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Nah, gw still has:

40k (game base is shrinking due to scale/pricing/balance)
HH (both board game and wargame - gaining a large following)
LOTR (had a MASSIVE following, getting rebooted soon)
Specialist board games (space hulk, bac, DO, etc, selling very well)
AOS (selling better than the naysayers say)

All have their target audiences and are getting much love this year. The reasons for the boardgames/army sets are many cons are going to small box games instead of single unit purchase army games. GW had to change their products in order to qualify for the convention spaces.

 455_PWR wrote:
Nah, gw still has:

40k (game base is shrinking due to scale/pricing/balance)
HH (both board game and wargame - gaining a large following)
LOTR (had a MASSIVE following, getting rebooted soon)
Specialist board games (space hulk, bac, DO, etc, selling very well)
AOS (selling better than the naysayers say)

All have their target audiences and are getting much love this year. The reasons for the boardgames/army sets are many cons are going to small box games instead of single unit purchase army games. GW had to change their products in order to qualify for the convention spaces.

Sorry to say this, but any proof of the sales volume of any of the GW product (regardless of the side taken, be it "it's not selling at all" or "it's selling like cupcakes") is anecdotal because GW doesn't disclose any hard numbers about their sales. Also, HH is pretty much a FW game, and if you ask the 30k players, they want to keep it that way.

What Fenrir meant is that GW only has one really big game now, as there is no hard evidence of AoS's success or 40k's downfall - if you want, just take a look at the ICV2 discussion.

 455_PWR wrote:
Nah, gw still has:

40k (game base is shrinking due to scale/pricing/balance)
HH (both board game and wargame - gaining a large following)
Specialist board games (space hulk, bac, DO, etc, selling very well)

Space Marines is Space Marines bro, regardless of fripperies like uniform.

To me having the world mapped out is not a constraint, and certainly not a bad thing. In fact, it's quite the opposite, having things thought out and mapped out in your universe is a good thing, it helps things remain fairly consistent from author to author, story to story. That being said, the Old World was no where near being filled in. You had a map, but there were blurred edges, areas of mystery and " here be dragons" which still allowed you to fit in whatever force you wanted into the setting. You yourself had a list of essentially unexplored areas that we had little more than a name and some vague descriptions of. There were plenty of areas to expand upon without starting over.

 VeteranNoob wrote:
The setting was constrained by its size and borders, even though some of those areas we have barely heard anything about still provide a potential for coverage.

I don't know how you can possibly say the setting was constrained when GW never explored the constraints.

It wasn't the setting that was constrained, it was GW's mindset toward the setting, not wanting to either expand nor advance the setting of the WHFB world.

 Grumblewartz wrote:

I am not opposed to AoS, and I do think a dramatic change was necessary in game mechanics and fluff, as Warhammer Fantasy was on life support. However, I think End Times could have been an intriguing setting for the game that would have been moderately successful for a 2 year stretch. Then they could have gradually broke down the old world and introduced AoS. I probably would have (and I would venture to guess a fair number of other players too) been more receptive to the fluff change. As it stands, it felt like a big FU to all the loyal players that had made GW what it is today, and it has instilled a sense of unease in GW games now, since we never know when the next game will be "AoS'ered". I will be intrigued to see how AoS develops, even if the setting is not my cup of tea. I will probably check out KoW as a rule set for future gaming, though there model line has really become quite interesting too.

I agree with this. honestly GW did a poor job of introducing AoS after the End Times.

Mind you I am also of the opinion they didn't need to completely destroy everything to make the change. They could of had Sigmar reborn defeat Archaon and save the world but the Chaos magic flooding the world slowly changes things. Then you can jump the setting ahead a few thousand years and have a long history where the old alliances and people broke down into new factions we see now.

Honestly that whole 6 month period after the last End Time book dropped and we heard NOTHING and then suddenly we got AoS dropped on it was one of the poorest business/PR decisions I have ever seen.

Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:I know for a fact that I'm going to keep on working on my Asur well through this year and the majority of the next, be it in fluff or modelling wise.

*Pale, skinny fistbump*

Grumblewartz wrote:I do think a dramatic change was necessary in game mechanics and fluff

Nah, just game mechanics. Even if they didn't want to expand eastwards or advance the storyline (such as the 'advancement' turned out), they had 2,500 years of history just since the empire was founded, and more, to explore. Historical players get a lot of mileage out of lesser spans of RL history.

Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

 455_PWR wrote:
Nah, gw still has:

40k (game base is shrinking due to scale/pricing/balance)
HH (both board game and wargame - gaining a large following)
Specialist board games (space hulk, bac, DO, etc, selling very well)

Space Marines is Space Marines bro, regardless of fripperies like uniform.

Aye! A couple of historical periods and scenarios, featuring the same ol' faction beating things up. (Or beating eachother up) And people say that the Warhammer world was constrained...

Deadawake1347 wrote:
To me having the world mapped out is not a constraint, and certainly not a bad thing. In fact, it's quite the opposite, having things thought out and mapped out in your universe is a good thing, it helps things remain fairly consistent from author to author, story to story. That being said, the Old World was no where near being filled in. You had a map, but there were blurred edges, areas of mystery and " here be dragons" which still allowed you to fit in whatever force you wanted into the setting. You yourself had a list of essentially unexplored areas that we had little more than a name and some vague descriptions of. There were plenty of areas to expand upon without starting over.

This! The vastness of the Empire alone was mentioned - it's also been referenced in publications as tiny islands of civilisation separated by vast gulfs of wild forest, or words to that effect. Plenty of space there for more than just beastmen and orcs.

Plus, any Tolkienish co-medieval fantasy world worth it's salt needs a map.

People also seem to forget how 'big' the world gets when the fastest thing that you can get your hands on is a horse. Historically, most folks did not venture much beyond ten miles from where they were born. I'm quite enjoying Bernard cornwells Saxon series right now, and his England, which we consider to be a tiny country, consists of four Saxon kingdoms, Cornwall, the (bloody) Welsh territories, the (bloodier) scots which is essentially unmapped for our hero uhtred, and beyond this, you have the fresians, the franks, the Irish, the dal riada (Ulster/Scottish isles kingdom) and god knows how many Viking and Danish holds. Even this tiny country has literally no end of places to go adventuring and causing trouble.

Having infinite space or even infinity worlds (in 40k) doesn't necessarily add to the tapestry. So much of what 40k has boils down to one dimensional 'jungle world' and the whole thing is coloured with very basic, very broad strokes. A single world, or even a continent or a country the size of Britain offers a far more 'intimate' setting and that is not a bad thing.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 VeteranNoob wrote:
The setting was constrained by its size and borders, even though some of those areas we have barely heard anything about still provide a potential for coverage.

I don't know how you can possibly say the setting was constrained when GW never explored the constraints.

It wasn't the setting that was constrained, it was GW's mindset toward the setting, not wanting to either expand nor advance the setting of the WHFB world.

Too many forums...
I'm not sure if we are talking about the same thing or even agreeing

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

Actually, the Old World gathered so little interest that Total War: Warhammer is actually coming out - not a mod, mind you, but a full fledged game. This year. For Creative Assembly to pick it up, I think it would have to have a "profitable amount of people interested" in it.

I think there's a ton of people interested to the extent that they're prepared to spend, what, £40 on a video game and spend the odd evening playing it.

WHFB on the other hand, needed people to spend £100s if not £1000s and devote enough time to painting for it to feel like a full-time job... I was looking at getting in to WHFB around the End Times. I fancied Vampire Counts. Then I worked out how much money I would need to spend, and how much time I would need to spend painting, skeletons and zombies that were only really bloody cannon fodder - but I had to take them (hundreds of them) for the core unit tax... And I thought - actually, no.

Crispy78 wrote:

I think there's a ton of people interested to the extent that they're prepared to spend, what, £40 on a video game and spend the odd evening playing it.

WHFB on the other hand, needed people to spend £100s if not £1000s and devote enough time to painting for it to feel like a full-time job...

But that's little to do with the popularity of the setting. (Apart from the lengths people were willing to go to 'officially' participate in it, before they burned out)

You didn't need hundreds of skeletons and zombies to appease the core tax. My vampire count army was 75 models or so total. That was at 2000 points.

Myths like needing hundreds of models to paint before you could play are what contributed to the game being binned in the first place by people, because if I didn't know any better I wouldn't want to be forced to paint hundreds of models either and people rarely fact-check anything.

I loathe the new setting, and the game rules do nothing for me.

The whole thing left such a bad taste in my mouth that I have barely played even 40K since, and won't spend another dime on any of it (new at least.) *

I hope AoS fails miserably and GW gets bought out. There is no limit to my salt.

*Exceptions will be made for Total War Warhammer.

H

Herod wrote:
I loathe the new setting, and the game rules do nothing for me.

The whole thing left such a bad taste in my mouth that I have barely played even 40K since, and won't spend another dime on any of it (new at least.) *

I hope AoS fails miserably and GW gets bought out. There is no limit to my salt.

That's terribly spiteful, it is actually the right place though.

The new setting fits the new game; in that it gives lots of player freedom to create your own narrative to match a flexible game that can be play as (and with what) you like. Each new realm is a setting in it's own right, giving creative freedom to the players.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Crispy78 wrote:

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

Actually, the Old World gathered so little interest that Total War: Warhammer is actually coming out - not a mod, mind you, but a full fledged game. This year. For Creative Assembly to pick it up, I think it would have to have a "profitable amount of people interested" in it.

I think there's a ton of people interested to the extent that they're prepared to spend, what, £40 on a video game and spend the odd evening playing it.

WHFB on the other hand, needed people to spend £100s if not £1000s and devote enough time to painting for it to feel like a full-time job... I was looking at getting in to WHFB around the End Times. I fancied Vampire Counts. Then I worked out how much money I would need to spend, and how much time I would need to spend painting, skeletons and zombies that were only really bloody cannon fodder - but I had to take them (hundreds of them) for the core unit tax... And I thought - actually, no.

Getting into a wargame is an entirely different level of commitment than a video game, you really can't just pick up 8th and try it for a bit.
I got into Warhammer around when AoS released, the cost put me off BEFORE adding a bunch of stuff I didn't really want for core tax . Not to mention the tome I had to convince someone to teach me.

 DarkBlack wrote:

Herod wrote:
I loathe the new setting, and the game rules do nothing for me.

The whole thing left such a bad taste in my mouth that I have barely played even 40K since, and won't spend another dime on any of it (new at least.) *

I hope AoS fails miserably and GW gets bought out. There is no limit to my salt.

That's terribly spiteful, it is actually the right place though.

I want GW to fail at this point, not because I'm spiteful but because GW used to be a company that made things I like, now they don't, I would like them to go back to making things I like even if it means they have to fail before they or someone else picks up the ball.

Sure, maybe it's selfish, but I don't really care.

The new setting fits the new game; in that it gives lots of player freedom to create your own narrative to match a flexible game that can be play as (and with what) you like. Each new realm is a setting in it's own right, giving creative freedom to the players.

I still just don't understand this argument. Players always had creative freedom, if you didn't like the Old World you could always pretend it was something else, you could write your own fluff. The world was big enough not only for GW to expand it more but for players to write whatever the hell fluff they wanted and just shoe horn it in to the world as they see fit.

You could have invented a fictional town within the Old World that was on the edge of a volcano, or hidden in a cave under the ocean, or in a part of the world being overtaken by Chaos. If you could imagine it, it could be done in one of the many unexplored parts of the world.

Creative freedom is something you always have in wargaming, it doesn't need to be granted.

Creative freedom is something you always have in wargaming, it doesn't need to be granted.

That's spot on. Prior to AoS I was building up a Samurai Army to count as Empire. I had high hopes 9th edition would fix some of 8th's problems and revitalize the communities. Too bad.

Just bought a copy of first edition. It's not supported, but I suppose I'll just have to manage without.

You are such a wargaming hipster dude.

I saw the huge amount of WHFB stuff now being in the "last chance to buy" (aka "where models go to die") and I felt like a little part of me died too. WHFB may have been dying already, but while the models were still there, it wasn't truly dead. Now that most stuff is gone, it is definite

Ah well, at least it will allow me to spend money on other stuff instead.

I was never huge into WHFB gaming, as I never had time to paint armies for both that AND 40k. However, I am/was a huge fan for the last nearly 20,years, and loved all the fluff, as well as reading all the Black Library novels.

Hell, just yesterday I found my copy of the Albion Campaign rules that were sold with White Dwarf!

I know it's an odd angle to take, but lately, I have been thinking of playing KoW in 15mm scale as something more manageable to paint (I generally have to provide armies for both sides to get my games in, as I live in a dead area, and my friends/wife will play, but not interested in painting).

I've actually found that because of Kings of War's "steal old Warhammer players" approach, coupled with Ral Partha's 15mm Demonworld line, I can actually set all my 15mm KoW games in the Warhammer World, as the Demonworld line especially has the old 90's Warhammer aesthetics. So that's where I am going to get my nostalgic Warhammer Fantasy fix, GW's squatting of armies be damned. Between them and minis from Splintered Light miniatures, I can pretty much cover every WHFB race but Lizardmen and Chaos.

I figure if GW is dead set on killing their setting AND armies, I will just keep a great setting alive but stop giving GW any more money.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I was never huge into WHFB gaming, as I never had time to paint armies for both that AND 40k. However, I am/was a huge fan for the last nearly 20,years, and loved all the fluff, as well as reading all the Black Library novels.

Hell, just yesterday I found my copy of the Albion Campaign rules that were sold with White Dwarf!

I know it's an odd angle to take, but lately, I have been thinking of playing KoW in 15mm scale as something more manageable to paint (I generally have to provide armies for both sides to get my games in, as I live in a dead area, and my friends/wife will play, but not interested in painting).

I've actually found that because of Kings of War's "steal old Warhammer players" approach, coupled with Ral Partha's 15mm Demonworld line, I can actually set all my 15mm KoW games in the Warhammer World, as the Demonworld line especially has the old 90's Warhammer aesthetics. So that's where I am going to get my nostalgic Warhammer Fantasy fix, GW's squatting of armies be damned. Between them and minis from Splintered Light miniatures, I can pretty much cover every WHFB race but Lizardmen and Chaos.

I figure if GW is dead set on killing their setting AND armies, I will just keep a great setting alive but stop giving GW any more money.

Those do indeed show a distinct kinship to 90s WFB. Very nice.

 Da Boss wrote:
You are such a wargaming hipster dude.

Ah, the lowest common denominator attempt at an insult. So oft used at so many things it's become meaningless.

Or, I just buy stuff I like.

While I like 15mm models in general, I haven't been able to find enough 15mm models that I actually like aesthetically to get in to 15mm WHFB. Some armies aren't too bad, some armies aren't well represented, some armies are well represented but the models are pretty mediocre.

I quite like the current aesthetic of WHFB Orcs and Goblins and as of yet I haven't seen anything in 15mm that satisfies me. Same with Lizardmen. And those are my 2 main WHFB interests.

It seems like you could make a decent Bretonnian army as there's a lot of 15mm historics from the 1300-1500 sort of period. I also remember seeing a bunch of decent looking skeletons which would be a good basis for a VC force.

 Vermis wrote:

Crispy78 wrote:

I think there's a ton of people interested to the extent that they're prepared to spend, what, £40 on a video game and spend the odd evening playing it.

WHFB on the other hand, needed people to spend £100s if not £1000s and devote enough time to painting for it to feel like a full-time job...

But that's little to do with the popularity of the setting. (Apart from the lengths people were willing to go to 'officially' participate in it, before they burned out)

I was going to say this but I have no need for that since Vermis got the drop on me! *Fistbumps back*

I think it's universally agreed that FB needed a change desperately - what we mainly disagree on is the extent of the changes necessary. I am on the side of "balance the damned rules PLEASE and shake up the world a little". They should have taken a good long look at 6th Edition and tried to revert things a bit, imo.

 argonak wrote:

Creative freedom is something you always have in wargaming, it doesn't need to be granted.

That's spot on. Prior to AoS I was building up a Samurai Army to count as Empire. I had high hopes 9th edition would fix some of 8th's problems and revitalize the communities. Too bad.

9th AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE BABY

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
You are such a wargaming hipster dude.

Ah, the lowest common denominator attempt at an insult. So oft used at so many things it's become meaningless.

Or, I just buy stuff I like.

So do I, but I don't feel the need to condescend to others about it.

No need to feel depressed, it's for the best. The models would be released anyway and you would have obese guys in gold lycra, christmas tree Archaon, LEGO juniors dracoth cavalry and power armour dragons all in whfb, all depicted on soulless cgi illustrations by deviant art artists in brand new 9th edition wararmy warboooks.

Seriously now, I'm really grateful that at least they had the courage to destroy it, that way whfb will live long after both GW and AoS bite the dust.

WFB is not dead, it just got raised and is Unbreakable and Unstable.

Warhammer:Total War is reviving interest in the game, and it is clear that Creative assembly have no interest in AoS, right down to the damnation with faint praise.
Creative Assembly podcasts shows a lot of 8th gear in the background and there is a lot of love for the lore.

Unbreakable and Unstable. - now the monkeys are not writing army books and rules fanfixes are seeping in. The game is getting less broken, but is also destabilising. Your local meta will fix this.
You can still get into WFB if you act soon, and there is no small chance that GW will come to its senses once the AoS cash cow bursts.

Personally, I think that Ronnie Renton should crow louder and louder about all the WHFB customers he's getting, nothing will stick in GW's ire like hearing this and they may decide to bring back a living rulebook or something like just to scorch the earth for other companies.

I will quietly hope and pray that they give it to the FW/new SGs guys and keep it the hell away from the 'GW Prime' team, to keep it very clear of detritus from AoS. If we want a skirmish game to go with it, SG can rereleash or indeed reimagine, Mordheim.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Personally, I think that Ronnie Renton should crow louder and louder about all the WHFB customers he's getting, nothing will stick in GW's ire like hearing this and they may decide to bring back a living rulebook or something like just to scorch the earth for other companies.

While I agree...at the same time GW looked at the numbers and realized they could afford to lose those customers as there number were not growing. That was sort of the whole point of the Warscrolls for each army that came out last summer. Grab who you can who MIGHT like AoS and say so long (and thanks for all the fish!) to the rest.

Remember WHFB was canned because it was not selling and new players were not coming in. We can argue to death as to WHY that was *cough* Rules! *cough* but at the end of the day all 15 armies were 15% of sales. As far as GW is concerned Ronnie can have them.