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I've been thinking, given everything that has happened with the coming of 8th, the launch of the primaris line, the big changes to parts of the lore, what is the likely hood that we will get an "End Times" Styled event in the coming years in the vain of what happened to WFB?

Primaris marines are a huge departure in design from the midget marine line, and they much more closely resemble Stormcast Eternals rather than what we thought of as the old "Grimdark" marines. Custodians, the Ad Mech, Imperial Knights all fit the aesthetic, and there is always a chance they'll reboot the guard line with hover tanks and caraparce armored troops in the near future. The New Chaos line keeps a lot of the old style, but updates it in subtle ways that make them really pop and fit in with the newer models from the imperial side.

Call me crazy but it just seems to me to be the direction they're going. They've rebranded WFB to AoS, Games Workshop to "Warhammer." The only thing left to be rebranded is the 40K game and line, and to be honest I think the likelihood of this happening is quite high.

Didn't that kind of happen towards the end of 7th, there were certainly vaild fears that it was the case. A lot of the Eldar coming together with both their own factions and major player of the human faction had massive parallels with Warhammer end times. They just didn't go the full hog as a)there was no need, 40k unlike Warhammer wasn't in a terrible place and b)they no doubt noted how many they annoyed on AoS launch (it wasn't solely due to completely different rules, no points etc)

Dai wrote:
Didn't that kind of happen towards the end of 7th, there were certainly vaild fears that it was the case. A lot of the Eldar coming together with both their own factions and major player of the human faction had massive parallels with Warhammer end times. They just didn't go the full hog as a)there was no need, 40k unlike Warhammer wasn't in a terrible place and b)they no doubt noted how many they annoyed on AoS launch (it wasn't solely due to completely different rules, no points etc)

Possibly. But I don't buy into the whole argument that AoS came out because WFB was failing.

I think the plan has always been to completely restructure and rebrand the entire company from top to bottom. Creating a major shift with the 40K lore and moving past a lot of the old stories is something I'd really like to see happen in the coming editions.

I believe the game will be much better and allow players more ability to enjoy their games and factions when everyone has their primarchs, the emperor gets off the throne and is reborn and the really cringey parts of the lore are lost or retconned out of existence.

It really does seem to me that this is the direction they're going in as well, especially with the changes made to the black crusade, blackstone as a resource and so on over the last few books.

I think there will be a 40k rebrand in the next 10 years but it will be more subtle than the WFB/AoS rebrand. The focus does seem to be on a big imperium vs chaos event that may signal a rebrand.

It could be achieved by bringing back primachs and having an event that focuses on the maelstrom and possibly killing off the emperor. So that said it could take some time and at least one new edition. Hopefully then GW will be unshackled from old lore written in the 80s.

Although all that said with the money that GW is turning over at the moment they may not want to make big changes.

I hope not, because it destroyed Warhammer fantasy for me. Completely lost interest in the new lore and my main faction was left hanging in the breeze and has been since the release of AoS.

40k End Times already happened, with roughly the same plot as the WHFB one.

Let's say book 1 of the End Times was Wrath of Magnus, in which an extremely powerful sorcerer lets loose his long schemed plan to destroy the nation of the monarch that humbled him in a previous life. Which isn't at all like Nagash.

Book 2 would be fall of Cadia, in which a Chaos attack is ultimately repelled by the arrival of a golden divine being in a pyrrhic victory that leaves the Empire of Man wide open for further attacks. Which isn't at all like Glotkin.

Now in book 3 we had an Eldar faction fissure but ultimately re-unite all 3 of the important factions under the rule of the newly summoned Incarnate/Yncarne after which it will send it's aid to the Empire of Man. Not at all like Khaine.

Wait a second...

 small_gods wrote:
I think there will be a 40k rebrand in the next 10 years but it will be more subtle than the WFB/AoS rebrand. The focus does seem to be on a big imperium vs chaos event that may signal a rebrand.

It could be achieved by bringing back primachs and having an event that focuses on the maelstrom and possibly killing off the emperor. So that said it could take some time and at least one new edition. Hopefully then GW will be unshackled from old lore written in the 80s.

Although all that said with the money that GW is turning over at the moment they may not want to make big changes.

no no no no no no no. everyone who speaks of "unshackl;ing X from the lore" are in my experiance universally people who are just too lazy to learn the lore and writers too lazy to write to the lore. I don't want that. the Lore is what makes 40k for me. I don't mind moving forward, but "let's just wreck it so we can write whatever we want" is a horriable idea. I stopped following forgotten realms when they did that with 4e it's just no appeal to me, and when they decide to do that with a massive change to the came system, it results in losing a LOT of your fanbase. I know no battletechers who where thrilled with MWDA and very few played it

I think one of the issues that GW is going to have to deal with is stagnation. You can't just keep releasing new editions forever. I think they have 40k in a space where they are pretty happy. I also think you are going to see a lot more renewed interest in their LOTR lines once the Amazon TV show hits. What I would really like GW to do would be to create a totally new Warhammer universe.

Warhammer: 40,000
Warhammer: Age Of Sigmar
Warhammer: Heroes?

BrianDavion wrote:

 small_gods wrote:
I think there will be a 40k rebrand in the next 10 years but it will be more subtle than the WFB/AoS rebrand. The focus does seem to be on a big imperium vs chaos event that may signal a rebrand.

It could be achieved by bringing back primachs and having an event that focuses on the maelstrom and possibly killing off the emperor. So that said it could take some time and at least one new edition. Hopefully then GW will be unshackled from old lore written in the 80s.

Although all that said with the money that GW is turning over at the moment they may not want to make big changes.

no no no no no no no. everyone who speaks of "unshackl;ing X from the lore" are in my experiance universally people who are just too lazy to learn the lore and writers too lazy to write to the lore. I don't want that. the Lore is what makes 40k for me. I don't mind moving forward, but "let's just wreck it so we can write whatever we want" is a horriable idea. I stopped following forgotten realms when they did that with 4e it's just no appeal to me, and when they decide to do that with a massive change to the came system, it results in losing a LOT of your fanbase. I know no battletechers who where thrilled with MWDA and very few played it

See I sit in the opposite camp. Blow it up!

I've read the old world lore. It wasn't very good, but AoS has a fantastic fantasy setting. It's only gotten better in the intervening years.

 Togusa wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 small_gods wrote:
I think there will be a 40k rebrand in the next 10 years but it will be more subtle than the WFB/AoS rebrand. The focus does seem to be on a big imperium vs chaos event that may signal a rebrand.

It could be achieved by bringing back primachs and having an event that focuses on the maelstrom and possibly killing off the emperor. So that said it could take some time and at least one new edition. Hopefully then GW will be unshackled from old lore written in the 80s.

Although all that said with the money that GW is turning over at the moment they may not want to make big changes.

no no no no no no no. everyone who speaks of "unshackl;ing X from the lore" are in my experiance universally people who are just too lazy to learn the lore and writers too lazy to write to the lore. I don't want that. the Lore is what makes 40k for me. I don't mind moving forward, but "let's just wreck it so we can write whatever we want" is a horriable idea. I stopped following forgotten realms when they did that with 4e it's just no appeal to me, and when they decide to do that with a massive change to the came system, it results in losing a LOT of your fanbase. I know no battletechers who where thrilled with MWDA and very few played it

See I sit in the opposite camp. Blow it up!

I've read the old world lore. It wasn't very good, but AoS has a fantastic fantasy setting. It's only gotten better in the intervening years.

I find the Age of Sigmar lore to be awful. The Warhammer Fantasy universe had better stories and a well developed universe.

Darsath wrote:

 Togusa wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 small_gods wrote:
I think there will be a 40k rebrand in the next 10 years but it will be more subtle than the WFB/AoS rebrand. The focus does seem to be on a big imperium vs chaos event that may signal a rebrand.

It could be achieved by bringing back primachs and having an event that focuses on the maelstrom and possibly killing off the emperor. So that said it could take some time and at least one new edition. Hopefully then GW will be unshackled from old lore written in the 80s.

Although all that said with the money that GW is turning over at the moment they may not want to make big changes.

no no no no no no no. everyone who speaks of "unshackl;ing X from the lore" are in my experiance universally people who are just too lazy to learn the lore and writers too lazy to write to the lore. I don't want that. the Lore is what makes 40k for me. I don't mind moving forward, but "let's just wreck it so we can write whatever we want" is a horriable idea. I stopped following forgotten realms when they did that with 4e it's just no appeal to me, and when they decide to do that with a massive change to the came system, it results in losing a LOT of your fanbase. I know no battletechers who where thrilled with MWDA and very few played it

See I sit in the opposite camp. Blow it up!

I've read the old world lore. It wasn't very good, but AoS has a fantastic fantasy setting. It's only gotten better in the intervening years.

WFB was way too generic, the slayer cult stuff for me was especially insufferable, terribly written and dull.

YMMV of course, but I much prefer AoS and its current list of factions and lore.

I find the Age of Sigmar lore to be awful. The Warhammer Fantasy universe had better stories and a well developed universe.

Well I hope to finish my army and get a couple years of playing before it happens...

I would welcome a return to the old world though. Id have virtually no money but hey ho lol.

 Togusa wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 small_gods wrote:
I think there will be a 40k rebrand in the next 10 years but it will be more subtle than the WFB/AoS rebrand. The focus does seem to be on a big imperium vs chaos event that may signal a rebrand.

It could be achieved by bringing back primachs and having an event that focuses on the maelstrom and possibly killing off the emperor. So that said it could take some time and at least one new edition. Hopefully then GW will be unshackled from old lore written in the 80s.

Although all that said with the money that GW is turning over at the moment they may not want to make big changes.

no no no no no no no. everyone who speaks of "unshackl;ing X from the lore" are in my experiance universally people who are just too lazy to learn the lore and writers too lazy to write to the lore. I don't want that. the Lore is what makes 40k for me. I don't mind moving forward, but "let's just wreck it so we can write whatever we want" is a horriable idea. I stopped following forgotten realms when they did that with 4e it's just no appeal to me, and when they decide to do that with a massive change to the came system, it results in losing a LOT of your fanbase. I know no battletechers who where thrilled with MWDA and very few played it

See I sit in the opposite camp. Blow it up!

I've read the old world lore. It wasn't very good, but AoS has a fantastic fantasy setting. It's only gotten better in the intervening years.

or you could find another game if you dislike 40k. go play AOS if you like it better.

BrianDavion wrote:

 Togusa wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 small_gods wrote:
I think there will be a 40k rebrand in the next 10 years but it will be more subtle than the WFB/AoS rebrand. The focus does seem to be on a big imperium vs chaos event that may signal a rebrand.

It could be achieved by bringing back primachs and having an event that focuses on the maelstrom and possibly killing off the emperor. So that said it could take some time and at least one new edition. Hopefully then GW will be unshackled from old lore written in the 80s.

Although all that said with the money that GW is turning over at the moment they may not want to make big changes.

no no no no no no no. everyone who speaks of "unshackl;ing X from the lore" are in my experiance universally people who are just too lazy to learn the lore and writers too lazy to write to the lore. I don't want that. the Lore is what makes 40k for me. I don't mind moving forward, but "let's just wreck it so we can write whatever we want" is a horriable idea. I stopped following forgotten realms when they did that with 4e it's just no appeal to me, and when they decide to do that with a massive change to the came system, it results in losing a LOT of your fanbase. I know no battletechers who where thrilled with MWDA and very few played it

See I sit in the opposite camp. Blow it up!

I've read the old world lore. It wasn't very good, but AoS has a fantastic fantasy setting. It's only gotten better in the intervening years.

or you could find another game if you dislike 40k. go play AOS if you like it better.

YMMV but if you stagnate too long, it will die.

 Togusa wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 Togusa wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 small_gods wrote:
I think there will be a 40k rebrand in the next 10 years but it will be more subtle than the WFB/AoS rebrand. The focus does seem to be on a big imperium vs chaos event that may signal a rebrand.

It could be achieved by bringing back primachs and having an event that focuses on the maelstrom and possibly killing off the emperor. So that said it could take some time and at least one new edition. Hopefully then GW will be unshackled from old lore written in the 80s.

Although all that said with the money that GW is turning over at the moment they may not want to make big changes.

no no no no no no no. everyone who speaks of "unshackl;ing X from the lore" are in my experiance universally people who are just too lazy to learn the lore and writers too lazy to write to the lore. I don't want that. the Lore is what makes 40k for me. I don't mind moving forward, but "let's just wreck it so we can write whatever we want" is a horriable idea. I stopped following forgotten realms when they did that with 4e it's just no appeal to me, and when they decide to do that with a massive change to the came system, it results in losing a LOT of your fanbase. I know no battletechers who where thrilled with MWDA and very few played it

See I sit in the opposite camp. Blow it up!

I've read the old world lore. It wasn't very good, but AoS has a fantastic fantasy setting. It's only gotten better in the intervening years.

or you could find another game if you dislike 40k. go play AOS if you like it better.

YMMV but if you stagnate too long, it will die.

The 40k universe as a setting has proven very popular, lasting decades and several great video games to boot. If they're wanting to tear that down, they better have something strong to propose. Because if it isn't popular, then Games Workshop could be finished. 40k has been their flagship for the past decade,

I agree with Grimtuff: the change you were talking about has already happened to 40k.

In 7th, there was 40k, and dex after dex after dex.

After 8th, we have campaign books with a story that is moving forward; we have Kill Team and Blackstone, which both work to augment 40k. Both of these ideas were test run on Sigmar while 8th was still in it's infancy; they are now a staple of 8th. The fact that the Eldar have a new god and that any primarchs are awakening should be a sign that we are in the Sigmar Reboot of 40k- we are getting new models and concepts for the first time in a very, very long time.

Minigames allow GW a chance to figure out what the next army will be. Think about it: release 5 brand new factions as Kill Teams. Whichever sells the most becomes the next army.

They still have enough material to keep us going for years. Give us back the 5 Eldar characters we've lost; give Corsairs and/ or Exodites a go. Emperor's Children, Traitor Guard, Kroot... So much potential.

A reboot would prevent any of that, and all of that intellectual property would be lost. 40K is the best it's been in a decade, easily. A world reboot wouldn't be blowing up one game- they'd be blowing up Necromunda, Kill Team, Blackstone, 40K, and Apocalypse; Forge World would cease to exist... Quite simply, the company would collapse before they could recover. If 40k hadn't been strong enough to hold the business while they rebuilt the fanbase for AoS, that reboot would have sunk them. Even now, AoS is not strong enough to tide the company over the risk and turn around time on a 40k world reboot.

I can tell you 8th is my last edition. I can take a rerelease of BRB and selected Codices that need an update for competitiveness - sort of an 8.5, but I won't follow a reboot of such magnitude that it invalidates everything that we have right now.

Once the sisters drop happens, I will have everything I need to keep playing THIS edition for the few decades I have left in me, so the only way GW gets my money is to continue supporting the game[s] I already have.

Primaris Marines closely resemble the 30k Astartes.

The Stormcast are inspired by Astartes, not the other way around.

BrianDavion wrote:

 small_gods wrote:
I think there will be a 40k rebrand in the next 10 years but it will be more subtle than the WFB/AoS rebrand. The focus does seem to be on a big imperium vs chaos event that may signal a rebrand.

It could be achieved by bringing back primachs and having an event that focuses on the maelstrom and possibly killing off the emperor. So that said it could take some time and at least one new edition. Hopefully then GW will be unshackled from old lore written in the 80s.

Although all that said with the money that GW is turning over at the moment they may not want to make big changes.

no no no no no no no. everyone who speaks of "unshackl;ing X from the lore" are in my experiance universally people who are just too lazy to learn the lore and writers too lazy to write to the lore. I don't want that. the Lore is what makes 40k for me. I don't mind moving forward, but "let's just wreck it so we can write whatever we want" is a horriable idea. I stopped following forgotten realms when they did that with 4e it's just no appeal to me, and when they decide to do that with a massive change to the came system, it results in losing a LOT of your fanbase. I know no battletechers who where thrilled with MWDA and very few played it

****amn Right!

Add to the universe, don't change the universe. Build on the setting, don't change the story.

Primarchs coming back, killing the Emperor. . . puuh-lease. The more it changes, the less interested in it I am.

 Togusa wrote:


YMMV but if you stagnate too long, it will die.

there is a differance between not stagnating and blowing everything up. GW's already, as others have noted, made changes. in the past three years we've had a loylaist primarch return, an entire new type of space marine, Cadia was blown up. the Deathguard attacked Ultramarand inflicted serious damage, including destroying a famed garden world. Ohh and the Tau now have a jump gate enabling them to appear further from their homeworld, So yeah even if we dismiss vigilius as "ohh look it's another world that we've never heard of but is said to be important" (as GW tends to do often) then yeah a lot's been happening. Stuff like that is good. we do NOT however need entire factions, that are the loveingly painted armies of hundreds if not thousands of players, destroyed in a paragraph.

Imagine for a moment you have an Ultramarines army. You've loveingly collected, played etc it over a decades worth of time, and then suddenly GW destroys the ultramarines. you can't keep your army kinda canon by putting in that new kit you really like, because the unit was introduced in response to the fall of the Ultramarines etc. it'd "kill the mood" there is precisely nothing to be gained from doing those kind of massive massive changes. and everything to be lsot. and the rich background lore... that's a draw not a "impedimant to writing stories"

The emprah dying and ascending to some sort of proper godhood would be the next move IMO. At this point might as well...

The Grim dark feeling of being stuck in the dark ages standing on an eternal praecipe of Galaxy wide Armageddon is well and truly gone. We are now spoon fed the narrative and time line is being pushed forward and its really weird because we are talking millenia worth of culture and the never changing imperial behemoth which is stuck in its grim dark ways changing almost overnight. I'm not sure How I feel about it. I liked 40k because it allowed the mind to wonder and get imaginative. Now we don't get to wonder. We are being told what is happening...

Im sure GW would feth it up and make it so that storm casts can appear in 40k because space marines =$$$...By that point its a wrap for a huge portion of the fanbase so perhaps better they don't do it lol.

If emperor dies, doesnt Imperium go through Chaos? Isnt its existence hinged on his brain activity?

Only reason I have 8k+ points worth of imperium is because of Lore, certainly not because of great rules.

You won't risk a hail-mary attempt like the End Times with a game like 40K. You could pull off about a third of that and maybe keep the audience. 40K has long been GW's primary product - even when WFB was in full swing, 40K was almost always outselling it and strongly.

In the closing months, GW's paints and hobby supplies were outselling WFB kits. It was a prime time to pull the band-aid off and swing for the fences with a bizarre re-boot. In doing so they alienated a large portion of the existing fanbase, but...this was a fanbase that was ravenous, while not spending money/buying kits. GW figured a re-boot with a vastly different style would possibly attract new buyers, and hopefully enough to replace the withering sales of the old time fans.

They could risk this because WFB was in such dire straits it would be hard not to outsell it. They also could rely on 40K saving their bacon if it was a complete failure. They cannot risk the same thing with 40K. It is the big money maker. One of the reasons the fluff and lore hasn't changed much is because it doesn't need to. They haven't been at a point where they really needed to take strong action to continue sales.

The main issue with 40K lore is that, beyond novels, GW doesn't do anything with it. It's not part of their main model-selling business. Think about how excellent some 40K and 30K novels are, and how stupendous the old Forgeworld Imperial Armour books are. There is infinite space and opportunity in the 40K universe to produce compelling stories...but stories don't sell much plastic.

Vigilus was pretty weak narratively (spread way too thin, trying to sell too many armies). If GW put more effort into actual convincing and interesting narrative books (softback, even just 50-60 pages every couple of months) they could make the entire existence a lot more interesting.

As has been pointed out, the end times happened already. The Imperium is broken in half, Abaddons 13th crusade was successful and Daemons are everywhere.
Blowing up the old World was a fiasco, GW alienated its whole WHF fanbase and it took AoS years to recover from that blow, it basically had to start from zero instead of using the existing WHF base. It probably was even worse than Finecast. Even GW admitted that when they outright stated at the end of 7th Edition, no, we will not blow up 40K, trust us.

Also, Stormcast Eternals were Fantasy Space Marines right from the start, even without Primaris (or Custodes). Turning it around seems... Illogical to me

 Elbows wrote:


Vigilus was pretty weak narratively (spread way too thin, trying to sell too many armies). If GW put more effort into actual convincing and interesting narrative books (softback, even just 50-60 pages every couple of months) they could make the entire existence a lot more interesting.

I agree, Vigilius felt like well... the storyline of Dawn of War: Soulstorm. a bit of a jumbled mess mostly created to allow as many factions as possiable to fight.

That's been more or less the issue with every single GW-Prime story-based releases. When you have 25-30 factions...you cram at least half of them into every single planet and it comes off like a jumbled mess. Forgeworld was fortunate in that they weren't really under such constraints. They really only need to sell a dozen new resin kits with each book. Their stories wandered on occasion but you generally felt like it was a plausible and concise narrative.

Reading Vigilus for the first time I more or less laughed each time they introduced another faction "Oh...and...uh...the Dark Eldar are up North in a snowstorm...because why not." etc. The justification for conflicts was even worse. GW-Prime has done a lot of that though, and that's why I'm fine if they would stay far far away from it.

Or...simply release four or five narrative campaign books each year, but keep the factions to 3-4 per book (ideally even fewer). Keep them softbound and relatively short, but throw in a good story, a few unique datasheets if you introduce models and some specialist detachments, and a couple missions. Basically about half of what Vigilus was. They just tried too hard there.

I think they'd be better off focusing along regional campaigns then planetary. no one would think much of that if it was a conflict for a sector,

That was what I didn't understand about Vigilus...they could have stretched it over a dozen planets...but for some reason every faction involved showed up on one....it's always silly.

Yeah. Sector or Segmentum storylines would feel much less cramped.

You can ad a lot to the setting without having to blow anything up. Even Huge events do not need to effect the universe in any significant way.
The primarchs returning, irrelevant to the whole. Tone them down rather than up, There political power is where the shifts start to happen.
Even something like the emperor dying could be way more interesting if it served to playing into the bleak setting as a whole. Than a major event where you buy a bunch of models, and fight some special games with crappy rules and that is the highlight. Tyranids and necrons probably not invited to that anyway.

I just feel people have mistaking momentum in the setting as some need for it to morph and change constantly. When it would be really interesting to see some of that story in how the Imperium keeps its grip.
How the factions within it with power work to keep that power.
And the plans they have around that D:
Rather it feels like its going the other way, Endless escalation until the themes, story and setting collapse under itself.

They could pull a Shamalamalan and reveal that big E has been dead the whole time.