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 Jomy wrote:
Your expectations were higher?

Everyone should expect better content for the price GW is asking for their mag, promises of "making it better" or not.

HairySticks wrote:
As a scientist and an artist I feel that the use of paper for things like magazines and newspapers is a little bit irresponsible when access to the internet is so rife that the vast majority have pocket sized devices for getting onto it let alone home pc's, laptops and tablet computers designed (rather well) to all but replace the conventional paper book.

As a roleplayer and commuter, I feel you're grossly overemphasizing the positives of today's "ebook" solutions. When they become affordable enough not to be worth stealing by druggies or oiks, durable enough not to break when accidents befall, long-lasting enough not to require frequent charging, standardised enough not to be tied to a single vendor and come with access to titles esoteric enough to be useful for specialist fields, then I'll gladly listen to what you have to say about the topic. Until then, I'll be right here. In my library. Reading books.

Word.

I like the cover.

I wonder if they will cease pushing out rules for the iPad when they make the WD digital? If the draw to the new WD is painting/Chapter Approved style articles---yet they offer those as fragmented digital downloads---I'm still not sure why I would buy a WD.

 AgeOfEgos wrote:
I like the cover.

I wonder if they will cease pushing out rules for the iPad when they make the WD digital? If the draw to the new WD is painting/Chapter Approved style articles---yet they offer those as fragmented digital downloads---I'm still not sure why I would buy a WD.

I'm doubting there will be in painting/chapter approved style articles in the new WD. I think you're going to have to pay for these separately.

There's something very old school about that cover, I quite like it. Then contents are quite a different matter though, it would take a lot to make me pick up WD again.

 Agamemnon2 wrote:

HairySticks wrote:
As a scientist and an artist I feel that the use of paper for things like magazines and newspapers is a little bit irresponsible when access to the internet is so rife that the vast majority have pocket sized devices for getting onto it let alone home pc's, laptops and tablet computers designed (rather well) to all but replace the conventional paper book.

As a roleplayer and commuter, I feel you're grossly overemphasizing the positives of today's "ebook" solutions. When they become affordable enough not to be worth stealing by druggies or oiks, durable enough not to break when accidents befall, long-lasting enough not to require frequent charging, standardised enough not to be tied to a single vendor and come with access to titles esoteric enough to be useful for specialist fields, then I'll gladly listen to what you have to say about the topic. Until then, I'll be right here. In my library. Reading books.

Word.

Dude is bang on the money here.

 Agamemnon2 wrote:

HairySticks wrote:
As a scientist and an artist I feel that the use of paper for things like magazines and newspapers is a little bit irresponsible when access to the internet is so rife that the vast majority have pocket sized devices for getting onto it let alone home pc's, laptops and tablet computers designed (rather well) to all but replace the conventional paper book.

As a roleplayer and commuter, I feel you're grossly overemphasizing the positives of today's "ebook" solutions. When they become affordable enough not to be worth stealing by druggies or oiks, durable enough not to break when accidents befall, long-lasting enough not to require frequent charging, standardised enough not to be tied to a single vendor and come with access to titles esoteric enough to be useful for specialist fields, then I'll gladly listen to what you have to say about the topic. Until then, I'll be right here. In my library. Reading books.

Word.

Don't worry, your book are compatible with your existing shelf.

 Agamemnon2 wrote:

As a roleplayer and commuter, I feel you're grossly overemphasizing the positives of today's "ebook" solutions. When they become affordable enough not to be worth stealing by druggies or oiks, durable enough not to break when accidents befall, long-lasting enough not to require frequent charging, standardised enough not to be tied to a single vendor and come with access to titles esoteric enough to be useful for specialist fields, then I'll gladly listen to what you have to say about the topic. Until then, I'll be right here. In my library. Reading books.

Word.

ebook readers can now be had for $50, less than the cost of the hardback version of the 40k rulebook. Their battery consumption is low thanks to the e-ink screens. Most e-readers can be used for more than a month without needing to be charged. There are many e-readers that are not tied to a specific vendor. These include Sony, Kobo, Onyx, Ectaco, and Pocketbook, to name a few. There are plenty of esoteric titles that are available on e-readers. In fact in some fields, electronic files are more available, as the cost of printing the esoteric books would be prohibitive.

The one point that I did not respond to is that of durability. In the past, e-readers were not durable, as the glass screens were fragile. However, the new generation of e-readers that is just being released uses screens made from a plastic substrate. This should make them more durable. This being said, we will have to wait for actual user data to confirm their durability.

Interesting. Looks like things are marginally better than I surmised. It won't change my opinion, of course. Plus, I live in a backwater country where such things aren't easily or cheaply available, or necessarily compatible with local vendors if they were.

I'll give up my books when you pry them out of my cold, dead fingers. And of course, we'll see who has the last laugh.

After looking a bit closer to the WD here some comments (disclaimer: I have no interest in CSM and HH, so no product in the WD really raised my heartbeat, call that a negative bias):

1.) I still hate the cover. No trademark title. The free room wasted by listing the names of the game systems. Text bland "new miniatures" (really? and next month? and twice the same text for GW AND FW?). Surprising: More text for FW news than GW news.
2.) Format 1cm shorter, 154 pages (plus 2 unnumbered foldouts), font size much larger, so less text than in 120 pages of previous issues.
3.) It is still commercial TV style. Maybe even more consequential than before. 4 pages per new major box, 2 pages per minor box (warsmith), one page per new finecast blister. Big nice pics with short descriptive text, mostly revealing one advantage (like "Finecast Fabius now more durable than the metal version"), could be copied to the webstore. Language typical commercial TV style, just without the discounts Results in 50 pages to cover all new products of October.
4.) 11 pages for listing every GW store and indy retailer in the whole world, with address. Why? What a waste of pages. Add one page "local GW shop presentation", "local retailer store presentation", GW facebook ad, WD subscription ad and 2 pages mailorder ad. Yes, even commercials have ads between commercials. I fear, all these will be regular features.
5.) New: Forge World, Black Library and (to a lesser degree) licence products by FFG are equally represented as GW products. Each new major novel gets one page in the 50 page new product section plus some coverage later. Forge World HH gets an article (8 pages). This is a change I like.
6.) Pictures: No doubt about it: The picture quality has improved greatly, in the news AND article section. This is what the magazine is about: Showing nice pics to make the potential customers want to buy things. Also nice pics in the articles, not only from studio models.
7.) Texts: Yeah, there still are some, but expect half from what you are used from previous WDs. Even JJs standard bearer has half the text. The main body is a big pic with a few lines explaining the pic. Only very few text articles. A nice one on Vetrock, a very nice one by the dream team Phil Kelly/Jes Goodwin explaining the general idea behind the CSM miniature/Codex design. But WD is consequently done for teens with no time to read (TL;DR).
8.) There is a battle report of 16 pages with basically the content of 10 pages previously. haven't read that, but it seems to reveal some tidbits about the new Codex. There is a nice conversion article for ork bommas. There is a small but good painting article. Also one on a studio terrain piece. Pics from several nicely painted troops by several people, photographed in the studio. Pics of a nicely painted Skaven army. So there is some content.
9.) Well, there will be a digital version of the WD. If you have an Ipad and can read English that is. There will also be a digital CSM Codex in October, also Ipad/English only plus some digital novels.

Summary: This is still a big commercial. Better looking, professionally and more consequentially done, but still in your face. Some content looks promising, some things like 11 pages of global GW store addresses completely nonsensical, esp. when featured every issue (we will see). Might work for some teens or people who like fancy pics, but not for people who like to read. A few bits of interesting content are there, but currently not enough to justify the price.

Hope that helps a bit.

Cheers Kroot, time to finally kick WD into touch if even a big relaunch can't revitalise the magazine beyond the introduction of more pretty pictures.

yea thanks for the review, il pick one up next week, also the "new miniatures "part actually says " new citadel miniatures chaos space marines
Still a bit pointless i must admit.

Haven't bought a WD yet, I want FWD so yeah. Still not interested in buying it and honestly the price hicking is driving me insane for nothing gained on the consumer end.

I need to ask: are there any rumouirs about the next white dwarf? I wanne know if one of them has new rules?

Sound like it's the same old nothing wrapped in pretty paper. Well, wake me up in a year or so when they do the next revamp...

Find myself agreeing with many folk who think the supposedly new "modern-looking" cover is pretty bland and disappointlngly basic. It's all subjective but just because something (in this case the title font) goes backwards to using a boring basic square font, doesn't mean that it's any more modern.

Pretty lame cover but hopefully what's inside looks better.

 Kroothawk wrote:
... mostly revealing one advantage (like "Finecast Fabius now more durable than the metal version")

More durable? Against what? Sudden acid attacks? Random monster encounters?

 Kroothawk wrote:
5.) New: Forge World, Black Library and (to a lesser degree) licence products by FFG are equally represented as GW products.

So it’s more than a picture and a blurb swaying what the book is? It’d be nice to get some advertising in WD for FFG books.

 Kroothawk wrote:
8.) There is a battle report of 16 pages with basically the content of 10 pages previously. haven't read that, but it seems to reveal some tidbits about the new Codex.

I get that you don’t like Chaos, but what is the Battle Report like? Detailed army lists, turn-by-turn discussion and over-head maps showing the movement of troops... or some fancy photos, a bit of isometric photo-shop, and then a summary?

Hmm... a little disappointed so far. The cover and aesthetics I can live with, just REALLY hoping for a painting and modelling section.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Kroothawk wrote:
... mostly revealing one advantage (like "Finecast Fabius now more durable than the metal version")

More durable? Against what? Sudden acid attacks? Random monster encounters?

 Kroothawk wrote:
5.) New: Forge World, Black Library and (to a lesser degree) licence products by FFG are equally represented as GW products.

So it’s more than a picture and a blurb swaying what the book is? It’d be nice to get some advertising in WD for FFG books.

 Kroothawk wrote:
8.) There is a battle report of 16 pages with basically the content of 10 pages previously. haven't read that, but it seems to reveal some tidbits about the new Codex.

I get that you don’t like Chaos, but what is the Battle Report like? Detailed army lists, turn-by-turn discussion and over-head maps showing the movement of troops... or some fancy photos, a bit of isometric photo-shop, and then a summary?

As far as advertising FFG stuff, GW has been doing that the last little while - im looking at an advertisement for Rogue Trader : The Soul Reaver / Deathwatch : Honour the Chapter right now.

Yeah I know - a box in one quarter of a page. A one-page advert would be better.

4 times better even!

 Grimtuff wrote:

 wickedcarrot wrote:
They do look very Warmachinesque... but i kind of like them!

Dunno what WM models you've been looking at....

The Forgefiend/Maulerfiend bears a slight resemblance to Scaverous but that's it. As already said, they look more like Zoids than anything else.

It was the Forgefiend/ maulerfiend that I thought looked quite warmachine-like.

Not to White Knight (And I'm a subscriber anyway, so debate on buying is irrelevant) but wasn't there some talk a couple of months back that with the sudden massive scheduling shifts they'd changed which articles were to be in which WD?
So the stuff in here may be, to some extent, left over junk (This does not strike me as a good decision to make for a magazine relaunch, but GW=/=logical).
Main thing I'm hoping for is a return of painting articles. They had some really good ones for a long while up until about a year ago. A trend to completely subsume these into the iStore would be... vexing.

 Ouze wrote:

What I don't like is the fact that I'd have to pay a 20% "The closest GWS is 150 miles from my house" tax, which is really the only accurate way to describe the price differential between picking it up in store vs having it delivered. I do get it's cheaper for them to do that so I understand it, but I don't especially like it. Also, why would ordering it on the web cost more then picking it up in a store? That should be the cheapest option, since they don't have to print a copy and send it anywhere. WTF?

This may have already been answered, but the obvious answer is that they want the magazine to drive store traffic. The chance of you impulse buying something off the shelf if you're in the store is much higher than if you're sitting at home, after all..


Automatically Appended Next Post:

HairySticks wrote:
As a scientist and an artist I feel that the use of paper for things like magazines and newspapers is a little bit irresponsible when access to the internet is so rife that the vast majority have pocket sized devices for getting onto it let alone home pc's, laptops and tablet computers designed (rather well) to all but replace the conventional paper book.

As a teacher in a lower socio-economic area I can only at your appallingly ill-informed and elitist argument. "Vast majority?" Oh dear... aside from the tactile aspect and portability that paper brings, I can only wonder if you've considered your impact on the planet by needless and excessive use of electronic devices?

Oh yeah, I'm an artist too. Not sure what that has to do with anything? Unless you mean Bull... artist. I'm one of those as well.

 Makaleth wrote:
Hmm... a little disappointed so far. The cover and aesthetics I can live with, just REALLY hoping for a painting and modelling section.

Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment.

But color me unsurprised about the summary of what is in there. The only thing that I like is that FFG books are at least getting some better exposure in them.

Going to lock this now.

There's a thread on the discussion board : http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/477758.page where users can post their thoughts, impressions,stark terror, giggling mirth or crushed beyond hope dreams etc etc on the new format.