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 ClockworkZion wrote:
Maybe GW is replacing all their server hardware?

I don't even know if they have more than one server honestly.

They'll have multiple servers but it's a long solved problem and there should be almost no downtime on any website switch over, especially if it's not even migrated user accounts or provided any kind of transition - all the old links just drop. Companies far smaller and far larger than GW do it all the time and you'd barely notice. Amazon, google and facebook probably add several new servers a day and you'd never have noticed. Hell Dakka moved to new servers last week and the downtime was minimal.

Essentially you get the new site set up on the new servers (or a new part of the old servers), make sure it works, and then just switch over. It may take up to 24 hours for the DNS to update for some users (but the old site still works), but it's usually completely seamless.

The only 2 reasons for a site being down that long are; it's deliberate to build hype, or something's gone wrong in the process.

For a company who want all of their trade to go through the website this is hardly a shining example of how it's done.

It's sheer incompetence on the part of GW to have their site down for a whole day and counting. Normally when you revise or replace a website you build and test the new site offline then quickly "flip the switch" to make it go live with little or no interruption of service. What kind of major company actually puts their site down for a whole day or more? It's unprecedented, unprofessional, and mystifying that they would do such a thing. In other words, typically incomprehensible GW behavior.

So, old accounts won't work... meaning that they've nuked their existing mailing list, meaning they can't mail all their previous existing accounts to tell them about the new website. If that's true then wow... really wow.




Anyway, from the top:

GW wrote:Surprise!

Not really. We've known about this for months.

GW wrote:We’ve had the decorators in

And there's a lot less there now. Seems like you removed a lot of things... just like the 'Nid/Guard Codices! HA! (/topical joke)

GW wrote:...sprucing things up and making it easier than ever to find what you’re looking for on the Games Workshop Webstore.

Warhammer 40,000... <loading>... Warhammer 40,000 Armies... <loading>... tick Grey Knights <loading> displays all GK choices.

And now there are further Amazon-style modifiers. Well... it takes longer to get to any single thing (GK Troops was 40K Armies>Grey Knight +>Troops), but it's not awful.

GW wrote:There are loads of new functions

Factually incorrect. There are in fact fewer functions given that they've removed specialist and any FAQ/PDF systems completely.

GW wrote:...ranging from new product images and information to an easier, quicker checkout.

A quicker checkout can't hurt, but even so.

GW wrote:We’ll also be posting regular updates here on What’s New Today, bringing you all the latest information about upcoming releases and featuring hobby projects from you, our readers.

Not a new feature either. "What's on Sale Today" hasn't changed.

GW wrote:There are so many changes..

"Changes". They keep using that word...

GW wrote:...the best thing you can do is take a look around for yourself and see what's going on.

I see a lot more white space. And what's going on is a lot of what was going on before.



Meh.

Not digging it - it's definitely designed for tablets/iphones now - way harder to navigate on a pc. Boo.

Everything seems the same content-wise though, no missing minis or price rises that I could tell. A lot of the fantasy stuff are in the wrong category now.

Default sort is Highest priced products at top. Giggle. Oh GW.

They really buried the "What's new today." They really hide the fact that stuff is Finecast too. The logo is gone and you have to click "more" on the description to see it's a resin kit.

I do like the bigger pictures when you click on a kit though.

Finally free shipping on orders over GBP 75 for those of us in EU without a webstore. That's a definite plus. Too bad I hardly ever order direct.

Thinking of being a gigantic nuisance and calling their customer service so i can get them to tell me if the errata for the hellbrutes points is still valid as they no longer have a FAQ up?

and i do like that there is over 400 items that are webstore exclusives

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!

With this offer, you will receive one free Space Marine Captain - Limited Edition, Web Exclusive miniature. If you cancel your qualifying order, or any part of it, you must return the free miniature to us at your cost.

Umm... what???

 sarduka42 wrote:

 Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:
AND ITS UP!

So no Forgeworld or Black library integration, Some of the scenery specials have gone, can't tell if there has been price rise (don't normally shop throughou them) - what a overhyped letdown

Overhyped by who?

Toggling those checklists on the right is annoying. If I deselect an option before choosing a new one, the whole menu collapses and I have to re-open what I was trying to get to. Obviously designed by the lowest bidder. :(

I quite like the new website in terms of looks, nice and clean. The UI takes a bit of getting used to but I don't think it's any worse than before - three clicks and I'm into the troops section. In terms of content, such as FAQs I'm assuming they'll put them up over the next couple of days. I never read the articles anyway so not bothered about those.

One thing is sure though, its going to make for fun times in YMDC section!.

So they removed the last few pieces of hobby-related material, including FAQs, and are now just a web-store?

Well I did wonder how they could possibly make it more bland and corporate but they didn't let me down.

There is literally no reason to visit this site over an independent retailers website anymore.

My impressions..

1) I like the changes to the shopping experience. Its a better web store.
2) I dislike that its basically only a store. The blog is harder to find and any real sense of product support is gone.
3) I dislike that they are not supporting all the armies. Under the 40k armies list they do not list the Inquisition, nor do they list the Legion of the Damned. There seems to be no reason to exclude these armies.
4) Forgeworld products was never a realistic expectation. In order to supply FW kits they'd have to warehouse them in the USA. To do that they would need to produce them in significantly higher quantities wich would require cheaper materials or a significant mark up. Mark them up and they will quickly be pricing them out of the market. Change the material to traditional plastic and you have to loose detail in several of the kits but also retool the manufacturing process. The direct order method has worked well so far and to be blunt FW is a different company. It may be owned by GW but it has its own officers and holds its own meetings. Expecting GW stores to support the FW line is like expecting GMC dealerships to let you special order a Holden Ute in the united states.
5) The FAQs, while not shocking, was unexpected. I can see where they are going with this and I guess its clear why the didn't bother with any new FAQs in 6 months. If you don't own an ipad and you want to have the latest rules from GW, buy an Ipad. I think its clear any amendments and erratas will only come in the form of digital content updates, and after talking to the black library folks about epubs last week it is painfully clear that GW will likely always produce an ibook codex but will only produce the epub codex when it suits their schedule. The actual questions and answers portion of the process is likely dead for good. This just gets back to point number two.

 Breotan wrote:
Toggling those checklists on the right is annoying. If I deselect an option before choosing a new one, the whole menu collapses and I have to re-open what I was trying to get to. Obviously designed by the lowest bidder. :(

Maybe it was designed in the same manner their various computer games are designed - fire the brief off to two dozen mobile developers and see which ones makes the website the quickest.

MarkyMark wrote:
One thing is sure though, its going to make for fun times in YMDC section!.

ohhh now you done it.. HAHAHAHA i can see some intensity really sparking up in there....

and i can see some 8 year old trying to fix the missing units, i note the hellbrutes new kit isnt under CSM, and that kind of thing.

I hate it that the limit to get a free mini is $160 just 5 away from the new imperial knight kit. I was holding off to get the free mini.

Hmm it looks like the .pdf files are still up on the site just there have dropped any links to them. Had to find it via Google.
Chaos Space Marines PDF

It's disappointing but not surprising that they decided to drop the FAQs section. They hadn't had a substantial update in a year, looks like GW have given up on them altogether.

Are the FAQs still around anywhere? I'm running a tournament in a couple of weeks and kinda want to have access to them if I need them. Does anyone have the most recent versions stored/hosted anywhere?

 Voodoo_Chile wrote:
Hmm it looks like the .pdf files are still up on the site just there have dropped any links to them. Had to find it via Google.
Chaos Space Marines PDF

It's disappointing but not surprising that they decided to drop the FAQs section. They hadn't had a substantial update in a year, looks like GW have given up on them altogether.

just went to that link and it errors
http://www.games-workshop.com/error/error.jsp

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!

With this offer, you will receive one free Space Marine Captain - Limited Edition, Web Exclusive miniature. If you cancel your qualifying order, or any part of it, you must return the free miniature to us at your cost.

Umm... what???

I can only imagine it's for preorders, if you make a preorder, they send you the model and then you cancel the preorder? Otherwise you'd think they'd just send it all together, making it a somewhat moot point.

Powerguy wrote:
Are the FAQs still around anywhere? I'm running a tournament in a couple of weeks and kinda want to have access to them if I need them.

Thats what i am laughing at, sadly they seem to be AWOL...

Aw. They also finally nuked the page that had the old specialist games PDFs. Good thing I downloaded the Gorkamorka rules before then

 ausYenLoWang wrote:

 Voodoo_Chile wrote:
Hmm it looks like the .pdf files are still up on the site just there have dropped any links to them. Had to find it via Google.
Chaos Space Marines PDF

It's disappointing but not surprising that they decided to drop the FAQs section. They hadn't had a substantial update in a year, looks like GW have given up on them altogether.

just went to that link and it errors
http://www.games-workshop.com/error/error.jsp

Huh, let me see if I've just got the damn thing cached or something...

Its nice that the new website is already down for maintenence.

Should be up any minute now.....

 DJGietzen wrote:
My impressions..

3) I dislike that they are not supporting all the armies. Under the 40k armies list they do not list the Inquisition, nor do they list the Legion of the Damned. There seems to be no reason to exclude these armies.

Legion of the Damned are under web store exclusives and Space Marines although as you point out, there is no direct route to them as a separate army.

http://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Space-Marine-Legion-of-the-Damned-Squad

I want that captain but I will never get it :(
website is disappoint.

feth me, the new site is awful.

Typical design by committee mess, far too many competing design elements on the page. Looks better on high res screens than low res screens due to the size of the elements, doesn't seem to follow responsive design, GW really haven't gotten modern website design. Still it loads fast on my phone (Note 3) and the store is easier to navigate than before.

Not liking the removal of all of the actual content either. Not sure why this took so long, it really is pretty basic now that the content has been removed, other than a stupidly long approvals process for the design.

I quite like how you can browse the whole range of an army on one page now, for the painter and modeller I think the site is quite nice, even for the gamer it's easy enough to navigate to a specific force oganisation slot. I quite like how you can pull up the fast attack choices for all armies at the same time for example. I think I actually quite like the new site, except the distinct lack of FAQ's and Erratas.