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Well, I was never a huge fan of Warhammer Fantasy, so I am probably not the one who should be stating his opinion on this, but I was a casual follower. Actually, most of anything I know from Fantasy is from my love for the old Man O' War game. I still have that, and if anyone wanted to play a game, I would be all over it. I also have the 6th edition WFB set, but haven't even assembled all of the models. I would love to one day, but there just are a bunch of other projects I have in front of it that I like more. And I have played just about every other GW game under the sun going back to Rogue Trader.

Had another WFB 9th Ed had come out and looked like another traditional WFB game, I certainly would have enjoyed checking it out. Maybe even flirted with buying it as I had done with 7th and 8th. I did like what I knew of the old world, and didn't bother keeping up with the End of Times to know exactly what happened, although I kind of had an idea that they were creatively destroying one world to reboot the game. The problem is, I really don't like what I have seen from this new world. I dislike most of the model designs. The rules might be better I don't know, I haven't played, but the core box set and the 'universe' I see GW has created is enough for me to not even flirt with being interested.

I had my issues with WFB, but I appreciated the variety of armies, the character of the armies, and could tell that some of them haven't aged very well. I can see the desire for GW to change something. I just think this overhaul was too much, and while I was a casual fan willing to buy a few models here and there, I have zero interest now. And I can't help but look at the AoS set and think its just DV with swords and axes. Its like we went to 40k from WFB, back to WFB thru 40k. I know 40k borrowed from the WFB universe, but now I just feel like there is little different between the contents of each universe so to speak, and therefore even less variety of games from GW than there has been.

I have been a fan of GW for the last 20+ years. I just feel as each year goes on, they give me fewer and fewer reasons to be a fan of theirs. If it weren't for 40k, I don't think I would have any interest visiting their website anymore. I do miss GW's Golden Years. I miss the color, the comedy, etc. I guess after pretty much owning all I could possibly want from all the other GW games I have collected, GW failed in roping me in on this one. I kind of feel they put the nail in the coffin for me.

As an off the cuff initial response to what I have seen so far of AoS, I would say I feel the opposite.

Nothing about WFB really drew me in, because I was a 40k fan.

Now, I actually took a look at what AoS has to offer. I find the setting to be more to my liking, probably because they basically took crazy ass 40k and injected it into WFB.

I haven't played it yet, but I am liking the new aesthetic(art and models) and the minimal amount of fiction I've read.

I got into the Old World via the Warhammer RPG, so I am bummed out they blew it up and now it's super Angel adventure in Heaven(s).

But as long as you can find a buddy, you can play last edition, or well, just fall back to the RPGs (I play 2nd ed, good system)

Huge fan of the Black Library Warhammer settings.

Fond memories:

- Gotrek slaying a Bloodthirster like a boss, and shrugging it off as a 'no biggie'.

- Malus Darkblade bickering with the evil daemon posessing him, like an old married couple.

- Brunner the Bounty Hunter kickin' ass and takin' names, like a boss.

- Thanquol being a typical, Saturday-morning cartoon villain. I hope his musk glands aren't too spent after the whole End Times affair.

- Orion, Consort-King to Ariel and all-round badass leader of the Deepwood Host in all it's awesomeness.

- And last but not least, Genevieve Dieudonne defeating Drachenfels and saving Karl Franz from the Undead. She's my kinda gal!

Ah, Warhammer. You will be missed dearly.

This kiddie 'Masters of the Universe' rip-off masquerading as Warhammer is a pale shade of it's predecessor.

What I'm trying to say, is, any 40k enthusiasts out there who shied away from dipping toes in the Fantasy setting, do yourselves a favour and get reading some old BL classics. You WILL NOT be disappointed.

You know, you can see me defending AoS and it's settings in a couple threads but I must admit that I miss the "World-That-Was" too. I've been a huge fan of the Empire and I basically loved everything about it - the structure, the armies, provinces, that weird, crazy architecture, the colleges of magic, the depth. I love cities in fantasy universes and I always loved noting all the cool stuff people came up with that I didn't for the sake of, firstly, my D&D sessions and nowadays as inspirations for the games my studio is developing and it has to be said - the Old World was unique, there's no doubt about that. Over all those years all those editions and novels really brought the world to life with all the detail (yes, even those silly, low quality paperbacks like Gotrek & Felix ones contributed) and I'm going to miss it.

But it has been stale for a long time too. There's only so much Chaos invasion from the north stuff you can do before it gets to the ridiculous point of Abaddon's 13 failed crusades. Such a failure! So the story had to progress... but which way? You either could have had good guys win - mobilize huge armies, beat the evil bad guys, push them back north and seal the chaos portals through some fancy heroic gizmo stuff of legends. And they lived happily ever after. Sounds extremely naive, childish and dull for me. I don't know, a happy end just doesn't cut it for me in grim, gothic fantasy.

So the other option was... to have Chaos win. To have Archaon assemble the greatest army of Chaos the world has ever seen and march south, grabbing all the allies he can and even tricking other evil guys into helping him (Nagash - I know it's shown the other way around and that Nagash somewhat reached his godly status, but let's not fool ourselves, Archaon was the one who won the End Times) and, well, finally succeed and bring the Old World to ruin.

And yes, that's what they did. Of two possible options of ending it to not keep it hovering in the bland, stagnant stalemate they picked the better one, they did a huge campaign with enormous events and sent it off with a huge bang.

It can be argued based on personal preferences whether the new setting of weird, half-mythical and half-alien realms is good or bad, it's definetely totally different, but it has it's potential - when we finally see the focus shift from the titanic clash of Sigmar's Stormhosts with those that occupy these new, weird worlds there will come regular human civilization and then I will see if I enjoy the way normal nations are designed - their armies, structure, architecture and all the ideas.

Right now this is Manowar's wet dream as this is the beginning of the greatest war yet and it has to go in with a bang, but then, after the dust smokes we'll see what AoS universe really looks like. We'll see if GW will add the depth we loved in Old World.

There's nowt to say you can't use AoS rules for games set in the Old World though. The entire background/setting still exists; it's just not what GW are pursuing commercially.

As a GW fan and 40k player for almost the past two decades, I appreciated the lore of both fantasy and 40k. As a 40k player, I never played fantasy but still bought the codex books for the pics and fluff.

When AOS came into being, I jumped on board hard-core. As a collector and modeler, I was finally able to use the random minis I had bought from fantasy over the years (had bought them because they looked great) without spending a crap ton of cash for a complete fantasy army.

90% of folks around here love playing AOS. The game is a blast, the art is great, the atmosphere is laid back, but the storyline so far is just so-so imho.

Hands down, when it comes to fantasy, nothing beats the end times lore... nothing... not even the original fantasy fluff. I guess comparing AOS to the end times is really what makes AOS lore just so-so.

^ This.

The reason the End Times struck such a chord was the fact that fan-favourite hero/ villain characters, as well as resurrected/ brought back characters from Oldhammer, collided in an epic swan-song battle royale.

It was a send-off written for a world that GW saw no profit in any longer and decided to take a huge gamble with AOS instead of maintaining the '5 minutes to midnight' mechanic that the Storm of Chaos set up.

Yeah, certain plot strands were abandoned (looking at you, Settra) or ignored. But for the most part, the End Times worked.

I suppose we'll have Total War: Warhammer going forward, to fulfill our old nostalgia needs.

Looking forward to the Von Carstein campaigns, always wanted to command a virtual Zombie Dragon someday.