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.

Reading Dakka you see it constantly in threads that somehow 8th has been this massive failure that everyone hates and its running GW. But according to GW

“Following the close of its 2017/18 financial year Games Workshop provides the following trading highlights: Games Workshop is pleased to announce that the sales and profit growth, which was discussed in the trading update released on 4 May 2018, has continued in the period to the end of the financial year. Sales growth has been across all sales channels. We expect the Group’s sales for the 53 weeks to 3 June 2018 to be approximately £219 million and the Group’s profit before tax to be at not less than £74 million. Royalties receivable from licensing are c. £10 million. In recognition of our staff’s contribution to these results, we paid during the year a bonus amounting in total to £5 million. This was paid equally to each member of staff. Games Workshop also announces that the Board has today declared a dividend of 30 pence per share. This will be paid on 27 July 2018 to shareholders on the register at 22 June 2018, with an ex-dividend date of 21 June 2018. The last date for elections for the dividend re-investment plan is 6 July 2018. We will provide detailed information on the audited results for the 2017/18 financial year at the time of our full year results announcement on 31 July 2018.”

Source: http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2018/06/finance-gw-teases-an-amazing-year.html

GW has seen an almost 40% sales growth from 2017. Bell of lost souls did an article with all the numbers and quotes. You can also independently look up GWs statements. So it looks as if 8th has been insanely successful and thus 8th style of play is most likely here to stay.

So looking at this report
1. Do you think that GW will ever truly move to a 9th or simply seen a minor update almost like what we are seeing is AOS 2.0 which is essentially adding a few rules and clarifying the old edition?
2. Will we begin to see a lot of new factions like in AOS or are there already enough factions in 40K?
3. Will people on Dakka ever store claiming that 8th is the worst thing to ever happen to 40k?

Lets discuss what exactly a sales report like this means for 40k headed into the future

So much disingenuous rubbish in that BoLS blog, it's unreal.

"Popular" doesn't equal "Good". "Appealing to the lowest common denominator" does equal "Good".

GW have manged to lure in a large new audience with dumbed down STEAMLINED (which doesn't mean well written, see my sig) rulesets to sell 9 pence of plastic for £40 to. They haven't made a "good" set of rules.

And only a very small minority think that 8th wasn't an improvement on 7th. If they actually hired a proper rules editor for 9th, that would make everyone a lot happier.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
So much disingenuous rubbish in that BoLS blog, it's unreal.

"Popular" doesn't equal "Good". "Appealing to the lowest common denominator" does equal "Good".

GW have manged to lure in a large new audience with dumbed down STEAMLINED (which doesn't mean well written, see my sig) rulesets to sell 9 pence of plastic for £40 to. They haven't made a "good" set of rules.

And only a very small minority think that 8th wasn't an improvement on 7th. If they actually hired a proper rules editor for 9th, that would make everyone a lot happier.

Popularity is arguably the only (and best) metric we have for measuring how good a game is. I don't see how anyone could argue that 8th isn't good while it's bringing in such a massive amount of money. Especially doing this despite the release of star wars legions which has a bigger more popular IP and surely would have destroyed an inferior game completely.

Is 8th edition a financial success? Yes. It is.

Does that mean it’s above scrutiny and criticism? No.

Financial success does not equal good. It never has and never will. Justin bieber is one of the most successful artists in the world, he also produces fething terrible music, fight me.

I want GW to do well, I really do. I love 40k and I want it to be around for as long as I am. But success is a process, by ignoring gaping flaws in a game and ignoring blatant mistakes and oversights by a design team who gets payed to do this for a living, you are contributing to mediocrity.

Is 8th the worst game ever? No. (AoS is). But it’s by far from the best, and I think there is lots of room for improvement. Financial statements will not convince me otherwise.

There’s also the fact that there is more to the upswing in profits than simply dropping a new edition. They also removed their old CEO and replaced him with someone who seems to be more in touch with reality. They released several new armies and releases for armies, brought back speciality games, licensed their IP out to various video game franchises, re entered the competitive gaming scene, started doing market research, and created an online presence. These are not insignificant changes that also contributed positively to their financial situation.

So please, put down the koolaid.

Asmodios wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
So much disingenuous rubbish in that BoLS blog, it's unreal.

"Popular" doesn't equal "Good". "Appealing to the lowest common denominator" does equal "Good".

GW have manged to lure in a large new audience with dumbed down STEAMLINED (which doesn't mean well written, see my sig) rulesets to sell 9 pence of plastic for £40 to. They haven't made a "good" set of rules.

And only a very small minority think that 8th wasn't an improvement on 7th. If they actually hired a proper rules editor for 9th, that would make everyone a lot happier.

Popularity is arguably the only (and best) metric we have for measuring how good a game is. I don't see how anyone could argue that 8th isn't good while it's bringing in such a massive amount of money. Especially doing this despite the release of star wars legions which has a bigger more popular IP and surely would have destroyed an inferior game completely.

In my experience, things that are popular are often subpar. For a capitalist business, the most important factor in determining if something is "good" or not is its popularity. I do happen to think the 8th edition ruleset is the best I've played with in 40k so far. I started in 4th but didn't actually know how to play correctly until 5th.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
Is 8th edition a financial success? Yes. It is.

Does that mean it’s above scrutiny and criticism? No.

Financial success does not equal good. It never has and never will. Justin bieber is one of the most successful artists in the world, he also produces fething terrible music, fight me.

I want GW to do well, I really do. I love 40k and I want it to be around for as long as I am. But success is a process, by ignoring gaping flaws in a game and ignoring blatant mistakes and oversights by a design team who gets payed to do this for a living, you are contributing to mediocrity.

Is 8th the worst game ever? No. (AoS is). But it’s by far from the best, and I think there is lots of room for improvement. Financial statements will not convince me otherwise.

There’s also the fact that there is more to the upswing in profits than simply dropping a new edition. They also removed their old CEO and replaced him with someone who seems to be more in touch with reality. They released several new armies and releases for armies, brought back speciality games, licensed their IP out to various video game franchises, re entered the competitive gaming scene, started doing market research, and created an online presence. These are not insignificant changes that also contributed positively to their financial situation.

So please, put down the koolaid.

No one is arguing that 8th is perfect..... But its hard to call it a disaster when it's doing so amazingly. If anything it shows we need fewer changes then ever before and id argue we are getting more improvements more frequently this edition then any edition in the past.

This is because they make new models & datasheets that invalidate older armies/units, forcing older players and new players to spend money at GW products alike.

Financial success = money made.

Financial success doesn't mean players are happy.

The problem us players have in the game has no bearing on the success of the sales. Afterall, I think the poll somewhere showed that more people simply likes to collect miniatures and not play the game of 40k.

 skchsan wrote:
This is because they make new models & datasheets that invalidate older armies/units, forcing older players and new players to spend money at GW products alike.

Financial success = money made.

Financial success doesn't mean players are happy.

The problem us players have in the game has no bearing on the success of the sales. Afterall, I think the poll somewhere showed that more people simply likes to collect miniatures and not play the game of 40k.

But there is more evidence of people playing the game
1. Increased sales by almost 40% (some percentage must be players)
2. Tournaments are selling out at a record pace and in larger numbers than ever. LVO sold out in just 48 hours and the FLG guys had to fly back out to vegas to try to get even more room for the event

It really seems like just a vocal few on Dakka don't like 8th

 skchsan wrote:
This is because they make new models & datasheets that invalidate older armies/units, forcing older players and new players to spend money at GW products alike.

The problem us players have in the game has no bearing on the success of the sales. Afterall, I think the poll somewhere showed that more people simply likes to collect miniatures and not play the game of 40k.

I think that about does it for this thread.

Asmodios wrote:
It really seems like just a vocal few on Dakka don't like 8th

That really is what it is. It's not only that some people won't ever be pleased, it's that some of those people always say that it's the worst thing ever and that the game is unplayable because of it. There's a lot of good, valid criticisms of things in 8th, but none of them make the game unplayable or bad. I, for one, would like to see some, though not all, vehicles and monsters have 2 facings; front and back. I think it would be a lot of fun and make some things a little less safe to dive deep into enemy lines, or give a benefit to players that are able to surround their opponents, but it's a very minor thing overall.

 Yarium wrote:

Asmodios wrote:
It really seems like just a vocal few on Dakka don't like 8th

That really is what it is. It's not only that some people won't ever be pleased, it's that some of those people always say that it's the worst thing ever and that the game is unplayable because of it. There's a lot of good, valid criticisms of things in 8th, but none of them make the game unplayable or bad. I, for one, would like to see some, though not all, vehicles and monsters have 2 facings; front and back. I think it would be a lot of fun and make some things a little less safe to dive deep into enemy lines, or give a benefit to players that are able to surround their opponents, but it's a very minor thing overall.

Yes, I don't think there is anyone that thinks 8th is perfect (i have several of my own gripes) but it really does seem like some people won't give 8th a chance or truly do just want GW to fail. Even when faced with hard stats on the tremendous growth in both sales and the tournament attendance, some people just cant seem to admit GW is doing things correctly so far in 8th.

Asmodios wrote:


It really seems like just a vocal few on Dakka don't like 8th

Generally, people are more vocal when they dislike something than when they like something. The majority of people who like the game aren't going to go online and praise it, they'll probably just try to involve their friends or family. Those who dislike it are much more inclined to speak out, either online or to others in person.

As already mentioned, many 40k/AOS "players" rarely, if ever game, and many of those that do don't care much about the rules past "something to do with all my cool toys". And so the customer base proves Kirby right: people will buy the jewel-like objects of wonder GW makes, because purchasing GW products is the hobby.

8th may be popular. It does not necessarily follow that 8th must be a high-quality ruleset because it is popular.

The gaming industry as a whole doesn't make high-quality games very often. They make stuff that is watered down to appeal to the most people possible because making as much money as they can-whether it's GW, EA or Riot and so on- is more important than making a great game.

Most of what I hear and read of the positives of 8th boils down to:

Being something someone can just open up and play right away, because taking time and effort to learn a game, even if it means that the play experience will be richer in the long run, is too much work.

Being faster, because apparently there is an expectation that a mass-battle game with 50+ models per side should take as little time to play as one match of MTG.

And not being 7th edition- because an extremely simple, shallow ruleset with gameplay that consists of shuffling models towards the center of the table and rolling buckets of dice was somehow the only alternative to an extremely poor edition.

Is 8th the step in right direction?
Yes it is.

Is 8th edtion a good edition?
For casual gamers that dont spam op shait or abuse soup, but create their own house terrain rules cuz the game dont have terrain rules, yes it is.
For everyone else, 8th is not the solution to 40k. only 9th is.

GW has no sence of balance and combined whit their very successful hype train machine, they are basicly luring people to buy the next army/model cuz it has rules that make the prev army/model weak.

It is very clear that GW is a miniature model company, not a game company.

If only there were 40k events to gage the popularity of this game. Someone could put on conventions and tournaments especially for 40k players, and we could track attendance of those events over time as s proxy for the game’s popularity. Then we could compare those numbers to sales figures to get a clearer picture of the state of 40k as a whole.

If only.

I don't think I've seen people claim it was a failure. Just that they don't like it.

I think that the true value of 8th will be proven as time goes on. I think GW lost several players to the fast edition cycle and a lot of people came back with the promise of a complete overhaul. Whether this holds or not remains to be seen. You also have a very heavy and front loaded release too. Most had bought the indexes they needed then had a codex within a year for instance. You also had a major release for the largest faction in the game and all its sub factions. We don't know if this reached GWs sales goals for Primaris but it's no surprise that it increased sales.

If GW falls into the old GW habits then I think this will just be a sales spike. If they actually hold to the new GW image they are trying to build then they will likely continue to succeed. I think that addressing the game quality issues that many current fans bring up will help cement the new over the old.

From a game design standpoint - if your focus is on a really good game, you aren't going to make much money on it because a really good game will only appeal to the people that think its a really good game.

To make as much money as possible you have to have it watered down to appeal to as many people as possible.

Which is why GW games will never be "good".

 FrozenDwarf wrote:
Is 8th the step in right direction?
Yes it is.

Is 8th edtion a good edition?
For casual gamers that dont spam op shait or abuse soup, but create their own house terrain rules cuz the game dont have terrain rules, yes it is.
For everyone else, 8th is not the solution to 40k. only 9th is.

GW has no sence of balance and combined whit their very successful hype train machine, they are basicly luring people to buy the next army/model cuz it has rules that make the prev army/model weak.

It is very clear that GW is a miniature model company, not a game company.

Is 8th perfectly balanced? obviously no
But I believe we are seeing more unique lists and faction place in tournaments than ever before. even a simple ITC rule like "bottom level ruins block LOS" seems to fix the terrain rules very well. 8th seems to be a massive step in the "gaming company" direction for GW


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Skaorn wrote:
I don't think I've seen people claim it was a failure. Just that they don't like it.

I think that the true value of 8th will be proven as time goes on. I think GW lost several players to the fast edition cycle and a lot of people came back with the promise of a complete overhaul. Whether this holds or not remains to be seen. You also have a very heavy and front loaded release too. Most had bought the indexes they needed then had a codex within a year for instance. You also had a major release for the largest faction in the game and all its sub factions. We don't know if this reached GWs sales goals for Primaris but it's no surprise that it increased sales.

If GW falls into the old GW habits then I think this will just be a sales spike. If they actually hold to the new GW image they are trying to build then they will likely continue to succeed. I think that addressing the game quality issues that many current fans bring up will help cement the new over the old.

Have you read the "8th moners too soon" thread. There's plenty of people claiming 8th is a trainwreck

meleti wrote:
If only there were 40k events to gage the popularity of this game. Someone could put on conventions and tournaments especially for 40k players, and we could track attendance of those events over time as s proxy for the game’s popularity. Then we could compare those numbers to sales figures to get a clearer picture of the state of 40k as a whole.

If only.

The danger there is finding correlation without causation. The people spending more on product aren't necessarily the same group that are attending tournaments. Equally, are the same people repeatedly going to events, or is it simply a case of a radical shift in the game is generating a lot of "suck it and see" attendances which are resulting in a high number of "nope, not going to bother with 8th either" drop outs, but we've yet to see the end of the queue of potential returning/new competitors?

This aside, I don't think one can point to 8th as being a massive success with any certainty. The financials were already well on their way up before 8th's release, and most closely tracks model releases and big boxes rather than any sort of activity around either main game, so while it would be folly to try and argue it hasn't played a significant role, throwing around terms like "massive success" when we have no idea how sales break down, either since or before 8th's debut, makes it difficult to prove conclusively.

 skchsan wrote:
This is because they make new models & datasheets that invalidate older armies/units, forcing older players and new players to spend money at GW products alike.

Financial success = money made.

Financial success doesn't mean players are happy.

The problem us players have in the game has no bearing on the success of the sales. Afterall, I think the poll somewhere showed that more people simply likes to collect miniatures and not play the game of 40k.

You know, I seem to remember a time period when GW was releasing things like a new kit for the Hydra/Wyvern where one of the two was blatantly the most broken thing in the codex, and it wasn't the one people already owned.

Or new Wraithknights invalidating Wraithlords. Or new kits paired with blatantly broken formations including the new models. Or new Scatbikes invalidating everything.

Seems like this has been going on while GW was doing terribly, and while GW was doing well.

maybe that means it isn't the factor you can blame the success of 8th on?

Given that 6E and 7E were particular low points and 7E saw 40k lose its top tabletop wargame market spot, at least for a while, for the first time since the 1980's to X-Wing, almost anything would see a major improvement over that.

The GW of 2018 and 8E are far better than the GW of 2015 and 7E, but thats not saying much yet. We'll see in a couple more years.

Asmodios wrote:

Is 8th perfectly balanced? obviously no
But I believe we are seeing more unique lists and faction place in tournaments than ever before. even a simple ITC rule like "bottom level ruins block LOS" seems to fix the terrain rules very well. 8th seems to be a massive step in the "gaming company" direction for GW

Coming from other game systems, the more I hang around the 40k community, the more I realize they seem to have a pretty warped perspective of what a competitive, balanced game ends up looking like. No system out there lets you play with literally anything and win. No system out there doesn't demand some specific terrain constraints to work with the specifics of the game rules. Most games are lucky if more than half their factions are competitively viable.

40k definitely has problems. I definitely wouldn't rank it among the top games I play as far as being suited for competitive play. That said, in terms of approaching what a good competitive game actually looks like, 8th edition seems to have the game in the best shape I've seen in the decade or so I've been part of the hobby.

What it shows you is that this hobby had a massive following that was significantly disrupted by the quality of 7th edition.

I don't think this means 8th edition in and of itself is a great edition, it just tells you that it is markedly better than what preceded it, and their community outreach is having a really positive effect.

All I know is that I have absolutely enjoyed 8th edition. Far more than 6th or 7th.

6h, imho, was a disaster. 7th wasn’t exactly better. Just trying to figure out how various units moved meant flipping around several pages. I’m pretty sure I only played My DE reavers correctly in one game during 7th.

8th isn’t perfect but it’s far and away better than the previous crap.

8th might be a bit banged up with areas that could legitimately need improvement, but quite frankly after the last edition was figuratively on fire and burning everyone who tried to play it, it's a massive improvement and that's bringing people (back?) into the game in record numbers.

People who want 40k to be a highly balanced tournament style game are probably never going to be happy with it, because there is just too much stuff to create a perfect balance, and Forge World... exists and inherently takes a crap on balance in the game.

But 8th is the strongest version of the game in a while, especially from drawing in new players, both according to anecdotal evidence of increase in players in my local clubs and from GW's financial reports. Might stand to reason that Dakka is actually a very narrow portion of the player base, who doesn't reflect the feelings feelings of GW players as a whole?

I feel like 8th did a good job of bringing back legacy gamers. It was the first edition I heard about since I stopped playing way back in 2006 (I can't believe that was over 10 years ago).

I was excited about dusting off my old black templars and heading down to my local FLGS for the "most playtested version of 40k yet." It was fun until the IG codex came out, the eldar one made them unplayable and now those templars are on a shelf or have been painted as ravenguard or waiting conversion to deathwatch...

I've dropped hundreds of dollars (guessing around 1k) this edition on models (custodes, storm raven, another predator, characters, bobby g, celestine, assassins, scouts, primaris, dreads), codexes, indexes, rules, ca and haven't played a game in months.

I'm frustrated by the lack of balance, how bad marines are compared to other armies I face and how I need to take a fully optimized and cheesy list in order to have a good game against random armies from other factions.

Even with all of that, if I had the time to finish my army and practice I'd have attended the bay area open this year because even though the game is an unbalanced mess it is fun to go to a convention with people who enjoy the same thing you do.

I think the rise of "nerd culture" over the last decade is what is helping GWs numbers. I'd bet that comparing the rise in the tourney scene in 40k with the numbers of attendees at comic-cons would see similar gains.

Based on my experience, GW got a huge bump in sales due to people returning to an edition they actually advertised. Word got out to people who have been fans for years (I first started playing WHFB in highschool in the 90s) and they've come back but know with grown-up wallets. I'm grown now so a couple hundred bucks a month on a hobby doesn't really register but on the other side my grown-up friends aren't really into 40k so I don't have a game group like I used to. My "nerd" friends play rpgs like shadowrun, pathfinder and blades while the rest of my friends are into golf/shooting/fishing/sports...

Even though I hate the balance of the game now the "we'll fix it with CA" has kept me into the modeling/painting side of things but if things don't get balanced soon (dark eldar was a slap in the face to marine players) I guess I can just pack everything up again and play with my sons in 5-10 years once they are old enough.

Financially, eight edition, in all probability, alongside a number of other changes in direction gw have made have been responsible for the 'massive success' we are seeing. I don't think eighth is solely responsible, but I also don't think it can be entirely discounted.

What I do know is (anecdotally) interest here in gw games has not been as 'obvious' or 'energised' in a long time. From any of the shop owners or friends I speak to, most speak of a 40k project, or of seeing surging activity in playing 40k. Generally, the conversations also lead round to 'how' people are playing, and generally, the view is 'avoid the tournaments as some of the stuff out there is ridiculous, but try and talk it out and play less competitively'. I had enough not seen the community this excited in a long time, Internet aside. Conversely, I also see declining interest in the 'other' games that were the refuge of those escaping 40k. Warmachine/hordes has declined massively from a few years ago (read: fell off a cliff), and while I see plenty historicals (warlord are doing great), I rarely see games like infinity.

For my own part in this, I made not spent as much on gw stuff in 10 years. I have not enjoyed painting stuff this much in years either. Putting together my darkvmperium box set (especially the death guard) was an absolute joy. I am actually selling off two of my three WMH armies, and tempted to sell off some of my infinity stuff in order to put money towards my 40k projects (death guard and dark angels primaris forces). I have one regret. I regret not buying an assload of gw shares when they fell through the floor a few years back.

Casual 40k died with the IG codex.

 Marmatag wrote:
Casual space marine 40k died with the IG codex.

Stop playing marines and join the xeno's IG arn't have as scary with a viable codex.

Deadnight wrote:
What I do know is (anecdotally) interest here in gw games has not been as 'obvious' or 'energised' in a long time. From any of the shop owners or friends I speak to, most speak of a 40k project, or of seeing surging activity in playing 40k. Generally, the conversations also lead round to 'how' people are playing, and generally, the view is 'avoid the tournaments as some of the stuff out there is ridiculous, but try and talk it out and play less competitively'. I had enough not seen the community this excited in a long time, Internet aside. Conversely, I also see declining interest in the 'other' games that were the refuge of those escaping 40k. Warmachine/hordes has declined massively from a few years ago (read: fell off a cliff), and while I see plenty historicals (warlord are doing great), I rarely see games like infinity.

This is my experience as well. As a small shop owner, my sales of Warhammer product have more than tripled over the last year. We went from having around 5-6 steady players to 20-30 regular players. Though, like you mentioned, it has definitely led to other games dropping off significantly. Star Wars: X-Wing, Warmachine/Hordes, and most other miniature games have basically completely fallen off since last summer.