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 His Master's Voice wrote:
@ Orinoco

BOOM, HEADSHOT!

for the lulz!

WD has sucked for ages, I welcome the move.

I just hope its good, and I will be really pleased if it actually is.

Well done GW for doing something with WD, though I am extremely sceptical that it will improve the quality in terms of content.

EDIT - It doesn't bode well that "White Dwarf Daily" is basically what they're doing at the moment... i.e. raiding the Flickr pool and advertising their new products.

My hopes are definitely not heading in an upward trajectory.

Give props to GW for actually trying. Now we see which way this reform goes.

How hard they try has nothing to do with it. I only care about the results of their effort. If the magazine has anything I find worthwhile (my definition/viewpoint), I'll buy it. Otherwise I won't. Over the past ten years, it mostly hasn't and thus I haven't. We'll see how this reorg affects things in the future.

I'm hoping this pans out. White Dwarf used to be a very worthwhile purchase -- full of narrative, ideas, hobby tips....

Most of all, please *please* GW give us more player armies /models/conversions from the community. Page after page of standard, non-converted, 'Evy Metal-painted pictures has made White Dwarf boring.

All I'm thinking about is the "Sod Off Bryan Ansell" bit in that issue of WD when reading the article . . .

I'll take a look at the first few. If they seem greatly improved, perhaps I'll subscribe.

So is the new shiny editor guy the guy from EDGE mag or was that just a rumor that was completely wrong?

Also II'm hoping for a letters section so that we the disgruntled "fans" can get our voices HEARD!!!!!!!

Actually not that disgruntled, just it might be a good section for GW to have, a bit of a feed back loop and all.

*shrug* I'm optimistic. Sounds like GW has made some capital investments into WD, which indicates that they're serious. Now it's up to the new staff to make it happen and keep it happening.

At some point someone at GW had to realize that if WD is to be a key portal for your customers into the hobby, it needs to be good.

 ceorron wrote:
So is the new shiny editor guy the guy from EDGE mag or was that just a rumor that was completely wrong?

Also II'm hoping for a letters section so that we the disgruntled "fans" can get our voices HEARD!!!!!!!

Actually not that disgruntled, just it might be a good section for GW to have, a bit of a feed back loop and all.

I'm not sure about Edge, but I know that he used to be the editor of N64 magazine some years ago.

Important thing will be journalists, paid to write articles which contain actual content. That's what the magazine has been missing for some time.

 Pacific wrote:

I'm not sure about Edge, but I know that he used to be the editor of N64 magazine some years ago.

Thanks Pacific that is interesting to know. N64 magazine was my favorite magazine of better days, always had such a great and lively sense of humor you could tell the guys behind it had real passion for Nintendo and the video games they made.

As a side note the last issue of Nintendo Gamer to long lived predecessor of N64 mag was printed and released earlier this month. A touching issue that look back on the magazines 20+ years history right back to Super Play. Some fond memories there.

It will be interesting to see how this turns out.

And yes it will be the articles that make the magazine no new editor or indeed lots of money thrown at it will make it better. It comes down to the articles and in many ways the writing.

Maybe, just maybe, that Digital editor will have time to make those rules that SHOULD be online (WD Sisters Codex) actually show up online. Wouldn't that be nice?

Excellent news. I love White Dwarf but there is no doubt that the quality did go downhill.

"You gotta have blue hair!" - Strong Bad.

Look, the cynic in me says "All this has happened before, and all of this will happen again". It took about a year for Fat Dwarf (190-210-ish) to return to its same original size (but for a higher price and with no card inserts). How long for this one to revert to type?

Fat Dwarf was the best phase of WD, although I will say that the good stuff kept coming for a lot longer than issue 210.

Brewhouse bash, card terrain, complete BFG game all appeared well after the 210 mark.

The magazine itself was excellent right up until issue 310+ or so, when the editors decided that putting words in their magazine wasn't actually important,

The font size and white space decreased, the wordcount and overall quality tanked.

Even battle reports which used to be nice 16-page affairs with maps, army composition discussion and narrative stories to support were reduced to 8-page shorts that were mostly pictures with a couple of paragraphs and no clue as to what is actually going on in the game.

I'm excited to hear about a new design for an ailing magazine, I personally hope that it becomes a showcase of the hobby again, full of great articles about painting, modelling, converting, playing and terrain. I am not interested in purchasing an expensive catalog that showcases an expensive line of products that I should really consider purchasing today! As for the Battle Reports, I really hope they do get changed. Like many of you, I would like to see more battle reports featuring fans of the game and not just gwemployee01 vs. gwemployee02 playing a boring game involving what they pulled off the shelves of the 'Eavy Metal department. (Also featuring the exciting new and expensive products you should consider purchasing today!)

On the subject of the Battle Reports featuring products from 'Eavy Metal, I love seeing games played with master-class painted figures, but my biggest gripe is that once again 'Eavy Metal is nothing more than a showcase of the product. The squads and vehicles always feature a wide range and variety of weapons/wargear because the squads were built as a showcase of what is available. This makes for an unrealistic battle with poorly equipped squads. How often are you going to run into a 10-man Grey Knight Terminator squad armed with a Psilencer and an Incinerator at your FLGS? How often are you going to run into a that same squad with two Psycannons? It just makes the Battle Report feel uninteresting.

I'm hoping the new White Dwarf will be a step in the right direction, but I fear they are just going to re-package the same expensive catalog. I'll check it out when the new one arrives.

 scarletsquig wrote:
Brewhouse bash, card terrain, complete BFG game all appeared well after the 210 mark.

The magazine itself was excellent right up until issue 310+ or so, when the editors decided that putting words in their magazine wasn't actually important,

Yeah it really didn't. One of the last issue I bought was 215 I believe. I have 227 or something like that that I got in an eBay auction, but I stopped buying before 220. 215 was the second issue in three months (the other being 213) where the so-called "battle report" was an isometric photo of a table, and a paragraph or two from the people playing it. Maps were gone. Discussions of army lists were gone. Turn-by-turn information was gone. I know it came back eventually, but the main draw for WD (for me) was gone, so I stopped buying.

 Brock79 wrote:
I'm excited to hear about a new design for an ailing magazine, I personally hope that it becomes a showcase of the hobby again, full of great articles about painting, modelling, converting, playing and terrain.

They won't. Any articles will focus only on the things they sell. Every BatRep will take place on a Realm of Battle, and any terrain article will only focus on Official Citadel Miniatures Terrain. The hobby is dead. Long live the HHHobby!

I love how contradictory the GW community is.

Skeptical Grimtuff is skeptical...

My experience with GW in the past is telling me "same gak, different format". Regardless of if WD improves in quality I won't be subscribing as that requires financing GW, I'll continue to flick through the optimists copies.

1 thing I'm curious about though, seeing as they're potentially going to harvest their Flickr pool for photos how long before we see a smattering of non-GW models in WD? They can't pull them from the mag, like on their website for obvious reasons. "Tear out page 72 kids! There's something on there that's not part of the HHHobby!"

I'm excited about this, it's been a long time coming and I look forward to see some actual progression in White Dwarfs style, layout and content.

I hope it all goes well and we see a dramatic change as I don't want to reach a grand total of 394 GW Catalogues.

I'm always gonna HOPE that we see an improvement, but i hold out essentially zero hope for this being one. I too remember the days when WD had a free mini, card games (Brewhouse bash was fun, I still have my copy), and new rules, but a few years ago, we all saw the company grow into a commercial enterprise run by business people not hobbyists, and WD became a slick, glossy overproduced piece of advertising. If I buy a magazine I like to get something out of it. Also, in Australia it currently retails at $13!!! For something that I read through in one hour!!! Cover to Cover!

WD is, and will remain glossy advertising, and until we see a return to hobby sections (how to build cheap terrain, card buildings, whatever), I will refrain from paying to be advertised at.

Of course, it MIGHT return to awesomeness with this reboot, but i am cynical.

I want to be clear here though, i am not bashing the company, it is a commercial enterprise, and is damn good at that. It pumps out the best minis in the world, at (despite what everyone says) fairly similar prices to the competition, and it has every right o behave as a commercial entity and make money from its fans.

I just resent paying $13 for the slim little advertising pamphlet they currently pass off as a magazine.

The only way they are gonna get my hard earned dollars off me is if they actually continue the trend of including stuff like the new codex daemons in future copies.

A complete overhual of the actual mag is needed honestly, the team part seems covered but I look at the photo and just smell "underpaid under grads getting media based degrees."

I hope I'm suprised and that the only female now working for GW actually keeps working for GW. Till a consistent magazine of high quality is published, no american pesos from me por favor.

The new changes sound great, really love the new team so far!

Cautiously optimistic. I want to like WD, really I do! It has just been a little hard as of late, though I still like flicking through older copies looking for stuff I missed. I will wait to see what everyone thinks and them maybe take the plunge once more!

Meh, I resubscribed after a decade, two issues ago, just in case they start throwing more rules articles in, so I don't have to try and buy them in a frenzy if and when they do.

I keep seeing comments about using images from the flikr pool in WD.
Re-read the article: they were talking about White Dwarf Daily, the new name for the blog.

All I want are decent battle report format like they had in the late 1990s.
Minimap with models marked.
Occasionally a pic to show what is happening.
1 set map/pics per turn.

Not 1 massive pic accross 2 pages for an entire battle...

As always, not that excited unless we see the return of more painting guides that are actually worth a damn. Showing us a picture of the stage, the colour used and not the actual technique or anything useful apart from 'this is what it should look like, why doesn't yours look like this' does nothing more than advertise a new sub-paint you may or may not have.

Consistency and effort are what I'm on the lookout for, and even if this is a container of pure gold it has to be something more than a one-off to get some more subscribers.

I look forwards to a revamp but in my heart of hearts know that the new White Dwarf will be the old one but with Grombrindal wearing a baseball cap with a braided beard saying "Yo, for the ancestors (Jervis) y'all!" while being X-REME!

He will also now have a new and completely original sidekick called Poochy (yes that one).

In truth if that was true if the had Thrud the Barbarian back i'd subscribe.