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.

GW has "repackaged" their boxes of infantry for LotR/WotR. Each box will only have one sprue instead of two, so only half the models, at 25.50 USD instead of 33 USD. Massive price increase for anyone into or interested in LotR/WotR.

Wasn't that license supposed to end in 2010?

I've not seen a single game of it played ever and it doesn't interest me, so when it does end it means more resources for WFB that are sorely needed.

I like the LoTR minis.

Of course, that's because I traded the one's my sister's ex-boyfriend gave me for my first Flames of War minis! But the Goblin warrior pack was always good for games of D&D... I might have to go find one now.

Ah, GW. Master of stealth price increases. I guess this is in preparation for The Hobbit.

In all honesty this isn't surprising. WFB orcs went from 19 models at $35 to 10 models for $29 in one day. That's a 63% increase per model.

This showed up in N&R earlier this week... it's a bummer for sure

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/423128.page

It's a shame, they were great in non-heroic scale armies, but are really becoming to expensive

At least a lot were sold so they shouldn't be too hard to pick up second hand, I do have a couple of nice units of Rohan in my desk

I wonder what they will come up with for the Hobbit? They already have the Battle of Five armies game, but I'll wager there will be some new releases just in time for the films. Maybe thats why the price is going up now.

Aerethan wrote:Wasn't that license supposed to end in 2010?

I've not seen a single game of it played ever and it doesn't interest me, so when it does end it means more resources for WFB that are sorely needed.

I still don't think that's what would happen.

I think they'd cut LOTR and then cut all the staff that worked on it. You
end up with the same amount of resources devoted to WFB.

That would be a damn shame as they could easily divide the staff up between 40k and fantasy and release models and books faster than the current schedule(although perhaps they don't want to for some reason).

For all we know, that one book writer for LOTR is dying for a chance to revamp Wood Elves!

Aerethan wrote:That would be a damn shame as they could easily divide the staff up between 40k and fantasy and release models and books faster than the current schedule(although perhaps they don't want to for some reason).

For all we know, that one book writer for LOTR is dying for a chance to revamp Wood Elves!

He might want to, but they might not want to ramp up the
release schedule. They'd end up having less work for less peeople.

I've never seen a game of it played, ever. I've gone to many a FLGS and GW stores. I've seen the display game, tried it once with a redshirt, but I've never seen someone actually play the game.

Upping the price just seems like another nail in the coffin. If it meant more resources being put towards 40k and fantasy I wouldn't mind at all if LOTR died.

Necroshea wrote:I've never seen a game of it played, ever. I've gone to many a FLGS and GW stores. I've seen the display game, tried it once with a redshirt, but I've never seen someone actually play the game.

Upping the price just seems like another nail in the coffin. If it meant more resources being put towards 40k and fantasy I wouldn't mind at all if LOTR died.

And just because you've seen no one play doesn't mean it isn't played.

I hardly ever see a lot of games that I see played at conventions like
Little Wars, but the kinds of people who play them play in their basements
and not at shops.

There were LOTR and WOTR games being played at Adepticon the last several years.

I don't mean to be obtuse about this, but I think everyone has to back
off of the whole "the end of LOTR will mean more 40k/WHFB." I think
GW counts their beans and knows how much money they can get out
of any given 40k/Fantasy release, which is probably why they have
such a slow release now. If they cut LOTR/WOTR I'm guessing they'll
either cut those resources or they'll find a brand new non-40k/Fantasy
related project for them to work on.

This stuff is not taking people away from 40k/Fantasy. If they thought
they could make more money with more 40k/Fantasy releases, they'd do it.

Well, yeah, of course. I don't see people playing chess ever but that doesn't mean people don't play it (it makes me sad too, I LOVE chess).

Anyways, I seem to have come across as one of those types who actually think the fall of LOTR would effect others. I merely meant to say if it DID impact 40k or fantasy in a positive way then I wouldn't miss it, otherwise I really don't care what they do with that line. The worst it does to me is fill up a 1/3 of white dwarf, but then again I don't really buy those either.

GW is not going to let the Perry twins go. They are the main sculptors for LOTR, and did a lot of other GW before that.

snurl wrote:GW is not going to let the Perry twins go. They are the main sculptors for LOTR, and did a lot of other GW before that.

Right, but they're also not going to increase production to accommodate them.

They'll send projects the Perry twins way that they would have otherwise
given to other sculptors, and they won't ever have to increase production.

Perhaps resources that could go towards specialist games...

A boy can dream of a new Mordheim release can't he?

I'm still interested in when the LotR license is supposed to expire.

Aerethan wrote:Wasn't that license supposed to end in 2010?

I've not seen a single game of it played ever and it doesn't interest me, so when it does end it means more resources for WFB that are sorely needed.

Actually, it means less net income, so LESS resources for WHFB.

Kaldor wrote:

Aerethan wrote:Wasn't that license supposed to end in 2010?

I've not seen a single game of it played ever and it doesn't interest me, so when it does end it means more resources for WFB that are sorely needed.

Actually, it means less net income, so LESS resources for WHFB.

QFT!

All the 40k-fanboi wishlisting and LotR-hate was old back in 2001 when I first came across it. The notion that somehow LotR deprived the other games systems of resources has time and time again been proved to be demonstrably false! GW ramped up their staff (for instance they employed Mat Ward and Adam Troke specifically to work on LotR) resources to produce LotR stuff over and above their 40k and WFB stuff. Similarly LotR was released *alongside* not *instead of* their core games. And, to put it mildly, LotR earned them a crap-ton of cash. Cash that was invested in the plastics design and manufacturing process. Simply put, without LotR then GW would not have produced the Baneblade and subsequent similarly complex models.

40k players should be on their knees grovelling in thanks at the feet of LotR, not spouting the usual bile and hatred. Which, folks, I have to say is simple ignorance.

The next time someone spouts the old "LotR spoiled my Warhams, wah wah wah", then feel free to call them an ignorant fool, because simply put, that is the objective truth. If they had one ounce of common sense, and spent one minute doing some actual research, then they would not hold that stupid, foolish, incorrect and ignorant opinion.

All IMHO of course....

Osbad wrote:[(for instance they employed Mat Ward and Adam Troke specifically to work on LotR) resources to produce LotR stuff over and above their 40k and WFB stuff.

That is just one more reason to hate LotR then.

All the LotR hate really comes from the fact that when it was released it took over alot of space in WD that was devoted to other things like specialist games.

LotR came out at the same time that all Specialist Games support was cut in the company, so it gave the perception that it had a part to play in that.

At least that is my reason to dislike it. It signaled the initial downfall of GW from miniature gaming company that made cool games to evil corporation only interested in sucking money from their playerbase.

Would GW have survived without the cash cow that where all the kids buying LotR miniatures because of the movies (without ever playing the game)? I don't know, but I bet my left kidney that if it did survive then we wouldn't be seeing all the carp "milk them for all they got and give nothing back" atitude that we see today...

PhantonViper wrote:All the LotR hate really comes from the fact that when it was released it took over alot of space in WD that was devoted to other things like specialist games.

Wrong wrong wrong wrong! Count the pages. When they released LotR they increased the page count of the magazine. They took NO resources away from WFB or 40k.

WD has fluctuated over the years in page count and content. But generally speaking LotR was an addition in the magazine, not a substitution.

Seriously, I doubt the people who come up with this garbage can even count! How much effort is it to count the pages in WD and come up with actual facts instead of spouting 2nd hand nonsense opinions like this one?

PhantomViper wrote:LotR came out at the same time that all Specialist Games support was cut in the company, so it gave the perception that it had a part to play in that.

At least that is my reason to dislike it.

Which again, is erroneous. Lack of support for SG was entirely the problem of SG and NOTHING TO DO WITH LOTR. If SG had been profitable then they would have continued. They were not, and NEVER WERE. It is well documented that GW realised they were going up a blind ally with SG's trying to turn them into long term revenue streams. LotR becoming popular did not somehow magically make SG less popular and therefore cause GW to drop them. SG were NEVER popular enough to generate the level of support their fans demanded. So that support was cut. END OF STORY.

It signaled the initial downfall of GW from miniature gaming company that made cool games to evil corporation only interested in sucking money from their playerbase.

Again. Totally. Fallacious. In fact, GW continued to expensively support SG to a level not justified by revenue streams right up until they axed the Fanatic Studio in 2004. That's a 4 year period after they took on the LotR licence and only 1 year before the LotR bubble broke. A massive length of time in the business world. And again, without the subsidy of LotR profits, axing Fanatic was a decision they would have been financially forced to do years earlier!

Lets get it clear: SG was always going to fail. It was a broken business model. The sales volumes NEVER justified the amount of support that GW chucked at them and fans became to feel entitled to. NEVER. Even at its height, BFG for instance was only a tiny blip of revenue compared to any of the core games. Simply put, the "lead tail" was never there in the first place for these games. Fun as they were. Only Epic 40000 came close, and that was killed by the 2nd edition rules fiasco, long before LotR was even a glint in Peter Jacksons eyes.

It is also a matter of record that Kirby was not overly in favour of taking on LotR, it was the staff that persuaded him in the end. He and other senior managers knew it would be a bubble and that this would cause management headaches when the share price ultimately returned back to "normal" levels.

Sure, I recognise that during the "Bubble" period GW management got "fat and lazy" (Kirby stated so himself in the 2005 annual report), but that was not directly the fault of the LotR success, more the case that they took 40k and WFB fans for granted, assuming there was no competition and that they would continue to grow revenues without having to chase customers. An entirely different kettle of fish.



So please. Get the facts straight and stop belileving this errant nonsense. It carries about as much conviction as the Loch Ness Monster.

*rolls eyes*

And Viper, I'm not trying to pick on you. I apologise if I come over excessively harsh,. It isn't directed at you personally. But after 11 years now of this absolute nonsense being repeated in every GW forum I have ever participated in, I am getting heartily sick of it.

People have a right to an opinion, even a demonstrably erroneous one. This the internet after all I have a right to get annoyed with foolish opinions, even if I don't have a right to insult those that hold them

Osbad wrote:

Wrong wrong wrong wrong! Count the pages. When they released LotR they increased the page count of the magazine. They took NO resources away from WFB or 40k.

]

I think there was the one issue with 2 pages of 40k, and that may have been what prompted the whole 'White Hobbit magazine' jokes that were going around at the time.

I completely agree with the rest of your points however.

Indeed.


One would suggest in fact that we will, in the GW stores anyway, see the focus shift away from the WOTR battle game as the 3rd core/key game, and see the emphasis be placed once again on the LOTR skirmish game.

Pacific wrote:

Osbad wrote:

Wrong wrong wrong wrong! Count the pages. When they released LotR they increased the page count of the magazine. They took NO resources away from WFB or 40k.

]

I think there was the one issue with 2 pages of 40k, and that may have been what prompted the whole 'White Hobbit magazine' jokes that were going around at the time.

I completely agree with the rest of your points however.

I wouldn't disagree that from time to time one core game will dominate the whole magazine>. This happened this month with the new Vamp Counts which dominate the magazine to the detrement of 40k and LotR. It is irritating, but it is what GW have always done in WD and is not a result of LotR specifically.

There were plenty of balancing occasions when LotR got barely any coverage and 40k or WFB dominated. It is a matter of mathematical fact that overall (until I stopped counting a few years back) there was no less 40k and WFB coverage ON AVERAGE after the inclusion of LotR than before it. Any individual issue may vary, but that is just one datum (or a handful). On average, the size of the magazine increased in 2001 and only dwindled again in the mid noughties when they ran into profit problems and foisted the godawful "BUY THE GIANT" issue on us.

Again. I don't deny they dropped the ball on 40k in the early noughties, but it would have happened anyway. It was not BECAUSE OF LotR. LotR may have delayed them spotting the problems, but that is a very different issue, and on the whole the benefits of the revenue from LotR more than outweighed they problems of distraction when it came to improving the hobby for players. GW dropped the ball on 40k because they thought they didn't have really have to try very hard to make the model range sell well.

Sorry to bang on like this. Didn't realise I was so sore about it!

I can't understand the dislike of LoTR, I thought it was a good system and preferred it to Warhammer. It felt more realistic and I liked how it managed to reflect the Hero aspect of the main characters.

Osbad wrote:Lots of probably true stuff

I was talking mostly about perception and the proof of that is that you've been hearing the same stuff for the past 11 years, because that was the perception that was passed at the time, that it is true or false really doesn't mater after all these years.

And you really can't judge the SG solely by the revenue that they generated by themselves... They were gateway games into the "GW hobby" and also served as an outlet for players that were burned out of the main games.

Without them, GW players started to turn to other companies for smaler games and for "diferent" games from their core 2 and that has hurt GW more than the smaler ROI on the SG would have.

So, according to a previous poster, we can thank LotR for the Finecast(tm) debacle?

Cheers.......

But how does this make any sense? The demand for the product is terribly low as is, raising the effective price is just going to lower it to be non-existent. They already don't move the product in stores enough so it's just sitting in warehouses and on floorspace wasting capital. It's like they're intentionally trying to waste money and kill revenue.

tl;dr: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_DnPwaEn8aGE/TSpzcGV0LRI/AAAAAAAANZ8/d1gCIm9UgsI/s1600/scanners4.jpg

Surtur wrote:But how does this make any sense? The demand for the product is terribly low as is, raising the effective price is just going to lower it to be non-existent. They already don't move the product in stores enough so it's just sitting in warehouses and on floorspace wasting capital. It's like they're intentionally trying to waste money and kill revenue.

You are forgetting the core rule of corporate GW. Price rises don't have to make sense, they are ALWAYS the right strategy!

But this price increase is just a positioning strategy to take more money out of future buyers when the Hobbit movie comes out.

reds8n wrote: Indeed.


One would suggest in fact that we will, in the GW stores anyway, see the focus shift away from the WOTR battle game as the 3rd core/key game, and see the emphasis be placed once again on the LOTR skirmish game.

I believe that this is precisely the reason for the shift. In WotR, the new boxes are only 1 1/2 companies; utterly useless. When debating this with my WotR buddies (there are quite a lot of us in our area), this was the conclusion we came to. The only other possibility (a bit of a wishlist, imo) was that they were trying to sell off the old sprues in preparation for new models.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

PhantomViper wrote:

Osbad wrote:Lots of probably true stuff

I was talking mostly about perception and the proof of that is that you've been hearing the same stuff for the past 11 years, because that was the perception that was passed at the time, that it is true or false really doesn't mater after all these years.

And you really can't judge the SG solely by the revenue that they generated by themselves... They were gateway games into the "GW hobby" and also served as an outlet for players that were burned out of the main games.

Without them, GW players started to turn to other companies for smaler games and for "diferent" games from their core 2 and that has hurt GW more than the smaler ROI on the SG would have.

They were definitely gateway games. I know several people that only got into it because of Blood Bowl or something similar.

how about we learn from the past, and when the hobbit minis come out, don't waste your money on that garbage. No one plays LotR war games, and the 5 people that do at conventions might not justify you getting it.

Plus, GW constantly craps on it's customers with contempt and hate, stop supporting their QUICK CASH IN crap like this.

I have never seen a single game of lotr played since it came out, and I play around the world. I know if any of my friend even bring the hobbit minis up, I am telling them full stop to not bother, and go buy something else instead.