Mat Ward has left GW

Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:

No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.

If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

**Howard A Treesong**

I think the last ten years have had some real horrors in the rules and fluff, and that's due to the way GW execs are managing the company. I'm indifferent about Matt Ward leaving, if Alan Merritt et al were unhappy he wouldn't have been there 12 years.

I greatly disliked the air of misogyny in the sisters of battle being slaughtered so that the incorruptible grey knights could daub themselves in their blood to be even more incorruptible. It made no sense from the fluff, it was entirely unnecessary and distasteful. But even if Matt Ward wrote that, Alan Merritt and others signed it off and sent it for publishing. Those people still run the company, so I don't see anything changing.

**Sigvatr**

The thing is: what else could he do but writing books? He hasn't done anything but writing army books / codices for tabletop systems and with his (rightfully) terrible reputation, I cannot imagine anyone being looking forward to employing him.

So he's stuck with writing stories which he, obviously, sucks at. While still being employed by GW, he could get away with it because GW doesn't care about quality. But now that he's on his own...good luck trying to get anyone to buy it!

...and by "good luck" I mean "I will love to watch you fail miserably. A lot.". Get ready to stock up on cardboard and plastic cups.

**gorgon**

Sigvatr wrote:
The thing is: what else could he do but writing books? He hasn't done anything but writing army books / codices for tabletop systems and with his (rightfully) terrible reputation, I cannot imagine anyone being looking forward to employing him.

So he's stuck with writing stories which he, obviously, sucks at. While still being employed by GW, he could get away with it because GW doesn't care about quality. But now that he's on his own...good luck trying to get anyone to buy it!

...and by "good luck" I mean "I will love to watch you fail miserably. A lot.". Get ready to stock up on cardboard and plastic cups.

Grow up.

**Platuan4th**

gorgon wrote:
Sigvatr wrote:
The thing is: what else could he do but writing books? He hasn't done anything but writing army books / codices for tabletop systems and with his (rightfully) terrible reputation, I cannot imagine anyone being looking forward to employing him.

So he's stuck with writing stories which he, obviously, sucks at. While still being employed by GW, he could get away with it because GW doesn't care about quality. But now that he's on his own...good luck trying to get anyone to buy it!

...and by "good luck" I mean "I will love to watch you fail miserably. A lot.". Get ready to stock up on cardboard and plastic cups.

Grow up.

THANK YOU.

**Sigvatr**

gorgon wrote:

Grow up.

Once you have grown up, you will realize that seeing someone you really hate fail still is a very satisfying event to witness.

We might have hoverboards by then, though.

**SeanDrake**

Howard A Treesong wrote:
I think the last ten years have had some real horrors in the rules and fluff, and that's due to the way GW execs are managing the company. I'm indifferent about Matt Ward leaving, if Alan Merritt et al were unhappy he wouldn't have been there 12 years.

I greatly disliked the air of misogyny in the sisters of battle being slaughtered so that the incorruptible grey knights could daub themselves in their blood to be even more incorruptible. It made no sense from the fluff, it was entirely unnecessary and distasteful. But even if Matt Ward wrote that, Alan Merritt and others signed it off and sent it for publishing. Those people still run the company, so I don't see anything changing.

While yes he must have had oversight in the fluff he squeezed out the fact that nobody else produces such gak leads me to think the issue was ward.

In regards to rules given the fact that between the demon army book and 8th edition he has single handedly killed an entire system speaks volumes in regards to his ability.

Also he gets to much credit with 40k with the excuse that he writes for a following edition, he basicly in reality writes overpowered crap or o&g level crap.

Also he has admitted on more than one occasion that he let his personal feelings towards an army dictate it's power level.

In regards to him being let go I doubt it he was the boards golden child and unless he got caught pissing in kirbys tea I doubt that changed.

**motyak**

Gentle warning, reign it in guys. All of you. If you disagree with something that someone says, hit the yellow triangle, don't deal with it in the thread itself. Ok?

**H.B.M.C.**

Howard A Treesong wrote:
... I greatly disliked the air of misogyny in the sisters of battle being slaughtered...

Misogyny is the hatred of women. Killing a woman doesn't automatically mean that you hate all women, so I'd be careful about ascribing motive to something without knowing whether the author actually hates women.

**Platuan4th**

SeanDrake wrote:

Also he has admitted on more than one occasion that he let his personal feelings towards an army dictate it's power level.

That was true of every GW studio designer. It's also the reason the release schedule worked the way it did.

**Sigvatr**

To be fair, that already happened before Ward. Codex: Necrons (2002) references Necrons wiping out an entire community of Sisters. Sure, it wasn't as stupid as the Ward stuff (surprise), but I always thought of SoB being the fluff's punching bags.

...and to be fair, Necrons can't be sexist ;D

**AesSedai**

Sure is getting chippy in here.

I'm happy to see the end of the unholy alliance of Mr. Ward and GW. His over the top, fan boy writing was distasteful. The Grey Knights codex had some real doozies. People love to trot out Mortarion's heart and SOB blood orgies, but it was always the super secret box OF DOOM that put me over the edge. As a fluff writer he was just bad. Further, his rules we're regularly out of whack with the general power level of the other codices. His name is synonymous with power creep.

Now that he is out, my feelings can basically be summarized as best of luck, but thanks for nothing.

**Goresaw**

Its interesting how polarizing of a figure he is. He has a few nice things (lotr rules, 'interesting' codex rules) a lot of bad things that have had time heal the wound (grey knights and necrons have lost a lot of power as the editions have changed) and a ton of horrible fluff (that some people will never forgive him for).

I think the real root of the hatred is he's an easy target. GW has continued to release even worse rules and continuingly questionable bolterporn fluff. But Ward was the first to give us such a startlingly fast decline.

I think, however modern rules abortions like Eldar, Tau, Knights, supplements, etc are all far more harmful to the game and my opinion of GW. Its just that Wards original forays into "destroying everything you care about" have desensitized us into not caring as much about current horrors. At this point I'm like... 3 knights with reroll charge and invulns for no extra points? Yeah sure.... whatever. I don't care anymore.

**nobody**

Personally I find it amusing that there was so much hate over his codices as compared to, say, Phil "Forge The Narrative" Kelly.

Of course, I get the hate seems to come mostly from Fantasy players and folks who don't like his fluff, but it's weird to see people hating on books that (in hindsight) were 6th ed books written in 5th

(After seeing the gak that Tau went through when their 4th ed book had a ton of rules/wargear thrown out the window when 5th came out a little while later I can't complain too much though)

**DaddyWarcrimes**

Hulksmash wrote:
His fluff was mediocre to bad. But his books were solid and balanced with his other work. He really was one of the best rule guys they had codex wise. I'm gonna miss him homestly if he's gone.

I completely agree. Ward's rulebooks had excellent internal balance, and when compared purely against each other, had fairly decent external balance. The problem came when you put them alongside Cruddace and Phil Kelly's work. Both are horribly inconsistent, with Kelly being the king of boring monobuild army books.

**Azreal13**

SeanDrake wrote:

Also he gets to much credit with 40k with the excuse that he writes for a following edition, he basicly in reality writes overpowered crap or o&g level crap.

It isn't beyond the realms of possibility that the reverse applies, ie the new editions were written/revised in order to flatten out the power curve he kept throwing off.

As it appears the chariot rules were in part rewritten in order to fix the Burning Chariot in favour of simply FAQing it, I'm more disposed to believe this could be the way the studio works.

**puma713**

So someone with a strong hand in writing the recent WHFB rules and 6th/7th 40K rules is being fir. . .ahem. . .resigning? Not much surprise there. He's going to leave to write, when writing is what he did to begin with. Something smells funny in Nottingham.

**skoffs**

DukeBadham wrote:
I admit, Wards fluff is appaling, like seriously, and at times his armies can seem stupidly broken, but then comes the next update for the rules and his army suddenly seems a lot more balanced, and in his books no army has particularly useless units or auto-includes, each unit or model is as viable as the others

Ha, tell that to the Necron codex. Nothing BUT auto includes (Wraiths, Annihilation Barge, etc.) or useless garbage (Flayed Ones, Lychguard, etc.).

And the reason his codexs suddenly seem more balanced when the new editions come out might have something to do with them having to create rules just to balance out the OP crap he wrote.

I will agree, though, it might not be entirely his fault. If GW was a halfway decent company they might have employed people to monitor quality control, thus making sure cluster Please don't bypass the language filter like this. Reds8n like his didn't make it to print.

**Howard A Treesong**

H.B.M.C. wrote:
Howard A Treesong wrote:
... I greatly disliked the air of misogyny in the sisters of battle being slaughtered...

Misogyny is the hatred of women. Killing a woman doesn't automatically mean that you hate all women, so I'd be careful about ascribing motive to something without knowing whether the author actually hates women.

Hence my saying it had an air of misogyny rather than saying 'he's a misogynist'. Do try to keep up.

**Yodhrin**

Pacific wrote:
I always thought that the Draigo/heart inscribing wasn't meant to be taken literally, but in a kind of psuedo religious/ancient historical text kind of way. "And lo, Draigo did bestride the warp, and lo he struck down the evil one Mortarion, and struck his own name upon the heart of the demonic foe".

It's kind of like Marneus Calgar holding back an ork horde on his own for a 'night and a day', or whatever it was, it has a mythical sound to it.

Obviously if you imagine someone actually doing these things (strutting around in a substance that is utterly inimical to life, and killing something that has no physical representation/form in it) then yes it sounds like nonsense. Perhaps they could have done a bit more to reinforce it as something that was written thousands of years after the event took place (ancient parchment look to small blocks of story for instance), and it would have had a better reaction.

Mind you, it all pales compared to the conceptualisation behind 'Unbound', so perhaps he thought GW have now gone too far and left of his own accord!

That's an issue with a lot of GW's fluff writing though; they tell us we shouldn't take stuff literally, that codices are "propaganda" from the perspective of each faction, yet they continually write the actual text from the perspective of the omniscient narrator, and the two are incompatible. "Dear Diary, today we brofisted some Necrons and my pal Draigo totes carved his name into a daemon-Primarch's heart, it was amazeballs, signed Brother Cruor Angelus" - OK cool, I could accept the "propaganda" angle, but when it's presented as "This thing happened, that thing happened, a third thing happened in this series of things, this is the date on which the things happened", that's a statement of events which occurred, there's no other way for the reader to take it.

**Kanluwen**

Howard A Treesong wrote:
H.B.M.C. wrote:
Howard A Treesong wrote:
... I greatly disliked the air of misogyny in the sisters of battle being slaughtered...

Misogyny is the hatred of women. Killing a woman doesn't automatically mean that you hate all women, so I'd be careful about ascribing motive to something without knowing whether the author actually hates women.

Hence my saying it had an air of misogyny rather than saying 'he's a misogynist'. Do try to keep up.

Why even bring it up then?

By your logic, the Necrons have "an air of misogyny" because they slaughtered an entire Sororitas convent.

**MWHistorian**

If they're getting rid of the codex writers, does that mean they realize something's wrong with their codecies? And if so, do they realize what that is?

Seeing as how they joyfully don't do market research I don't they'll figure out how to fix it, but I just wonder if they realize something's wrong and are flailing around trying to fix it without understanding the problem.

**Azreal13**

Kanluwen wrote:
Howard A Treesong wrote:
H.B.M.C. wrote:
Howard A Treesong wrote:
... I greatly disliked the air of misogyny in the sisters of battle being slaughtered...

Misogyny is the hatred of women. Killing a woman doesn't automatically mean that you hate all women, so I'd be careful about ascribing motive to something without knowing whether the author actually hates women.

Hence my saying it had an air of misogyny rather than saying 'he's a misogynist'. Do try to keep up.

Why even bring it up then?

By your logic, the Necrons have "an air of misogyny" because they slaughtered an entire Sororitas convent.

Necrons are clearly massive misogynists, hence the total lack of boobies on all their troops.

**H.B.M.C.**

Howard A Treesong wrote:
Hence my saying it had an air of misogyny rather than saying 'he's a misogynist'. Do try to keep up.

I'd just assume to not use the word at all, for fear of diluting its meaning and purpose.

**Kangodo**

Sigvatr wrote:
The thing is: what else could he do but writing books? He hasn't done anything but writing army books / codices for tabletop systems and with his (rightfully) terrible reputation, I cannot imagine anyone being looking forward to employing him.

So he's stuck with writing stories which he, obviously, sucks at. While still being employed by GW, he could get away with it because GW doesn't care about quality. But now that he's on his own...good luck trying to get anyone to buy it!

...and by "good luck" I mean "I will love to watch you fail miserably. A lot.". Get ready to stock up on cardboard and plastic cups.

Well, it's the internet.
Everyone that works at a company gets attacked on the internet.
It's like Greg Street, a lot like Greg Street.

**Kilkrazy**

SeanDrake wrote:
Howard A Treesong wrote:
I think the last ten years have had some real horrors in the rules and fluff, and that's due to the way GW execs are managing the company. I'm indifferent about Matt Ward leaving, if Alan Merritt et al were unhappy he wouldn't have been there 12 years.

I greatly disliked the air of misogyny in the sisters of battle being slaughtered so that the incorruptible grey knights could daub themselves in their blood to be even more incorruptible. It made no sense from the fluff, it was entirely unnecessary and distasteful. But even if Matt Ward wrote that, Alan Merritt and others signed it off and sent it for publishing. Those people still run the company, so I don't see anything changing.

While yes he must have had oversight in the fluff he squeezed out the fact that nobody else produces such gak leads me to think the issue was ward.

In regards to rules given the fact that between the demon army book and 8th edition he has single handedly killed an entire system speaks volumes in regards to his ability.

Also he gets to much credit with 40k with the excuse that he writes for a following edition, he basicly in reality writes overpowered crap or o&g level crap.

Also he has admitted on more than one occasion that he let his personal feelings towards an army dictate it's power level.

In regards to him being let go I doubt it he was the boards golden child and unless he got caught pissing in kirbys tea I doubt that changed.

Yeah but they've got 125 people (well, 124 now) in the design studio. Is it really possible that a £130 million (well, £120 million now) international company would produce new products by letting bearded men sit in a cubby hole and send stuff off to the printer without any kind of play-testing or oversight? Especially when they have such an important IP to protect.

**puma713**

Kilkrazy wrote:

Yeah but they've got 125 people (well, 124 now) in the design studio. Is it really possible that a £130 million (well, £120 million now) international company would produce new products by letting bearded men sit in a cubby hole and send stuff off to the printer without any kind of play-testing or oversight? Especially when they have such an important IP to protect.

Before the recent report I would've undoubtedly agreed with you. Now, I would not be surprised if I found out that is exactly what happens.

**TNT925**

I'm actually surprised this much hate is still directed at Ward. I can understand why GK players and Necron players are still upset, but didn't a bunch of stuff come out not too long ago saying that the codex authors have nothing to do with the actual rules themselves? I was under the impression that the unnamed GW 'design team' did all that.

If true then we can't really blame Ward for the funky rules. The fluff by all means is his doing, but the rules I thought were someone else.

**puma713**

TNT925 wrote:
I'm actually surprised this much hate is still directed at Ward. I can understand why GK players and Necron players are still upset, but didn't a bunch of stuff come out not too long ago saying that the codex authors have nothing to do with the actual rules themselves? I was under the impression that the unnamed GW 'design team' did all that.

If true then we can't really blame Ward for the funky rules. The fluff by all means is his doing, but the rules I thought were someone else.

I believe he was also one of the chief authors of the two rulesets (WHFB and 40K) that many attribute the ruin of their favorite system to.

**Goresaw**

I think Ward definitely hurt both games, badly. But lets face it, the company as a whole is doing nothing to help. If Ward stabbed the game and left it bleeding, everyone since has been stealing its wallet and shoes, and kicked it in the ribs for good measure.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
And hell.. after seeing the ork codex... I would be dancing in the streets if Ward had wrote it. He at least made armies interesting, even if they were broken, or the rules functionally unplayable without serious FAQ.

We've got a serious goldylocks problem. Its always too hot or too cold.

**Azreal13**

puma713 wrote:
TNT925 wrote:
I'm actually surprised this much hate is still directed at Ward. I can understand why GK players and Necron players are still upset, but didn't a bunch of stuff come out not too long ago saying that the codex authors have nothing to do with the actual rules themselves? I was under the impression that the unnamed GW 'design team' did all that.

If true then we can't really blame Ward for the funky rules. The fluff by all means is his doing, but the rules I thought were someone else.

I believe he was also one of the chief authors of the two rulesets (WHFB and 40K) that many attribute the ruin of their favorite system to.

The fact is, nobody outside of Lenton can ever really accurately assess the influence he may have had. Take the anecdote about Battle Focus, how many occasions may that have happened where an anecdote didn't surface? It is as possible that he had a hand in every poorly written or overpowered concept that has angered and annoyed people in the last decade as he was the sole voice pleading for balance while the rest of the studio laughed maniacally and released the Eldar and Tau books.

I think the easy way of summarising most of Ward's (or that which is attributed) excesses is a lack of restraint. Take the aforementioned Battle Focus, all it would have taken to become a fluffy and evocative rule, which gave an advantage without being unnecessary would have it allow running and snap shots, but no, run and fire at full BS, cause reasons.