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Dice Monkey wrote:That is kinda like saying I found a cubic zirconia after manually filtering through 10 metric tons of poo with my teeth. No thanks.

That pretty much sums up how I feel playing GW games for me, lately.

A new CEO coming into to struggling company will often fire the top management. They are often part of the problem and intransigent to change.

The one thing that Gav always did well was writing battle reports. I was reading through some of the older gorkamorka battle reports that he did a while back and they were absolute top quality - the perfect mix of fiction and fact that a battle report needs to be interesting. If I miss him for anything it will be that (and the fact that yet another familiar face is leaving).

GW is loosing all of its old crew and its sales and popularity is dropping like never before.. strange that pepole dont see any connection between the two.

Replace enthusiasts with money hungry stock holders and see what happens.

Kallbrand wrote:GW is loosing all of its old crew and its sales and popularity is dropping like never before.. strange that pepole dont see any connection between the two.

Even if changes were made immediately, the public wouldn't see changes for at least a year. GW is going to have to make strategic changes in it's business model in order to get the business back on track. The reason GW is dropping off is because of past descisions have not played out well by the current / old, employees. Due to the current poor performance, the middle / upper management will get changed out.

Current / Past Business Model for increase sales:
- Restrict internet sales to the GW website
- Each army list is more powerful than the previous
- Issue a new codex
- Issue a new edition, even if it's only minor changes
- Make what was once good, bad and what was once bad, good
- Horde armies > specialist armies

Current / Past Business Model for increase profit:
- Raise prices every 6 months
- Reduce bits service
- Instead of changing a model, repackage it with new box art
- Have ZERO sales
- Update army books over 10 years instead of at edition release
- Use the same staff for all game systems

The Current / Past Business Model is not working and as such, people need to be replaced.

H.B.M.C. wrote:Andy C couldn't write rules either, he just had a better imagination than the rest of them, was extremely enthusiastic about everything, and came up with lots of great conceps (something GW is, historically, quite good at doing, yet they're terrible at executing these concepts). Without him, Sisters players would have joined the ranks of the Squat players (and, now, the LatD players as well) long ago.

I believe Andy C. wrote the LatD list. Which you and I know isn't perfect, but is ironically more balanced than Haines' CSM codex, and IMO is one of the better army lists they've ever done. If the apocryphal story about him presenting a new ruleset to GW for 4th edition is true, I give him a lot of credit. He saw the quagmire coming.

What happened to Andy H?

That's a very good question.

Hellfury wrote:

Dice Monkey wrote:That is kinda like saying I found a cubic zirconia after manually filtering through 10 metric tons of poo with my teeth. No thanks.

That pretty much sums up how I feel playing GW games for me, lately.

It's sad ... but I couldn't agree more.

gorgon wrote:

H.B.M.C. wrote:Andy C couldn't write rules either, he just had a better imagination than the rest of them, was extremely enthusiastic about everything, and came up with lots of great conceps (something GW is, historically, quite good at doing, yet they're terrible at executing these concepts). Without him, Sisters players would have joined the ranks of the Squat players (and, now, the LatD players as well) long ago.

I believe Andy C. wrote the LatD list. Which you and I know isn't perfect, but is ironically more balanced than Haines' CSM codex, and IMO is one of the better army lists they've ever done. If the apocryphal story about him presenting a new ruleset to GW for 4th edition is true, I give him a lot of credit. He saw the quagmire coming.

What happened to Andy H?

That's a very good question.

Andy Hoare is still doing his thing in the developers arena. someone earlier mentioned that His (Andy Hoare) codecies (with the exception of Tau codex) were some of the most balanced out there. (I am paraphrasing so forgive if I misquoted) I will throw my hat into that arena as well. I enjoy the enthusiasm and luster of Mr. Hoare's hard work.

The Current / Past Business Model is not working and as such, people need to be replaced.

Agree, but what exactly can they do? Can they actually lower prices, or will people just continue to go to online discounters? They can't stop churning out the codices and rulebooks or else the rightly-peeved owners of older ones get even more pissed. I've always said that GW surprised me since not even WotC, who practically have a monopoly of the card game and clix markets, folded up and closed their stores (which even sold all types of games products).

Also, what exactly is too powerful about Tau? Given I haven't played 'em since late fall '06, but lately I've seen posts cropping up about how powerful they are. I imagine it's just the assault guys whining about how they can't reach around the skimmer wall, though.
(PM me about this)

OT: Tau are tough because they play very differently to most armies. They are a glass hammer army, though, and can be cracked if you know how. (No holofields, after all. ) Tau can fire through terrain with a lot of weapons, and with markerlights they can spread their AT throughout the army, making it hard to avoid specific threats. Mech Tau are especially problematic as they are relatively protected, but side armor 12 or 11 is not that hard to deal with, it just takes some planning. Most folks go wrong by rushing forward thinking they have to get into hth where Tau suck, and they fall right into a trap. It takes a few rounds of shaking/stunning (or killing) transports and support tanks before you can push on a well organized Tau player with success. Thats my 2 cents. (Of course I play Tau and think they are the most balanced army of all time. )

Back on topic, I just read through the Warseer post and cannot believe all the moaning. I've always thought it would be good to see Gav go; his codices always seemed problematic. The few times I tried to read his fiction, it was just awful, especially compared to someone like Dan Abnett.

There is so much crying going on in some corners of the interwebs, but I have to say that Andy Hoare, Phil Kelly, and the rest of the design team should be more than up to the task ahead of them. Game design is not rocket science, and what GW needs more than anything are people who are willing to shake things up. 40k especially is a weird game that has been evolving by steps out of Fantasy Battles in Space, and needs someone who can take a fresh look at it.

I believe Andy C. wrote the LatD list. Which you and I know isn't perfect, but is ironically more balanced than Haines' CSM codex, and IMO is one of the better army lists they've ever done. If the apocryphal story about him presenting a new ruleset to GW for 4th edition is true, I give him a lot of credit. He saw the quagmire coming.

I thought Andy Hoar wrote the LatD list? Anyway, if GW had any sense at all they would beg Andy C. to come back and double his salary. His time of 40k overfiend was the best sales and participation they ever had for a reason. He was good and kept things fresh with his Chapter Approved articles. Admittedly there were too many loopholes in the rules and too many FAQS had to be written, but the hobby was more fun anyway. Bring back Andy C. and give him a large group of power gamers and rule benders to keep his accuracy in check.

My 2 cents

A lot of FAQ's was a funny thing.

Having Chapter Approved articles all the time made the hobbyists feel like we were getting some sort of game support, made us feel like we mattered to GW.

And then they published all the Chapter Approved articles into a book, which was mostly just a cut and paste job.

So, not too difficult, to produce new books, which meant new book sales, which meant more revinew....

How was getting rid of Andy C. and Chapter Approved a good idea again? [/sarcasm]

grizgrin wrote:Jazz: what, exactly, did you hope to accomplish with that comment? Please, do share.

Yah, I think that was meant as a joke and a funny little riposte, nothing more.

I'm right there with you, KiMonarrez. Chapter Approved articles couldn't have been more expensive to write than the revenue that the books brought in. It seems ridiculous to have gotten rid of those. HEck, they could have used edited fan-written content and still gotten away with that model. And then White Dwarf might be worth buying. One freaking page of rules per issue would do it.

KiMonarrez wrote:A lot of FAQ's was a funny thing.

Having Chapter Approved articles all the time made the hobbyists feel like we were getting some sort of game support, made us feel like we mattered to GW.

[/sarcasm]

It's interesting how closely non-electronic game publishing can come to the software lifecycle. Software giants shy away from ongoing support- REAL ongoing support that gathers user feedback and fixes things often with patches and small upgrades, not years of brokenness with very rare version releases that fail to address user complaints while introducing many new glitches. Big companies are afraid that real support is a financial commitment that could overwhelm them. In the software world (and with liablity and stuff) that's actually somewhat understandable, but with GW it's ludicrous. They would make so much more money if they were a bit more open with their rules and invested in bite-sized bits of content to keep players buying their mags and minis.

I love it when differing realms of geekdom collide.

Back on topic, seems like even those of us who hated Gav's rules are sad to see the departure of another of the old guard (well, middle guard) from GW. Maybe he'll link up with Andy C. on some of his newer projects. Um, uh oh.

Was he fired or did he leave voluntarily? The Finnish guy who wrote the (original Citadel Journal) Kislev army list and the 6th edition WHFB (among others) did leave because he could got much more paid in the computer games industry.

I was never impressed with Gav's rule-writing ability but he's been a fixture of the game for as long as I've been playing so I'm sad to see him leave.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

According to wikipedia, Andy Chambers has moved onto video games as he is the Creative Director for Starcraft II over at Blizzard.

http://au.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/starcraft2/news.html?sid=6171178&mode=all

now there are some good news. and when GW breaks down, he comes back, brings Blizzard with him and we finally get Starcraft miniatures


there's room for space orks and zombies in that game, isn't there?

jfrazell wrote:Sorry if this has been discussed previously. Discussion on Warseer (confirmed by Brimstone) that he is leaving. No confirm on Alessio also leaving.

http://warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=128708&page=2


Brimstone:

Second yes Gav is leaving GW, he's put in a hell of a contribution both to Games Workshop and Warseer and I'm going to miss him.

I'm pretty sure Alessio is not leaving however.

I took a quit jaunt over to Warseer. I was not very impressed with what I saw going on.

If you think that's bad you should see this forum:

http://warhammer.org.uk/PhP/viewtopic.php?t=39178&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

This is not as bad as Andy Chambers leaving.

I wonder how this'll impact on the rules.

And weren't the Dark Elves corrected with much feedback from Druchii.net? That would be good to see with most 'dexes. The FAQs are coming along and will likely be released bundled with DN:Forever.

EDIT: Besides, blaming him for all the horror that 40k or Fantasy have been through makes me wonder how many people here know what goes into developing a book like that. I just find it silly to insult someone on a personal level, no matter how funny the metaphor might be, because he wrote X/Z/Y.

Well, criticizing someone's writing skills often reflects upon their personality as well. Take Alessio: he's got a rep as a cheesy powergamer and rules lawyer, to the point that it was joked about nervously in White Dwarf when he was hired. Take a look at the codices that he had a hand in for Fantasy, and you see his favorites ending up brokenly good while his formerly least liked opponent lists end up weak. And then the main rules rewrite, where his obvious love of special-rules block movement (Brettonians, Skaven) makes him nerf skirmishers by march-blocking them within 8" of the enemy, effectively removing an entire class of (very historical and common) light infantry tactics from the game. Cheesy reworking of the basic rules to favor a class of army that was already quite powerful. Classic Alessio.

People write bad rules because of something in their character. Whether that be boundless creativity tainted with a bit of sloppiness (Andy Chambers), failure to think beyond the (very good) fluff to hard rules consequences (Gav), or biased favoritism written into fiddly rules (Alessio), it's people's strengths that also create weaknesses in their work. So things get a bit personal when you're analyzing what it is about someone that makes them write poor rules, even when you only know them through their work and a few interviews.

Boy, it would be interesting to see Gav working on Warcraft. I'm not a fan of that game or world, so I'd be interested to see whether he improved or damaged it if Blizzard hired him to do their non-electronic material background stuff (fluff for short).

Do I count two kittens dead because of you?

Anyway, I remember the WD where they presented "gaming supremo" Alessio, but as I´m not into Fantasy I can't really comment on his work. Though I kind of know what you mean as it's some of what was seen through the work of Pete Haines and his Iron Warriors.

Still, hardly a reason to rejoice or make more than the occasional poke. I can see Gav as being good intentioned rather than outright decided to make his favourites the best, and I think that it'd be hard for anyone to have his position and still make out a list that's 100% balanced against all comers, either for better or worse. Considering we're a community and there's probably some limit to who he can talk to about that, I'd guess this was a major factor.

Gee, what is GeDub going to do without good 'ol Gav? Is he now going to concentrate on his fruitful book-writing career? Please tell me he's not going to Battlefront or someone else with a successful game. Oh, the horror.

Gav was the worst employee in the studio, based on his work. This news makes me happy...but not happy enough to stop trying to screw GW on every single corner and sale that I can...

KiMonarrez wrote:A lot of FAQ's was a funny thing.

Having Chapter Approved articles all the time made the hobbyists feel like we were getting some sort of game support, made us feel like we mattered to GW.

And then they published all the Chapter Approved articles into a book, which was mostly just a cut and paste job.

So, not too difficult, to produce new books, which meant new book sales, which meant more revinew....

How was getting rid of Andy C. and Chapter Approved a good idea again? [/sarcasm]

They got rid of Chapter Approved because there was a lot of noise about people not wanting to have to bring a BBB, a codex, three Chapter Approved books, and miscellaneous other White Dwarf issues to the table to ensure that they had all the rules. Which is a good point.

It was also removed ecause a lot of people kvetched about the semi-legal status of CA stuff in tourneys. Which is further emphasis that the emphasis on tournament play has done little but hurt the game.

Salvation122 wrote:It was also removed ecause a lot of people kvetched about the semi-legal status of CA stuff in tourneys. Which is further emphasis that the emphasis on tournament play has done little but hurt the game.

Isn't it odd how GW only seem to listen to feedback when they're choosing to not to do something.

VermGho5t wrote:According to wikipedia, Andy Chambers has moved onto video games as he is the Creative Director for Starcraft II over at Blizzard.

http://au.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/starcraft2/news.html?sid=6171178&mode=all

Good for him. Chances are his pay is close to an order of magnitude higher than what he was getting at GW. I recall R. Talsorian Games basically going on hiatus for a decade while it's eponymous figure did games dev at Microsoft. After a decade he returned with enough cash to basically retire and write the game books he liked as a hobby without needing to worry what others thought.

They would make so much more money if they were a bit more open with their rules and invested in bite-sized bits of content to keep players buying their mags and minis.

AND...

a lot of people kvetched about the semi-legal status of CA stuff in tourneys. Which is further emphasis that the emphasis on tournament play has done little but hurt the game

Seems like GW recognizes this a bit, and is splitting the game into tournament 40k and Apocalypse 40k. The new codexes are clamping down on options (10-man formations, no alternate legions/ chapters/ craftworlds/ clans, etc) while Apocalypse loosens things up.

So we'll have "official tournament 40k" with fewer choices that should (hopefully) be easier to keep balanced. And we'll have "players' consent Apocalypse 40k" with more, goofier choices for people who don't care about tournament play - not just huge armies, but oddball armies. We already have alternate army datasheets (Kroot, Court of the Young King, Kult of Speed, Lost and the Damned) and are rumored to be getting the Chaos Legions as well.

So maybe Apocalypse becomes the loosey-goosey fluff 40k and normal 40k becomes more streamlined and tournament-friendly.

Or maybe I'm just talking myself into it because I would like to see the return of more funky Chapter Approved variants in any form whatsoever.

A fair number of RPG and board game people have gone into the video games industry.