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TL;DR: feel free to share your stories about “End Times” games, the storyline or anything related to efforts of keeping the 8th edition kicking or evolving here and help me collect data for my PhD! If you feel like doing an interview, contact me via the means listed below!

Hello everyone,
I am currently in the process of writing my PhD thesis, and I need your help! In relation to my larger topic of how apocalyptic narratives in video games and TTRPGs/tabletop wargaming in particular have evolved over the last few decades (my thesis is that somewhat of a dystopian turn has realized itself in some games in particular, which has several implications I won’t get into here in detail), I am currently trying to find players/fans who have been active or involved in the scene when the “The End Times” releases first came out.

I know “The End Times” were contentious among fans; I am trying to gauge why exactly. From what I’ve gathered so far, much of the sentiment was in regards to the supposedly poor execution or poor franchise management on the part of GW, and of course their financial interests and copyrighting interests taking precedence. If you have any takes on that feel free to share them! (I hope this discussion doesn’t dredge up too much of a sore spot for everyone).

On the one hand, I am trying to understand how the sentiment at the time was towards these releases, if you were excited/disappointed/indifferent etc., and if you really thought that this would be the end. I’m trying to ascertain this via qualitative methods, interviews and discourse analysis in particular. If you feel up to doing an interview, feel free to contact me through one of the means listed below!

On the other hand, I am trying to learn about the sentiment towards Age of Sigmar and the Old World and how both expressed attitudes align with actual consumer behavior. Connected to this are of course the discourse surrounding these apocalyptic events, your own interpretations and fan projects. I am also using Total War: Warhammer 1-3 as a jumping off point when talking about apocalypse within the WHFB setting, trying to understand how the modding and so forth constitutes an “oppositional/supplemental reading” of the source material.

If you know of any other fan project that tried to take matters into their own hands (I know of the Ninth Age and the Warhammer Armies Project, but I don’t know much detail yet; I will try to connect with the developers), this would help me. If you have experience with either of these projects, have conducted or participated in “End Times” games, or are intimately familiar with “End Times” lore or the mechanics introduced, any information you could share would be much appreciated.

I have no previous experience with the ethnographic approach I am trying to employ, so this is all pretty new to me-I really want to conduct interviews with players (or even those involved in design), or at the very least analyze their comments on these subjects. If you are interested in any aspect of this or even participating in an interview, feel free to contact me through the means listed below, or simply write in this thread!

If you have actually participated in an “End Times” themed scenario, particularly the official ones in the five “End Times” books, I would be very happy to hear about your experience in either this thread or via email/PM.

If by any chance you are on top of that also familiar with “Time of Judgment” for Vampire: The Masquerade/World of Darkness as well, this would help my case immensely, because this is the other setting I’m looking at for comparison. (but that one would just be a nice bonus )
Feel free to share your stories and thoughts in this thread, or contact me via PM or at CARPresearcher@gmail.com.

(Hope this is the right corner of the forum and I also hope this doesn't break any rules regarding self-promotion or whatever )

I think one big line you need is the difference between the death of a fictional universe and the end of a product line.

End Times wasn't just a fictional end but an actual end and it was several months (I think 3 or so if memory serves) where GW was basically saying that fantasy was 100% DEAD. They didn't premarket AoS during that time phase; nor anything. As far as people were concerned the End Times wasn't just a narrative story, it was a real tangible end of a 25-30year old model line that many of them had grown up with.

Sure you can keep playing after the game is gone ;but that means no more official events; no more marketing; no more store pushing; no more new customers in the same volume; no more new products or models; no more official unified rules or structural system.

This was also in the pre-3D printing era so once a model line was gone, the only stock would be second hand and the chances of the market picking up a new big game that "you can walk into any store and get a game with" is very slim to none.

Hey there, sorry for the very very late reply on this. Yes, you are indeed correct, that it also constituted the death of the product line for the foreseeable future, and that those two things have pronounced differences on how consumers might experience them, thank you for that comment. I think it's quite interesting in terms of timing that while the physical game and product ended, it was continued in the digital realm quite prominently with Vermintide and Total War: Warhammer right around that time. I was wondering whether that helped or hindered proceedings in some sense, because it gave fans at least some avenue of still experiencing the game world, if in a more abstract way.

I am actually quite interested in that aspect of an actual ending as well, because obviously the emotional and time investment in the product, story, universe and so forth are a significant interfacing of reality and fiction in that sense, and maybe that could lead to further insights on how people might conceptualize real crises as well, or cope with loss. Something to think about.

I know very little about the entire advent of 3D printing and its influence honestly; do you think that with today's level of 3D printing efforts an unofficial 9th or sth like that would have been easier to sustain?

I'm happy to have a go. I was a fairly prolific player at the time, although obviously I'm remembering things through the lens of over 8 years now.

For context, I was a massive WFB fan from 6th through 8th and would play 1-2 games a week, most weeks. This in in addition to a few competitive events and local tournaments each year. I am apparently one of the few players who remembers 8th edition fondly.

For my part I, perhaps naively, initially assumed that the End Times was going to be much like the Storm of Chaos event where it played out some scary scenarios, invited some very big battles and perhaps shuffled the power around a bit, but would ultimately return to a new status quo and set the grounds for 9th edition.
As the books came out and the scale of change became more and more destructive, this was then replaced with an expectation of a setting reboot, spring-cleaning some of the old stock and ultimately cutting a lot of the baggage that had come about from decades of product growth. It wasn't until the End Times concluded that it became obvious (At least, to me) that WFB was gone and not coming back.

In terms of each release, how I remember it:
Book 1: Nagash- Nagash comes back, some old 5E metal characters die, the squatting of Bretonnia and Tomb Kings, plus Kislev shanked off-screen. I assumed this was merging the Tomb Kings back into a united Undead book as a response to their dreadful reputation in 8E and a way to avoid an otherwise necessary revival of almost the entire model range. I also took the death of Bretonnia as a similar sign, that the perceived benefit of a refresh did not warrant the cost of a total overhaul. Combining the Undead models back into a fairly ham-fisted roster was horrible for balance but not uncharacteristic for a roster that I assumed was temporary.
Book 2: Glottkin- Some new Nurgle characters come out of nowhere and deal an awful lot of damage to the Empire. Truthfully I remember very little of this book, other than the utterly obnoxious Chaos Legion army list and Karl Franz getting juiced up. Again I just took this as a temporary end-of-an-edition power spike / cash grab, and perhaps a preview of how they intended to solve monstrous mounts which were previously very hard to justify. I didn't really see this as anything bigger than Tamurkhan and something that would ultimately be recovered from.
Book 3: Khaine- The Elf civil war goes loopy, the High/Dark schism gets blurry and Ulthuan sinks. This is the point where it became clear that End Times wasn't going to be walked back and that there were going to be massive differences to how the setting would appear in the next edition. To be blunt, merging Tomb Kings and squatting Bretonnia were on an entirely different scale to removing the barriers between Elf factions. This marks the point where I had written off any possible return to the status quo and assumed that an impending 9th edition would be some post-apocalyptic setting with entirely new factions, similar to how Warmahordes appears to be positioning itself in Mk4.
Book 4: Thanquol- Continuing the apocalypse theme with the apparent removal of Lizardmen and Dwarfs. Again, both factions built on a large amount of old 6E plastics which I assumed was clearing out the warehouse of unwanted stock.
Book 5: Archaon- I still remember seeing a photo of the closing page, where the world ends and everyone dies. To properly understand this, you have to remember that there was zero announcement or awareness that Age of Sigmar was coming, so at the time it was a fairly blunt 'RIP' to the entire setting. Until that moment, I had some hope that a 9th edition was coming and that the setting would still exist, albeit unrecognisable.

In terms of 3d prints and 3rd party miniatures, most of that came about after the death of WFB. I only remember Mantic Zombies being a regular staple in VC lists, and I think the Fireforge Knights for Bretonnia? In the modern era, you only need to look as far as Avatars of War or Highlands Miniatures to see how far 3d printing has come.

I'm sure a lot of that was waffle, but I'm happy to answer any more specific questions as well.

Thank you so much for detailing your experience with the books, that's really cool and insightful! I really like how you connected it to what you assumed to be the underlying sales strategy as well, those are interesting points.

You describe that you remember looking at the last page still, where everyone dies. Would you be willing to describe a bit more how that made you feel?

I sort of stumbled on one thing you wrote; why do most players not look fondly upon 8. edition? Do you know? I sadly do not know.

I was drawing parallels to Storm of Chaos as well, I remembered the time of this event from back when I played myself. I am sort of theorizing currently, that one of the reasons they went more railroad-y with the story was that they wanted to avoid a repeat of the storyline going somewhere that they didn't like by making it interactive. But maybe that's just a consequence of the underlying goal of ending the setting being different this time around.

I do have some questions which are more related to your feeling toward the books. Did you generally like the direction they went with, or were there aspects you saw as particularly problematic or unfaithful to the game? Was it exciting to read the books or something else? Were you more encouraged to check out any of the miniature releases or altered rules for models?

Also, did you ever get to play games under "End Times" rules or some of the different scenarios from the books?

Another question would be, how you looked at AoS when it finally was announced or as it continues to be developed. (did you switch to it?) I am not too well-versed on the lore of it, but they ended up making some references to "The-World-That-Was" quite a bit, right?

I'm still figuring out what good questions would be as I go, so thanks for bearing with me here.

Thanks for the tips on the 3D printing aspects as well, I'll be sure to check that out.

I wasn't a WFB player back then, so I won't give my opinion of the end times per se, but GW games were always extremely prone to edition wars. There are still people playing 3rd edition today! 8th edition was a larger change than 7th even before the expansions as the end times narrative progressed, which upset people, and (as always) led to the conclusion that GW was sacrificing the quality of the rules and fluff to make more money by selling more/more expensive models.
The awesomelies blog recently did a series on the history of Warhammer, which I strongly recommend to get a view of how some of the real grognards would have contextualised it.

My perspective on the End Times is rather split:
One the one hand, the first End Times campaign supplement, namely Nagash, followed the plot threads introduced in the 8th edition Vampire Count army book ("War in the Border Princes") and directly after the Sigmar's Blood campaign supplement. The Bretonnian civil war is followed up from the 8th edition Wood Elves army book (which is only in their timeline, in 2 or three separate entries, being rather brief and easily missed). It shows the End Times narrative for WHFB was planned at least half-way into 8th edition and they had at least two years to plan it, and they were preparing the scene, so to speak.
Then it happened.
Bretonnia got two pages worth of lore, plus a brief mention in the Wood Elves 2 pages to wrap up the entire Civil War plot, pretty much at the beginning of the book. It felt hasty and premature. And afterwards they used "Chaos stalks the land" to get rid of one whole Dukedom overnight narratively, and for the most part kept Bretonnia out of the narrative of the next 4 books entirely. There's one instance in book IV or V that Bretonnia came as a part of the army defending Altdorf alongside the Imperial forces. Overall, Bretonnia felt like an after thought in the entire campaign
Another point I had against the End Times narrative is how the writers appeared to have been heavily influenced by the Game of Thrones; it's well known that established characters were dropping like flies throughout the books. Of course, given the nature of the End Times narrative, everybody had to go; yet not every one of these send-offs felt fitting for the character.
As an example, I'd put forth Eltharion the Grim , who had a long-running narrative from 4th edition to 8th edition, in a saga spanning from his father Morarion's deeds during the Great War Against Chaos, to Eltharion's assault on Ulthuan and his subsequent wounding, the death of his father and brother during Waaagh! Grom, and finally his role in the defense of Tor Yvresse against the Greenskins. He died early in Book I while attacking Sylvania, reduced to dust by Death Spells. Despite all the setups, this end felt indignified for a character as storied as Eltharion. In fact, it served only to establish Arkhan's character, placing his strength above Mannfred narratively given how quickly Eltharion was killed in his final encounter.
Here, the problem I have is not how these characters died; wars have costs, and the deaths of these established characters underpin the weight of war -- It's how unsatifying many of deaths are that I take issues with. I understand not every death needs to be mega-epic-wow, but sometimes just felt like "subverting expectations" for the sake of it, with no thought put in how to subvert expectations that still meets customers' desires.

On the other hand, there are some bits and pieces in Nagash that did start to warm to me, like the death of Kemmler, which I found to be a nice call back to his origins; it played on his arrogance established since Roleplay first edition, tied up the looses ends between him and Krell, and gave Tancred II a decent enough send off (died like his father in battle against Kemmler). The whole auric bastion's fall was not as lovingly written, but at least a lot of old faces turned up like Alderbrand Ludenhof and the Ar-Ulric, and adding Valten to the mix. It felt suitably epic for something as pivotal as the defense of the last barrier against the forces of darkness.

Book IV focused a lot more on not-Empire; there's a tremendous amount of story-writting to tie up the threads with the Dwarfs; Lizardmen got taken out, yes, but it wasn't until the end of the book. Belegar's death doesn't fell as sudden as Eltharion (though it did happen "off-screen") either.

I've lost interest by book IV and still have not bothered with book V, also not very interested in the Elf side of things so I'm not clear on the details in what the story was like in Book III. General ideas I've gotten from the past decade was that Book V ended pretty abruptly and the ending was unsatisfactory. Also quite a few notable characters from the oldhammer days got passed for mentioning. Characters like Aborash, Bohemond, a lot of 4th edition characters' fates were left unmentioned in the main book series, which, if the End Times book were to tie up loose ends and give the past a good send off, had clearly failed to accomplish that. Of course that' not the goal, it nevertheless felt like a wasted opportunity to give these characters some representation in the plotline, an odd bits of updated rules, or event bringing back allied contingent units like Kislev and Tilean units as a "final stand" of the remaining civilisations against Chaos. But they couldn't, since their next project was to abandon the gritty, medieval aesthetics and switch to the sort of high fantasy looks wholly detached from the Warhammer Fantasy Battle universe.

Lastly I'd like to address my opinions on Age of Sigmar in connection to WHFB -- as regardless of how one looks at it, AoS is marketed as a successor to WHFB, and its creation is predecated upon the destruction of WHFB as an officially supported-system, and the discontinuation of its product line as we knew it.
At the end, I didn't bother with Age of Sigmar, not because it had worse ruleset (I don't know and don't want to know), but because what it is, let alone what it stands for, is in spite of the sort of fantasy genre I love and care about. Did the End Times turn me off from it? Sure? If the End Times had been a masterpiece, and AoS was to became what it is now, would I care? No. I do not like its aethestics, so as a hobbist first and foremost, I am not interested.

Probably also a bit late but I'll relate how things were for my group.
I'd just recently moved and found a new group. Me and one other guy played Fantasy every other week and we were drawing in other players slowly (everyone else was playing Warmahordes) I was still on contact with my previous group which played Fantasy exclusively.
I don't remember The End Times being marketed as the actual literal death of a product line until it was well into it because there was a certain amount of hype initially. I want to say it wasn't made clear what was going on until after Thanquol at least because I would never have bought the books had I known the game was going to be killed off a few months later.
I do remember being hyped for Nagash and we even had a few games with combined armies. There was definitely games played with Nagash and the updates Thanquol model. Most of us assumed it was leading into 9th because they'd introduced combined profiles so we were speculating a lot on what might happen.

Various lore revelations and events lead to a lot of speculation on what might be coming down the line. The stuff involving Settra especially got a lot of memes and excitement around it. I would say the majority of the lore, especially towards the end was severely disliked, the stuff surrounding the Bretonnians and Elves stands out, Mannfred being a giant bitch is still a meme to this day, Felix dying in a hole and being forgotten (both in WHFB and AoS), Valtan not really doing anything, a dwarf being chosen as an avatar for magic. I can't remember everything but the bad definitely outweighed the good for a lot of people.
For me personally I think the only resolutions I liked was Vlad and Isabella and Skarsnik.

As for AoS it never took of with us. The lore at launch was pretty unclear and we were all pretty bitter about the killing off of Fantasy. From what I understand the lore was pretty unclear and jumbled until recently and there was no real structure. The game itself launched with a lot of "joke" rules and again, a jumbled and unfocused approach. It was basically about as tone-deaf as you could expect. What really got to me personally is that it toom the 40k approach to conflict where more=better. My big issue with 40k is that no fight has any significance because the setting is so massive. If one planet gets destroyed in 40k its no big deal. If one city got destroyed in Fantasy it was a HUGE deal and AoS didn't have that low scale high stakes feel that engages me. As for the models and everything if you look at the releases almost every model based on aesthetics established by Fantasy blow the AoS original factions out of the water. AoS's original stuff is too cartoony and silly and the look of everything is just too OTT. Fantasy was also OTT but in a more believable way. As I said, I can't comment on it much because it never took off.

On a happier note it took 8 years but I finally brought my group back around to playing Fantasy 8th again. So its not a total loss.

Just wanted to say thank you for replying to this thread, I really haven't been able to keep up in recent weeks due to illness and a conference I needed to attend taking precedence, but I appreciate that you were willing to share your perspective here.

It's an interesting thought that the "edition wars" are more of a general phenomenon. I definitely also appreciate the comments about what drew you towards the storylines or what you disliked, this is very helpful to me. That the initial hype was palpable but that it equally floundered so quickly seems interesting, I'll have to think about that. Also, thank you for sharing your thoughts on AoS, especially the aspects that relate to a hobbyist's understanding of aesthetics and the scale being a turnoff. The setting is indeed very different in those respects from what I've gathered, I'm going to have to further analyze why GW made that choice to take it into that direction (meaning why this would be deemed more marketable; I personally like the aesthetics, but they are pretty different and my personal opinion is not really relevant to that discussion )

I definitely still have a lot of information to collect, thank you for helping me along.

Oh, and congrats on getting your group back around, Sim-Life!

I'm curious, have you got any "hard" data from your efforts, ie actual numbers taken by clubs on regular player numbers or similar. I guess it should be easy enough to dig up old forum threads from the era, but all in all it seems most of what you're given is "from my memory this is what I reackon" I can only assume you have posted in "AoS positive" places too, to get the view of WFB players who did embrace AoS.

Qualitative data is just as "hard" as quantitative data. I'm currently collecting qualitative data that is likely to affect future access to healthcare for a group of patients.

That aside, I suspect meaningful quantitative data would actually be harder to collect for this unless GW themselves shared/published it. The sample would otherwise be entirely skewed to the FLGS setting, missing any impact of GW stores and the GW webstore, and require a pretty high number of stores to respond to give a representative sample. GW's financial reports would be the most general but are usually light on detail.

 Haighus wrote:
Qualitative data is just as "hard" as quantitative data. I'm currently collecting qualitative data that is likely to affect future access to healthcare for a group of patients.

That aside, I suspect meaningful quantitative data would actually be harder to collect for this unless GW themselves shared/published it. The sample would otherwise be entirely skewed to the FLGS setting, missing any impact of GW stores and the GW webstore, and require a pretty high number of stores to respond to give a representative sample. GW's financial reports would be the most general but are usually light on detail.

While I doubt you'd get hard numbers but the sales of the books definitely tapered off towards the end. Nagash was sold out on day one. Khaine and Archaon hung around for a good while afterwards and were available months after release. I remember the Khaine softbacks especially were available for ages and I think some sites were even discounting them to get rid of them.

Hey everyone, yes my approach is definitely more on the qualitative end of the spectrum, but I agree that this does not mean that the data is any less "hard", it's a fairly common approach throughout many fields of study and sometimes more insightful than number crunching.

Comparing quantitative data sets did occur to me of course, but aside from looking at the financial reports of GW it is much harder to get a hold of due to a lack of sufficient resources on my end mostly, as Haighus mentioned.

I've been having some issues with widening my scope of inquiry due to life and other aspects of study getting in the way in recent weeks (and since I'm doing this alone, any impediment has pretty severe consequences for the time I can dedicate to the gathering aspect), but I'm still looking to collect data in more forums and communities going forward to get a better picture, so thank you for mentioning that RustyNumber. I will likely continue this all throughout next year, so I'm sure there will be enough data to get a decent view on the matter at the end. Your contributions so far were certainly a good start already, so thank you all again (and keep em coming if you like!).

 Sim-Life wrote:
While I doubt you'd get hard numbers but the sales of the books definitely tapered off towards the end. Nagash was sold out on day one. Khaine and Archaon hung around for a good while afterwards and were available months after release. I remember the Khaine softbacks especially were available for ages and I think some sites were even discounting them to get rid of them.

Maybe this is one of those "it depends on where you were" - but Khaine sold out on the Webstore in under 5 minutes - and finding it in UK shops was basically impossible.
I'm sure when they got round to releasing soft backs they didn't sell - because it was clear the game was over and people were burning their miniatures on youtube...

Which I think is why it was contentious. People's expectations were dashed.

For me End Times was when a lot of people "got back" into WHFB after a significant hiatus - potentially all of 8th and the latter half of 7th. People were interested that the story was moving forward and trying out the different rules. It was a great time to shake out your old armies and play some games. Whether this encouraged a lot of sales is unclear. I put together my goblins during this time - but most of that was sourced via ebay, rather than buying direct from GW. In any case, more WHFB seemed to be getting played in my store than had been the case in years.

There was therefore a degree of hope. We knew the edition was coming to an end - and felt something new was coming. You would I think see a very similar phenomenon between 7th and 8th 40k (but that would be much more warmly received than AoS). We assumed that was 9th edition - but with a major lore shake up, to prompt new models/characters.

And the first few books of End Times sort of encouraged that. Through to Khaine, I assumed they were changing the story to get all the factions to the Old World. It seems silly now - but I had no real doubts that 9th edition was coming. Thanquol put some severe question marks to that theory - but it wasn't yet entirely dead. And then we got rumours of what was in Archaon, then leaks, then the book itself - which finished on a rather abrupt full stop.

This might not have mattered *so much* if AoS 1.0 hadn't been such a disaster. I remember - like many - rushing to get the new rule book, assuming it would sort of "carry on" the story. Which I guess in a way it did - but in place of a no doubt imperfect epic, we got a tedious He-Man in Space ripoff (and almost nothing for 90% of the old WHFB factions). The rules were even worse. There was scarcely a game at all.

Cue woe, woe and thrice woe - and I think the End Times was swept along with it.

Again - there is a comparison to 40k. I thought 7th edition as a whole was a bit of a disaster (despite admittedly playing it a lot). But I really enjoyed the Gathering Storm series. But clearly that didn't end with "yeah, 40k's finished, go play "Time of the Emperor" instead". Instead sales went from strength to strength.

Tyel wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
While I doubt you'd get hard numbers but the sales of the books definitely tapered off towards the end. Nagash was sold out on day one. Khaine and Archaon hung around for a good while afterwards and were available months after release. I remember the Khaine softbacks especially were available for ages and I think some sites were even discounting them to get rid of them.

Maybe this is one of those "it depends on where you were" - but Khaine sold out on the Webstore in under 5 minutes - and finding it in UK shops was basically impossible.
I'm sure when they got round to releasing soft backs they didn't sell - because it was clear the game was over and people were burning their miniatures on youtube...

Which I think is why it was contentious. People's expectations were dashed.

For me End Times was when a lot of people "got back" into WHFB after a significant hiatus - potentially all of 8th and the latter half of 7th. People were interested that the story was moving forward and trying out the different rules. It was a great time to shake out your old armies and play some games. Whether this encouraged a lot of sales is unclear. I put together my goblins during this time - but most of that was sourced via ebay, rather than buying direct from GW. In any case, more WHFB seemed to be getting played in my store than had been the case in years.

Thank you for mentioning this, since this was the case for me as well to some extent. I hadn't been following Warhammer for a while and The End Times brought me back into it. I also recall reading at the time (though I sadly cannot recall where) that sales for WHFB significantly improved compared to previous years initially, which is why I was asking about the specific timing of when interest seemed to wane. This seems to be an indication (with all the previous statements made by others here) that GW managed to at least generate some excitement for whatever was coming next. It also seemed to me at least that the battle scenarios were specifically aimed at veteran players who had a lot of models at their disposal, which obviously makes sense. Can you recall if you only used the End Times ruleset or did people actually play the scenarios from the books?

Tyel wrote:
There was therefore a degree of hope. We knew the edition was coming to an end - and felt something new was coming. You would I think see a very similar phenomenon between 7th and 8th 40k (but that would be much more warmly received than AoS). We assumed that was 9th edition - but with a major lore shake up, to prompt new models/characters.

And the first few books of End Times sort of encouraged that. Through to Khaine, I assumed they were changing the story to get all the factions to the Old World. It seems silly now - but I had no real doubts that 9th edition was coming. Thanquol put some severe question marks to that theory - but it wasn't yet entirely dead. And then we got rumours of what was in Archaon, then leaks, then the book itself - which finished on a rather abrupt full stop.

This might not have mattered *so much* if AoS 1.0 hadn't been such a disaster. I remember - like many - rushing to get the new rule book, assuming it would sort of "carry on" the story. Which I guess in a way it did - but in place of a no doubt imperfect epic, we got a tedious He-Man in Space ripoff (and almost nothing for 90% of the old WHFB factions). The rules were even worse. There was scarcely a game at all.

Cue woe, woe and thrice woe - and I think the End Times was swept along with it.

Again - there is a comparison to 40k. I thought 7th edition as a whole was a bit of a disaster (despite admittedly playing it a lot). But I really enjoyed the Gathering Storm series. But clearly that didn't end with "yeah, 40k's finished, go play "Time of the Emperor" instead". Instead sales went from strength to strength.

Thank you for your insights here, especially the comparison with the 40k release strategy. Then again, the task may have been easier since 40k didn't struggle as much with generating interest.

This is interesting to me, that there was a break between expectation of the story continuing and what they actually did with AoS. This seems like you would have had an easier time accepting the new system if it made more references to WHFB, yes? Or were you more focused on the fact that the rules were so slim? I suppose from GW's perspective, where WHFB was an unprofitable product line, it would follow that they would choose a different direction for the new one, and I do believe one of the common complaints about WHFB was its comparatively high barrier of entry with an intricate rulesystem and comparatively high model count for a functioning army. Has your perspective on newer editions of AoS changed at all?

What stuck in the craw for many in my group was the transition being so naked driven by IP concerns. They could have masked that better - though bluntly they would need better than a minimum wage team of writers to do so. People get heavily into the end times games as mentioned above, and then couldn't really believe what it transitioned into. Over time while a few have stuck with AoS we have seen more drift back to fantasy and indeed to warmaster recently (with players being mostly in warmaster, then fantasy then AoS). But club/social environments are more long term and nothing to do with GWs sales model that they themselves say revolves around mums buying the stuff for kids.

Even now people that like GWs fantasy setting seem to talk about/buy books set in the old world, RPGs in the old world and play computer games like TW. I get how for a variety of reasons they had run out of road commercially - how much of that is their fault is up for debate - but really handled very poorly from rules to background to ethos.

Its interesting that they seemed to have similar plans for 40k and changed course abruptly with the change in management.

carpresearcher wrote:
Thank you so much for detailing your experience with the books, that's really cool and insightful! I really like how you connected it to what you assumed to be the underlying sales strategy as well, those are interesting points.

You describe that you remember looking at the last page still, where everyone dies. Would you be willing to describe a bit more how that made you feel?

I sort of stumbled on one thing you wrote; why do most players not look fondly upon 8. edition? Do you know? I sadly do not know.

Oh boy, there's a lot of issues, but Artillery, ASF elves, etc etc.

Then there was a push from the community and GW itself for ever bigger things predictably making the armies bloat. Specific armies required Elite infantry galore. Elit infantry that was Mailorder only, f.e. at the time i wanted to get a 3rd army of beastmen, to make a functional list i'd have to buy a large amount of bestigores. Yeah, turns out those were the days were gw attempted to cut out FLGS from their supply, hence availability in non GW store countries of requried units dropped to basically 0 or massivly overpriced.

Honestly availability was always an issue that got excacerbated by ever larger "normal" armies, even for armies that were "small" like ogre kingdoms one of my former armies and the one i threw away sadly... when basically Standardbearer, iron guts, gorgers, hunters, gnoblar trappers and the junkthrower were all mailorder that severly crippled any realistc prospect of building up that army to a decent point nvm functions on the table.

That cutting out FLGS attitude didn't go away into the end times and understandably interest dropped off.

I know plenty of people, me included, who never really acknowledged the AoS setting and still think of the Old World as THE Warhammer setting.

They are never going to play AoS and even side games like Warcry have "being set in the AoS universe" mentioned as a very important negative, most often a deal breaker.

Cyel wrote:
I know plenty of people, me included, who never really acknowledged the AoS setting and still think of the Old World as THE Warhammer setting.

They are never going to play AoS and even side games like Warcry have "being set in the AoS universe" mentioned as a very important negative, most often a deal breaker.

Yeah well I do personally believe the AoS aesthetics weren't meant to appeal to a not insiginificant portion of the old Fantasy base simple because it's so different. For anyone looking for that medieval fantasy vibe, AoS simply ain't it; I have to imagine suits at GW knew this and it was a deliberate move to transition to a completely different imagine. The recent City of Sigmar release simply reinforces my belief in their intent to discard the that kind of fantasy design in favor of... I dunno, steam-cog-atompunk-whatever-else vibe. As long as that's their aesthetics, I don't see myself ever interested in neither the system nor the background fluff.

But personally, since I don't disregard AoS because Fantasy died for it, I do pay attention to new AoS releases. Few in the offerings interest me, but every once and a while, they have good miniatures for most Warriors of Chaos and Lizardmen (the Seraphon range, perhaps because how alien their were originally designed to be, remained largely the same aesthetically -- no sleek round space helmets, yet); and I noticed a Warcry Goblin Wolf Rider kit that's in all aspects a visual upgrade to the old minis. There may be an occaionally Sigmarine head that needs cut off, but overall if you played those armies, there are things you can make use of.

Hey guys, I don't want to hinder discussion of the AoS aspects at all, I am inclined to agree that the aesthetic is intentionally quite different from Fantasy, so I can definitely see why it wouldn't appeal to many of the old customers.

But I thought it would be kind of good to summarize what I have gathered from your posts so far, so that you can maybe correct me on some stuff or add to it.

So for one, in terms of the storyline and accompanying book releases, while it was initially not entirely clear or deemed likely by some of the player base that the game would be discontinued, it became increasingly apparent as the releases became more world-altering that the company was pulling the plug on it; specifically the events in Book 3: Khaine were hard to come back from. The treatment of some factions such as Bretonnia was perceived as very jarring, because they were not treated with the respect in lore that would have been seen as appropriate. Generally, many lore bits were deemed underdeveloped and controversial, particularly towards the end, and character deaths were varying in quality; this rather hasty development of the lore writing is attributed to working conditions the writers faced (lack of preparation, low wages, high demand/workload).

While 8th edition in itself was somewhat controversial/disliked by some, there was a belief that a 9th edition would fix some of the issues. Players tend to play different editions anyhow, and continue playing 8th or other editions on their own time, but the lack of support from the company makes it hard to keep this feasible. While the release of The Old World carries some hope in terms of its implementation and return of the aesthetic players hoped for, there is skepticism over how the company will implement this.

Overall, players of WHFB have not embraced AoS to the degree that would have perhaps been satisfactory, or even outright shunned it. This was particularly linked to the very bare bones "disastrous" initial ruleset and release strategy of AoS. Yet AoS is overall a financial success for the company. There is some discontent over the perception that WHFB was mainly killed off due to copyrighting reasons and therefore an extension of ongoing IP protection efforts by GW. These are by now somewhat circumvented through 3rd party providers and 3D printing, which is obviously frowned upon by GW.

The roster changes and miniature releases that came with the End Times were initially not necessarily perceived as negatives (do we have dissenting voices or maybe someone willing to detail their experience with the ruleset?). Army composition was however not particularly easy for 8th edition at times, because it required use of mailorder products and GW tried to cut out the middleman saleswise, which didn't help matters.

This is of course a very brief summary and there are aspects i will go into more detail over, but does that seem fair to you?

Cyel wrote:
I know plenty of people, me included, who never really acknowledged the AoS setting and still think of the Old World as THE Warhammer setting.

They are never going to play AoS and even side games like Warcry have "being set in the AoS universe" mentioned as a very important negative, most often a deal breaker.

That is almost screamingly pathetic. And a very good indicator as to why a big, big portion of the local group has no interest in either going back or trying the old world.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:

Cyel wrote:
I know plenty of people, me included, who never really acknowledged the AoS setting and still think of the Old World as THE Warhammer setting.

They are never going to play AoS and even side games like Warcry have "being set in the AoS universe" mentioned as a very important negative, most often a deal breaker.

That is almost screamingly pathetic. And a very good indicator as to why a big, big portion of the local group has no interest in either going back or trying the old world.

I mean both view points are silly.

Honestly I 100% understood the hate that AoS had at launch, however its been 3 editions and X number of years and Old World is also coming back. I think anyone still carrying a chip on their shoulder needs to put it aside for either game. Yes GW handled it in a terrible way; yes it was a disaster at the time; but time has moved on and its healthier that people move on too and stop trying to draw battle lines in the sand.

 Overread wrote:

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:

Cyel wrote:
I know plenty of people, me included, who never really acknowledged the AoS setting and still think of the Old World as THE Warhammer setting.

They are never going to play AoS and even side games like Warcry have "being set in the AoS universe" mentioned as a very important negative, most often a deal breaker.

That is almost screamingly pathetic. And a very good indicator as to why a big, big portion of the local group has no interest in either going back or trying the old world.

I mean both view points are silly.

Honestly I 100% understood the hate that AoS had at launch, however its been 3 editions and X number of years and Old World is also coming back. I think anyone still carrying a chip on their shoulder needs to put it aside for either game. Yes GW handled it in a terrible way; yes it was a disaster at the time; but time has moved on and its healthier that people move on too and stop trying to draw battle lines in the sand.

Would you say that on the whole more people sort of let bygones be bygones considering time and support for both games has shifted significantly ever since the End Times or are there more people holding on to these grudges like a bunch of stunties? I'm asking because it is interesting to consider for my PhD how recovery after the fact is handled, whether the new reality is permanent division or a mending of sorts. Whether people lean more towards acceptance or spite, however you want to put it.

Also, @Inquisitor Gideon, could you maybe expand on what you meant by that? What do you associate with this attitude towards AoS?

carpresearcher wrote:

 Overread wrote:

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:

Cyel wrote:
I know plenty of people, me included, who never really acknowledged the AoS setting and still think of the Old World as THE Warhammer setting.

They are never going to play AoS and even side games like Warcry have "being set in the AoS universe" mentioned as a very important negative, most often a deal breaker.

That is almost screamingly pathetic. And a very good indicator as to why a big, big portion of the local group has no interest in either going back or trying the old world.

I mean both view points are silly.

Honestly I 100% understood the hate that AoS had at launch, however its been 3 editions and X number of years and Old World is also coming back. I think anyone still carrying a chip on their shoulder needs to put it aside for either game. Yes GW handled it in a terrible way; yes it was a disaster at the time; but time has moved on and its healthier that people move on too and stop trying to draw battle lines in the sand.

Would you say that on the whole more people sort of let bygones be bygones considering time and support for both games has shifted significantly ever since the End Times or are there more people holding on to these grudges like a bunch of stunties? I'm asking because it is interesting to consider for my PhD how recovery after the fact is handled, whether the new reality is permanent division or a mending of sorts. Whether people lean more towards acceptance or spite, however you want to put it.

Also, @Inquisitor Gideon, could you maybe expand on what you meant by that? What do you associate with this attitude towards AoS?

I'd say it varies both on the individual and on the community/ies they are a part of.

The return of Old World is also very new and recent and hasn't been tested long term yet. There are some who are disgrunted that GW are clearly keeping AoS and Old World model lines as separate as they can and for that purpose a bunch of armies that have Old World models in AoS are not included in the recent revival outside of "legendary" rules. Ergo they get one set of rules and won't get more and won't get new models etc...

In GW's view fans of those models should play AoS

Meanwhile the models we have for OW are dividing some. Because they are majority old sculpts some are very happy to get a chance to own models they didn't get in the past or to complete their armies and so forth. Others are annoyed that GW is charging modern prices for very old models and whilst they've had some quality improvements on the old moulds; they are still old sculpts. So that has caused some division from those into Old World


I'd say the dust hasn't settled yet from Old World actually returning = come back in a year or two and see what's happened. That its sold out everywhere with just 1 armies I think shows that it has been a popular launch and return and those willing to come back have come back. Time will tell on how well this pans out. If GW can run both games side by side; if Old World gets new models and new armies in a good pace; updates to old stuff and so forth.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:

Cyel wrote:
I know plenty of people, me included, who never really acknowledged the AoS setting and still think of the Old World as THE Warhammer setting.

They are never going to play AoS and even side games like Warcry have "being set in the AoS universe" mentioned as a very important negative, most often a deal breaker.

That is almost screamingly pathetic. And a very good indicator as to why a big, big portion of the local group has no interest in either going back or trying the old world.

I'm sorry, what exactly is "screamingly" (!?!) pathetic in not wanting to play a game because you dislike its setting?

Do you do that? Can you give an example of a game with a setting you dislike, but which you play anyway so as not to be considered pathetic by other people?

 Overread wrote:

carpresearcher wrote:

 Overread wrote:

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:

Cyel wrote:
I know plenty of people, me included, who never really acknowledged the AoS setting and still think of the Old World as THE Warhammer setting.

They are never going to play AoS and even side games like Warcry have "being set in the AoS universe" mentioned as a very important negative, most often a deal breaker.

That is almost screamingly pathetic. And a very good indicator as to why a big, big portion of the local group has no interest in either going back or trying the old world.

I mean both view points are silly.

Honestly I 100% understood the hate that AoS had at launch, however its been 3 editions and X number of years and Old World is also coming back. I think anyone still carrying a chip on their shoulder needs to put it aside for either game. Yes GW handled it in a terrible way; yes it was a disaster at the time; but time has moved on and its healthier that people move on too and stop trying to draw battle lines in the sand.

Would you say that on the whole more people sort of let bygones be bygones considering time and support for both games has shifted significantly ever since the End Times or are there more people holding on to these grudges like a bunch of stunties? I'm asking because it is interesting to consider for my PhD how recovery after the fact is handled, whether the new reality is permanent division or a mending of sorts. Whether people lean more towards acceptance or spite, however you want to put it.

Also, @Inquisitor Gideon, could you maybe expand on what you meant by that? What do you associate with this attitude towards AoS?

I'd say it varies both on the individual and on the community/ies they are a part of.

The return of Old World is also very new and recent and hasn't been tested long term yet. There are some who are disgrunted that GW are clearly keeping AoS and Old World model lines as separate as they can and for that purpose a bunch of armies that have Old World models in AoS are not included in the recent revival outside of "legendary" rules. Ergo they get one set of rules and won't get more and won't get new models etc...

In GW's view fans of those models should play AoS

Meanwhile the models we have for OW are dividing some. Because they are majority old sculpts some are very happy to get a chance to own models they didn't get in the past or to complete their armies and so forth. Others are annoyed that GW is charging modern prices for very old models and whilst they've had some quality improvements on the old moulds; they are still old sculpts. So that has caused some division from those into Old World


I'd say the dust hasn't settled yet from Old World actually returning = come back in a year or two and see what's happened. That its sold out everywhere with just 1 armies I think shows that it has been a popular launch and return and those willing to come back have come back. Time will tell on how well this pans out. If GW can run both games side by side; if Old World gets new models and new armies in a good pace; updates to old stuff and so forth.

That seems like a fair assessment, thank you for that. It's probably hard to discern definitively, due to the individual variance. Seems the jury is still out on this, but yes, it seems to work to some degree if initial sales are that good. In my personal view, I think it will prove difficult to sustain interest if they largely keep to the old sculpts, at least I think it would hinder the potential of the Old World long term. Sticking to the nostalgia appeal kind of seems like a waste to me, when I think you could just as easily bring in new customers by updating some models or bringing in new stuff; then again, I am of the belief that there can be much more life in the old setting, which GW doesn't seem to entirely agree on.

carpresearcher wrote:

The roster changes and miniature releases that came with the End Times were initially not necessarily perceived as negatives (do we have dissenting voices or maybe someone willing to detail their experience with the ruleset?). Army composition was however not particularly easy for 8th edition at times, because it required use of mailorder products and GW tried to cut out the middleman saleswise, which didn't help matters.

For roster changes, 8th edition I saw had haemorrhaged players locally in general. Locally it went from the biggest scene (bigger than 40k in my particular area) to pretty much gone. End Times lore was bad, and introduced things in line with the 8th paradigm of them releasing big ugly 'centrepiece' models, and also forcing units bigger during 8th (which because bigger units meant fewer units for the same points, pushed up army sizes to accommodate more similar individual unit numbers to feel 'natural').

 Daba wrote:

carpresearcher wrote:

The roster changes and miniature releases that came with the End Times were initially not necessarily perceived as negatives (do we have dissenting voices or maybe someone willing to detail their experience with the ruleset?). Army composition was however not particularly easy for 8th edition at times, because it required use of mailorder products and GW tried to cut out the middleman saleswise, which didn't help matters.

For roster changes, 8th edition I saw had haemorrhaged players locally in general. Locally it went from the biggest scene (bigger than 40k in my particular area) to pretty much gone. End Times lore was bad, and introduced things in line with the 8th paradigm of them releasing big ugly 'centrepiece' models, and also forcing units bigger during 8th (which because bigger units meant fewer units for the same points, pushed up army sizes to accommodate more similar individual unit numbers to feel 'natural').

Interesting observation, thank you for that! Almost seems like GW's particular release tactic with 8th edition to (presumably) drive sales had the opposite effect in your area, then. I'll be sure to add that.