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 mattyrm wrote:
I'd suggest rejigging the wording, cutting the insults and then resending it.

And if mattyrm's telling you to cut the insults, then you know you need to!

There's also these http://pics.lockerz.com/s/266716374

One looks like an up armoured Satyr of some description and the other some sort of spiky light Troll warbeast.

After my own review which featured on these pages a few weeks ago, I decided to write a constructive criticism email about the re-boot of white dwarf. Nobody will be in the least surprised I never got a reply from GW/white dwarf editor, and this was an email that did not contain sarcasm or swearing, just a clear and concise letter of complaint like in a newspaper.

That letter is destined to become hamster bedding.

I think it has been well established that GW is in the business now of selling plastic (and not so great resin). What sells more than bright pretty macro pictures? The "hobby" side of things, and the "game" side of things is certainly a secondary thought to them. If "you" look through a White Dwarf and go "that is the most awesome model I have ever seen!!!!!! I NEED one" than it has done its job perfectly.

If they reduced the priced by 50%, it may be worth my time.

Coming up next week - why bears gak in the woods.

White Dwarf has been useless for a long while now. Get over it.

When they started writing comments in the magazine as though though a fictional dwarf were making them, I gave up on the thing.

 JudgeShamgar wrote:
If "you" look through a White Dwarf and go "that is the most awesome model I have ever seen!!!!!! I NEED one" than it has done its job perfectly.

No, I think you need more than that.

Part of the reason, I've got into Flames of War recently has been the high level of hobby support on the website, particularly with regards to Open Fire box set. e.g. instruction videos on how to play the game, put the models together (organising the right minis onto the bases is quite complex) and paint them. Now ok, this is a different medium, but it represents the kind of background support to the hobby I expect.

Pretty pictures of a shiny new model aren't enough for me. I want to see how it fits together, the best way to paint it, how it integrates into my army etc etc. GW have stopped this altogether and therefore, I don't really get a feel for their products anymore.

I use the word "soulless" a lot when I talk about GW these days and this is kind of what I'm getting at.

I'm going to play devil's advocate here and say that while I enjoyed White Dwarf's as a kid, it had nothing to do with the hobby section. How to highlight the scales on an elven lord's dragon is not much use to someone who can't paint a space marine out of the starter box, and that ineptitude put me off for years.

 Flashman wrote:

 JudgeShamgar wrote:
If "you" look through a White Dwarf and go "that is the most awesome model I have ever seen!!!!!! I NEED one" than it has done its job perfectly.

No, I think you need more than that.

Part of the reason, I've got into Flames of War recently has been the high level of hobby support on the website, particularly with regards to Open Fire box set. e.g. instruction videos on how to play the game, put the models together (organising the right minis onto the bases is quite complex) and paint them. Now ok, this is a different medium, but it represents the kind of background support to the hobby I expect.

Pretty pictures of a shiny new model aren't enough for me. I want to see how it fits together, the best way to paint it, how it integrates into my army etc etc. GW have stopped this altogether and therefore, I don't really get a feel for their products anymore.

I use the word "soulless" a lot when I talk about GW these days and this is kind of what I'm getting at.

Just an FYI: I put the word you in quotation marks to indicate that the following statement made might not apply to everyone. I too would prefer to have more of a modeling showcase than WD has had in a long time.

 Flashman wrote:
Part of the reason, I've got into Flames of War recently has been the high level of hobby support on the website, particularly with regards to Open Fire box set. e.g. instruction videos on how to play the game, put the models together (organising the right minis onto the bases is quite complex) and paint them. Now ok, this is a different medium, but it represents the kind of background support to the hobby I expect.

Oh, trust me, Battlefront can be pretty arrogant pricks in the worst sense of it - one of the reasons might be since they now host a lot of former GW employees who carried that "THE HOBBY" attitude to FoW.

CainTheHunter wrote:

 Flashman wrote:
Part of the reason, I've got into Flames of War recently has been the high level of hobby support on the website, particularly with regards to Open Fire box set. e.g. instruction videos on how to play the game, put the models together (organising the right minis onto the bases is quite complex) and paint them. Now ok, this is a different medium, but it represents the kind of background support to the hobby I expect.

Oh, trust me, Battlefront can be pretty arrogant pricks in the worst sense of it - one of the reasons might be since they now host a lot of former GW employees who carried that "THE HOBBY" attitude to FoW.

This.

Wait a bit for the new car smell to wear off of FOW. You'll see the ugly white underbelly soon enough.

FOW has a good thing going, but they also, along with GW, have a bad habit of believing thier own gak to the point that no other game exists.

 Grot 6 wrote:

CainTheHunter wrote:

 Flashman wrote:
Part of the reason, I've got into Flames of War recently has been the high level of hobby support on the website, particularly with regards to Open Fire box set. e.g. instruction videos on how to play the game, put the models together (organising the right minis onto the bases is quite complex) and paint them. Now ok, this is a different medium, but it represents the kind of background support to the hobby I expect.

Oh, trust me, Battlefront can be pretty arrogant pricks in the worst sense of it - one of the reasons might be since they now host a lot of former GW employees who carried that "THE HOBBY" attitude to FoW.

This.

Wait a bit for the new car smell to wear off of FOW. You'll see the ugly white underbelly soon enough.

FOW has a good thing going, but they also, along with GW, have a bad habit of believing thier own gak to the point that no other game exists.

Lol, good to know

 Grot 6 wrote:

This.

Wait a bit for the new car smell to wear off of FOW. You'll see the ugly white underbelly soon enough.

FOW has a good thing going, but they also, along with GW, have a bad habit of believing thier own gak to the point that no other game exists.

Since they actively support other games in their magazine and even allow miniatures from other manufacturers in their official tournaments (as long as they don't produce the mini themselves as well), don't you think that you are exaggerating a bit?

Don't get me wrong, BFs "lets repackage all our books into a new one and charge you an arm and a leg for it" shenanigans have made me a little bit mad as well, but they are nowhere near the soulless vampires that GW are.

For those of you here who have never picked up a copy of No Quarter, I highly suggest picking one up now.

Gw's white dwarf magazine was what drew me into this hobby 2 years ago around the release of island of blood boxed set. The white dwarf I picked up had an extensive fluff section narrating the battle report they were playing and was extremely easy to follow. The following issue I think had a masterclass on painting one of the elf characters. I was hooked.

I subscribed to the magazine for a year and it all went well for the following few months, with the masterclass on the dark eldar being one of the best issues ever. I suppose the decay for me started around 2011 where none of the issues had any good content in it whatsoever save the dreadfleet issue.
Battle reports became messy and poorly written. There was no fluff articles anymore and the painting articles became utter gak.

Why oh why did every single 2011 heavy metal show case article have zero painting advice in it??? All they did was say 'i painted this in warm tones' or 'the colours i used bring contrast'. A few simple words like i used this color or dry brushed with that would have been so much more helpful.

Obviously I wasn't happy, and I never renewed the subscription after deciding i would just read it at the FLGS. As it so happens, No quarter was right next to white dwarf and being curious I flipped through.
Surprise surprise, it was exactly like the white dwarf that got me into warhammer. Painting articles that were super detailed and taught you advanced techniques like say....simulating the look of malachite on war beast armour. All the stuff you expect to see in a copy of white dwarf but don't get.

With the GW embargo still raw back then and the cheap buy in pricing of warmahordes it wasn't hard to find reasons to quit fail-hammer and start up warmachine/hordes after that.

Just last month I decided to give the new white dwarf another look and borrowed the dark vengeance issue. I wasn't surprised to see that it was basically the exact same magazine printed on nice paper with so many pages bit zero content.

Kind of like those womens magazines with all the ads.

Its clearly all about money now'a'days, but its not just GW its everything ( more or less )
They cant add detailed painting tips, as that would make there painting guide pointless to buy. That goes double for terrain. A sad sad truth.

Now im not promoting it but im "just saying " anything GW "prints" can be torrented, so i dont know why they would care so much. IMO

But as for the world being about money now and not for the love of things, a perfect example would be Sports. They dont play for the love of the game anymore, they play for money, our money in reality.
As does GW...

I see a form letter reply in your future. Unless ypu are throwing then praise that is about all you are going to get from them.

PhantomViper wrote:
Since they actively support other games in their magazine and even allow miniatures from other manufacturers in their official tournaments (as long as they don't produce the mini themselves as well), don't you think that you are exaggerating a bit?

No, I dont think that I am exagerrating, because actually they dont. You probably missed that pretty big fuss when BF announced that no other miniatures apart of BF can be used in their official tournaments, because "BF invented WW2 as THE HOBBY and now everything related to 15mm wargames belongs to ". And then they allegedly sent pretty arrogant letter to the Plastic Soldier Company, which they allegedly see as their main competitor. I have not seen this letter, but someone who is pretty close to the PSC claimed that he did and it was not nice... And then BF allegedly contacted biggest online retailers and advised them not to stock the PSC products in return promising early pre-orders of their stuff. And finally You cannot discuss other 3rd party 15mm manufacturers on their forum, because they kinda host it, pay for it and expect that you will buy minis from only. The biggest problem with this is that historical wargame community does not recognised this "inherently GW attitude of - I is makin' da rules and you gotta be playin' by dem and buying minis from me or else get da hell outta my shop". Historical wargames are about "forum shopping" - you get the minis and rulesets, you dont like rulesets, you get other sets and play them with minis you already have or if you dont have, you search for manufacturer who hpthas them (instead for converting your own Voidraven Bomber or other non-existent model from "GW approved bits"). So BF got quite a harsh response and had to concede some points, but this still went into the history and folks remember it.

This thread again?

No one will ever read this email. You could have emailed him the cure for cancer but due to bad presentation he will delete it the second he gets past the first line.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 mattyrm wrote:
I'd suggest rejigging the wording, cutting the insults and then resending it.

And if mattyrm's telling you to cut the insults, then you know you need to!

Excellent point, well presented.

Is there still that paragraph at the beginning of the mag saying we get lots mail, we do read every letter but if you want a reply, you must send us an IRC (I think this is some sort of prepaid postage) and be patient... ? Once you accept that they are trying to sell things you don't need, life gets easier. I don't even flick through it now in Tesco's because they've included some piece of loose paper or other as a pretext to seal the whole thing in a plastic bag. To me this says "WARNING: no worthwhile content, but we don't want you to know this until you have paid for it and taken it home!". I recall reading that What's New Today was going to improve at the same time as WD and instead we still get the "New products available to buy in7 days/tomorrow/here's some new product bought and painted within 12 hours by an eager beaver" posts. That's why I linger on the GW site approximately only 30 seconds per day before moving on to something more interesting. GW may lose out on my money as a result, but they clearly don't care.

CainTheHunter wrote:
So BF got quite a harsh response and had to concede some points, but this still went into the history and folks remember it.

Yeah, it's why I completely ignored the new FOW box set, despite everyone raving about how great a deal it is. I've more than had my fill of GW's crap for about six years now and I'm not going to do it all over again with another company if I can help it.

Backfire wrote:
I've always wanted to know, since most everyone agree that White Dwarf "has become terrible", when exactly was that "Golden era" when it was good? Because seriously I've read complaints of WD sucking "these days" since at least 1988.

It's always been worthless. It's just that in the pre-internet days, you couldn't get studio-quality photos of well-painted albeit garish miniatures and lackluster articles anywhere else.

nkelsch wrote:
No one will ever read this email. You could have emailed him the cure for cancer but due to bad presentation he will delete it the second he gets past the first line.

I doubt they even monitor those mailboxes at all. Why would they? Anything from non-preapproved senders goes to the bin and deleted with the spam

 curran12 wrote:
A letter of cursing sarcasm. I'm sure you'll get an immediate response and things will instantly change for the better.

my thoughts exactly

 -Loki- wrote:
Unfortunately, as soon as you swore in that letter, it gave them an excuse to bin it. If you want them to take you seriously, at least act like an adult. There was no need for that at all.

This.

Feedback even from paying customers must be polite and specific to be effective. You've got the shell of a good letter there, consider rewriting it with out sarcadm and rideness and it stands a better chance of getting results.

Everyone seems to be hung up on the word 'crap', I assume that the letter he sent to White Dwarf was the bold lettering part?If that is so, 'crap' was not a factor here! In this day and age I have to say that 'crap' no longer can be seen as a curse(unless of course you are easily offended). It is more used as a form of exclamation nowadays;anything from dropping your newly sprayed mini on the grass to the superglue not sticking! If he had used a more direct wording then I doubt they would read it.
I think they will read it, surely they will be looking for feedback both positive and negative as they have no doubt spent a fortune on the (ahem) re-design and need to know that they are getting it right or (cough!) wrong?

The craziest thing about the "new White Dwarf" is you'd think a monthly magazine of the biggest miniture war gaming company in the world with 3 primary games and tons of content under its belt would struggle to fit in everything they should have every issue. Yet it's the reverse, they're struggling to fill the pages of the magazine and have to fill them up with phonebook information and so on.

It just shows the laziness, ineptitude, and apathy the "new white dwarf" staff has.

Even that conversion article they put in, which at first I thought was cool with the first issue with dakkajet fanciness, but the latest two were...crap. The inquisitor lord in the second(?) issue was a piece of absolute...*Ahem*. It was bad. very bad.

Others have said it, but I wanted to reinforce.

Your letter sounds like whining, not a real complaint from a serious customer. You will be taken far more seriously if you write in a firm, polite but assertive, manner.

Note that I don't disagree with any of your "points," just the way they were presented.