter the hobby and invest. GW either don't agree or don't care, or think that the benefits from courting these older customers, while true, are not pronounced enough for them to make a concerted effort to maintain them.

Price increases, codex creep and all the rest are only experienced properly by people in the hobby for over two years. I'm sure that GW for a lot of people is a highstreet fad that doesn't last 5, 10 or 20 years.

If this is GW's core customer base and main source of money then how will you get any petition to GW to be taken seriously? The people signing a petition are not the focus of GW's strategy. GW put a low priority on listening to and catering for the opinions of people outside their core market. Furthermore, of the remaining people who would sign such petitions, there's not consensus on what that should be.

So ultimately, that's why all petitions fail to sway the company, if they even get a reasonable number of supporters and are submitted at all, and why "boycotts" are all talk and no action.

IronfrontAlex wrote:I digress, What i mean to get across to you fellow dakkaites is this: Why don't we unite?

Please don't take this the wrong way, but I think you're going about this all wrong. Don't get me wrong, I totally understand having a nice public chin-wag over how GW operates. I enjoy it as much as (alright, much more than) most people. But I don't think political action is really the way to go.

Political action is appropriate when two groups are invested in each other (or when a business's decisions have a social impact, but that's not really appropriate to this thread.) As GW's defenders love to remind us every time anyone criticises GW, they aren't invested in us. They are a business. Their job is to make money. But what a lot of people seem to forget is that we are also not invested in GW. While sitting in our comfy armchairs and telling the story about how we'd fix everything the company is doing wrong is good fun, it's not our job to fix the company.

If GW can't figure out what they're doing wrong after yearly dismal financial reports and constant complaints from fans, they deserve to fail. It's as simple as that. And they will, eventually. If they're so blinkered as to think they can disregard every opinion voiced on the internet because apparently the internet is a scary place only populated by "the haterz", then they are not keeping up with the times and they will eventually lose their position. The way I see it, it's not our job to stop that downward spiral by going out of our way to tell GW what they're doing wrong- most businesses pay damn good money to find out what their customers are thinking, so why should we go out of our way to overcome GW's barriers to communication? It's also not our job to hasten the spiral, like with angry boycotts and whatnot.

There are lots of great miniatures rulesets out there. There are lots of great miniatures out there. When you see quality games, buy them. Regardless of who makes them. When you see quality miniatures, buy them on their own merits- not by how well you can shoe-horn them into your GW army. If enough people abandon the notion that what they've spent on GW so far is some kind of investment that must be sustained or else it will lose value and instead just do business with the companies that deserve their business (GW included, if you think they deserve your business) then the people who make the best product will make the most money and these problems will sort themselves out on their own.

IronfrontAlex wrote:...we're talking around 50%+/- only a few percentages.

I'm not trying to insinuate anything, honestly, I am not. However, a + % of 50% would be, at minimum, 51%. That is controlling stock in the company. That makes him basically the top dog. Majority shareholder. Owns the company. I find it hard to believe he has THAT much stock.

Meh. I stomp on buildings for a living. What do I know?


King Ghidorah

IronfrontAlex wrote:Were talking US GW stocks, and we're not talking 5%, we're talking around 50%+/- only a few percentages.

Okay, you're going to have to edumacate me on this one. According to Bloomberg, there is no 'GW US' to own stocks of. There's GAW LN, GAW EU, and both a market composite and OTC composite.

And that's it.

So it's already kind of nebulous as to what your friend actually owns.

Now, here's the kicker. Being a publicly traded company, there is actually a list on who holds how many shares available to anyone with the know-how on how to find it.

The largest shareholder in the company is called Nomad Investment, at 7.4 million shares, or 23.75% of the total.

So it was nebulous as to what your friend actually owns, and now it's nebulous as to how much he actually owns. If he literally owns Nomad Investment, then he's got 28 mln GBP (roughly 45.5 mln US$) sunk into GW. It's listed as a private US-based firm, so it's possible you know this guy. If this is the case, then everything you're doing here is completely backwards; you don't need a bunch of petitions, you need to convince your friend on what GW 'needs to do' to make this hobby better. Then he walks in and says 'this is what we're doing, hush Kirby, I sign your paychecks', and it's all good.

sourclams wrote:Okay, you're going to have to edumacate me on this one. According to Bloomberg, there is no 'GW US' to own stocks of. There's GAW LN, GAW EU, and both a market composite and OTC composite.

And that's it.

So it's already kind of nebulous as to what your friend actually owns.

Now, here's the kicker. Being a publicly traded company, there is actually a list on who holds how many shares available to anyone with the know-how on how to find it.

The largest shareholder in the company is called Nomad Investment, at 7.4 million shares, or 23.75% of the total.

So it was nebulous as to what your friend actually owns, and now it's nebulous as to how much he actually owns. If he literally owns Nomad Investment, then he's got 28 mln GBP (roughly 45.5 mln US$) sunk into GW. It's listed as a private US-based firm, so it's possible you know this guy. If this is the case, then everything you're doing here is completely backwards; you don't need a bunch of petitions, you need to convince your friend on what GW 'needs to do' to make this hobby better. Then he walks in and says 'this is what we're doing, hush Kirby, I sign your paychecks', and it's all good.

What he said ^


King Ghidorah

Buying GW products while hating its prices is just people taking the path of least resistance. It's the same as watching a hate crime go down, to do nothing is to cooperate with the oppressor and take the path of least resistance.

You know, instead of quitting buying GW products, buying some other game system, recruiting new people, campaigning in his store for the new game, and making a new game night.