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 oni wrote:
All things considered... IMO White Dwarf is the best it's ever been in its current iteration.

I've been in the GW hobby since 1993 and while I appreciate the content of the older WD's for what it was at that time - the fact is the hobby has evolved from then to now.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
one of the things i miss in the White Dwarf
<Big Picture of Thrud>

You do know that GW never owned Thrud and Carl has done a bit of follow up work on him? I think there were four or five regular sized comics published from 2002-2007 or so.

Koppo wrote:

 Surtur wrote:


Okay, you don't seem to understand this but product description and showcase ARE ADVERTISING. It's showing off a product with the intent to make it attractive to the buyer. It doesn't need a price tag at the end to make it advertising.

I thought I had explained my reasons for the different categorisations. While I could count description and showcases as advertising by the same token I could count battle reports, painting articles, modelling articles or any mention of anything to do with wargaming in gerneral (as they talk about the models in use and e.g. provide a sample of usefulness for the product).

Like I said previously if you think that the categories I have used are essentially sub categories of some other super-category then feel free to add them together should you wish to use them to form a reasoned argument surely the break down is better than not having it. Other wise the table would be WD 329 pages 128, pages of advertising 128, WD 364 pages 120, pages of advertising 120 etc.
And that would be of no use to anybody.

I think part of this is that GW at some point made a deliberate decision to NOT include prices in White Dwarf. Their reasoning being that including prices made it frustrating for people reading old issues of White Dwarf to find the correct prices for products (real reasoning: hide price increases from people!).
Most people seem to think that any content which revolves solely around pictures of a box and/or the studio-painted miniatures of that box, to be 'advertising' for that box. This would include what you have termed 'product description', but not battle reports or modeling/painting. Obviously the entire mag is a advert for GW products; but the degree to which they hide this by making articles with content affects our perception, and the line seems to be somewhere around 'is there anything other than description of a single product here?'

Yep, I totally agree. I let my subscription run out about 6 or 7 years ago, and I don't buy it any more at all now. Every once and a while they'll fool me by including something that looks promising, but lately it's been a disappointment.

I still have a binder full of rules for Warhammer Skirmish, gut barging, gnoblar tossing, and (best ever) Path to Glory. Anyone remember that last one? It was a complete set of rules for playing a band of chaos warriors in a necromunda-style campaign. It had rules for experience, mutations and recruiting - really amazing stuff. On the marketing side, it even coincided with a tale of 4 gamers and the release of Warriors of Chaos back in 6th ed. I thought it was a brilliant strategy, and it convinced me to buy a pile of models to run the scenario.

If you want to look even farther back, who remembers the old cardboard warbiker rules from when they first released that model? I remember the 2nd ed hooplah about 'uge exhausts and the awesome fluff written about ork biker boyzz. Again, it sold a model to me.

My personal favorite series though, was a series of batt reps about a dark elf raid on a savage orc village. It had a set of great scenarios involving lighting the orcs' signal bonfire and waking Skabby the Shaman up from his shroom nap in time to fight of the skinniez. It sticks out in my early teenage memory as an awesome read, and I recreate the scenarios in games of Warhammer to this day.

By comparison, I haven't clipped anything out of a White Dwarf in years.

It's strange, because the actual gaming and production quality are substantially better - where has the content gone and why? I see no logical explanation. Better writing + better content = better marketing.

Confusedly,

Dan

All I have to say about the new White Dwarf catalog is: Out of all the US citizens they could have picked to write a regular column, why Vetock? It's like using the Jerry Springer show as an exemplar of American behavior. His columns amount to grade school essays on "What Jeremy did on Summer Vacation" It has always been a catalogue, now it's just an overpriced catalogue.


Oh and no real painting articles.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
one of the things i miss in the White Dwarf
{Thrud pic}

I also quite liked Gobbledigook, though Thrud was far and away better.

It all just added a bit more variety to the publication.

For me, it started going downhill, quickly, around the same time 'dragon' did and for similar reasons.
The shift to focusing exclusively on two games really held them back, I think.

GW was forced to drop prices from WD because the postal service wanted to declare it a catalog and charge them more for shipping ect.
I used to love reading WD's,rereading and then rereading some more
WD used to have modeling,converting articles,army ideas, ,proper battle reports,ect looking at older mags vs the new ones there is just a difference that you can feel in the look and the way things are written,

Now its,,,battle reports for the latest plastic crack followed by pages of adds for said crack .last WD I bought was for the sisters mini dex.

Sadly I don't think WD has been of value since the late 90's. Even back then my local gaming group much prefered the, now long dead, Citadel Journal, which always seemed like a magazine by gamers for gamers.

It's been a total waste of money for well over 10 years.

 LuciusAR wrote:
It's been a total waste of money for well over 10 years.

Hmm... I'd argue that there was a modicum of value to the magazine right up until the relaunch (largely through decent painting guides). Now it definitely is a total waste of money.

quite frankly i nolonger buy it. About 6 years ago i got one and thought it was good until i was given a load of old mid 90s copies. I promptly read them until they fell apart. Back then there was stories, comic strips, fluff, articles, guides on how to build terrain from junk and not just GW skull fetish kits. I could spend days on the tactica and a single magazine lasted me ages. There was coverage for necromunda, Mordheim, Battlefleet Gothic ( yes i actually have the one with the origonal play test rules for gothic and the card ships. Sure there was advertising but it was relevant to the content and more importantly it was mostly all stored in one easy clump at the back. It was a magazine. These days its just an overpriced glorified catalogue with a few bland articles on how good GW stuff is and how its the best stuck on here and there.

Has anyone picked up issue 400 that came out today? Not sure if I should get it but heard good reviews of it so far.

One question?

When was the last time anyone got punch-out terrain pieces in a White Dwarf like the bunkers, or the Eldar Waystone or the ruined Shrine for the Sisters of Battle release? Or complete beta versions of games, including all the punch-out pieces needed to play (Battlefleet Gothic). Or complete games, like Brewhouse bash or Pit Fighter, or expansions like the one to play "Dungeon" Blood Bowl with your Warhammer Quest tiles, complete with new tiles to add to the existing set?

You know, cool "free" stuff?

 scarletsquig wrote:
WD sucked hard 5 years ago as well.

It's been horrible ever since the giant issue of 314, which is prior to your dataset. Go back to issues 300 and prior if you want examples of a good magazine.

Also you're not taking into account quality. There used to be a *lot* more wordcount and a *lot* less whitespace. Battle reports are prime examples, they used to have a really detailed report with proper unit-by-unit breakdowns and maps for each turns and snippets of background to provide a narrative. These days it's a bunch of 2-page images with a few paragraphs floating around the corners. Massive images everywhere, massively giant fonts, massive amounts of whitespace, complete lack of actual words or any substance to the words that are in there is what has made it low quality, not the relative ratios of "this to that".

The adverts have never been the problem, WD has been loaded with ads for as long as I can remember. The quality of the content is the thing that has gone downhill. I used to be able to spend several evenings reading a WD since it was crammed full of text and really interesting stuff. Now it's barely good for half an hour.

For me it went downhill fast when AU started it's own branch ie printing in AU $ and in sydney (or something irellevant anyway) before that when Paul Sawyer aka Fat Bloke was still editor, (UK white dwarf- mid 90's) was when i remember good reading material after a period of several years, probably due in large part to the growing popularity of the hobby then, in this region, they decided to have an AU editior and branch if you will of Australian White Dwarf. the first two editors were fine, after that it went down hill and never recovered. more miniatures and more whatever does not replace quality reading material, it is a noticeable band aid attempt to either save face, a magazine or their sales which whatever may they be, but what is known for sure is the amount of veterans not feeling the support when they have helped GW over the years survive to the point they are at today (because lets be honest GW needs our money either via WD/BL/FW/GW kits/boooks sales in order to compete within the niche market- however it seems GW is in retirement village mode)


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 AegisGrimm wrote:
One question?

When was the last time anyone got punch-out terrain pieces in a White Dwarf like the bunkers, or the Eldar Waystone or the ruined Shrine for the Sisters of Battle release? Or complete beta versions of games, including all the punch-out pieces needed to play (Battlefleet Gothic). Or complete games, like Brewhouse bash or Pit Fighter, or expansions like the one to play "Dungeon" Blood Bowl with your Warhammer Quest tiles, complete with new tiles to add to the existing set?

You know, cool "free" stuff?

Thankyou yet again, Aegis for that. i almost had forgotten the 2nd/3rd edition addiction of free stuff, posters (warhammer fantasy world map is the only newish thing for free i can remember), miniatures (white dwarf- the dwarf, necron, DE warrior, and several spacemarines/ 2 chaos/1 loyalist), pop out scenery or battle markers (sob shrine, whfb tower, battle tracker), and rulebooks within "several editions of WD generally mar the it'd conclude in may for example" and then they release yet more rules or free stuff. sometimes they'd have a unique code or something which used the WD's barcode or something which allowed you to pick up a 25-50% off certain stock usually when they released new stuff or had a new sstore opening nearby. Exalted Mr Aegis but +3

My Warhammer fantasy world map (WD 300?) is currently framed on the wall of our home office, lol.

I think WD 310 was the point at which the quality of the magazine nosedived beyond the point of acceptability for most - known as the 'Giant Issue' I remember a tremendous amount of stink on the forums when that magazine was released, and that was in the days when GW was giving people a lot less to complain about.

My favorite WD of all time (I still have it even now) I compare all WDs to this one...