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I preordered some items from them and for the first time was disipointed with their customer service... A Preorder should NOT arrive 5 days after the release! Isn't that the main two points of preorders? 1. get it day 1 (or soonish) and 2. reserve your copy?

WayneTheGame wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Miniatures per box. Why do we only get 10 models for $30 when they're for a Horde army? Bring back 20 guardsmen/Orkz/Gaunts per box while leaving the price be.

Also give all options. If I buy a Tactical Squad, I should get one each of Missile Launcher/Heavy Bolter/Lascannon/etc. so I can build them the way I want. I should get two of each special weapon, because that's the maximum the options allow.

The way they offer some bits, they should change the rules to only allow the options provided in the box. Only offer 5 models in a box? The squad can only be 5 models then. One box = one complete unit should be what they strive for, not one box gives you something but not everything you need to "encourage" you to buy extra.

Both these a thousand times over. £20 for 10 Guardsmen with 3 out of the 9 weapons options? GW, are you having a laugh?

 Zaki66 wrote:
I've seen SO many threads, articles, videos, etc about how GW does things WRONG...

Well.... 21€/£16/$26 may be just a tad expensive for a plastic monopose infantry model in 28mm scale.

Every time I watch Big Bang Theory I wonder to myself why on Earth GW don't pay up and have 40K placed in there. Would be easy enough to do with all the product placement they do on that show.

The lack of marketing is really baffling. It's only because of marketing that diamonds are worth insane amounts of money. If you do it well, you can print money

 Davylove21 wrote:
Every time I watch Big Bang Theory I wonder to myself why on Earth GW don't pay up and have 40K placed in there. Would be easy enough to do with all the product placement they do on that show.

The lack of marketing is really baffling. It's only because of marketing that diamonds are worth insane amounts of money. If you do it well, you can print money

I thought the same thing when I watch that show.

GW needs to stop being incompetent bullies. The bad press from their needless aggression did them no favors. Even back when I still loved the game it gave me a bad taste in my mouth.

GW needs to communicate again. Even their stupid actions could be received much better if they just explained it to the players. "Dear players, we're updating the game to a new edition because we feel that...." is much better than "......."

No more Tauroxes, Khornedozers and Logan Clauses.

Rules that weren't written by a 12 year old with tourettes.

GW needs to do about everything better. I don't know if it could get much worse then it is currently.

 Chute82 wrote:
GW needs to do about everything better. I don't know if it could get much worse then it is currently.

Those are dangerous words, my friend. Things can always get worse.
Imagine entire armies of SW Centurions riding sleighs pulled by cybernetic polar bears. Crap, I hope GW isn't listening...wait, who am I kidding? They don't acknowledge the internet.

If you were GW, would you bother interacting with the online community?!

 monders wrote:
If you were GW, would you bother interacting with the online community?!

If I wanted to make money, yes.

It's 2015. By interacting with the online community you can make a couple grand MAKING A POTATO SALAD.

All in all I agree that virtually any other company would be making the necessary course corrections to continue riding a delicious gravy train.

It seems like the current generation of upper management intend to be the last.

Where do I start?

Firstly they could not increase prices with every single release, leading to situations were Ork Stompa costs only £5 more than the Gorkanaut

Secondly they could stop thinking they can get by with only plastic, since many traditional modellers still make moderately heavy use of resin and metal to supplement their plastic kits [which at least 10x detailed than anything GW has produced]

Thirdly they could understand that every other company producing miniatures lowers prices when they move to plastic for a very good reason.

Fourthly they could stop aiming their product at brain dead 13 year olds who will spent about £150 on starting out and go back to Call of Duty in half a year.

Fifthly they could stop forcing players in Australia etc to play double price for no understandable reason.

Sixthly they could do something to stop other companies taking their customers that isn't hoping said customers knowledge of gaming companies doesn't extend beyond them.

Seventhly they not make anyone who wants to sell their product have to get past 3 million restrictions.

Eighthly they could make forgeworld not diamond hard to get.

Ninthly they could update their rules to the standards of the 2010s, not the 1980s.

Tenthly they could make your chance of victory in their rulesets come down to skill, not what army you're using.

Eleventhly they could pull back their stores to just the larger ones in major population areas, or just get rid of them completely.

Twelthly they could learn about the role of social media and advertising.

Thirteenthly they could go back to when 40k had about 9 large armies, instead of 19 armies were only a third have more than 2 units available to them.

Forteenthly they could stop acting like their products do the equivalent of curing cancer, or at least actually deliver on that promise in some way.


That's all I can think of right now.

I love their stuff, when I got involved with their IP / world 40k seemed like a vista of gaming scenarios that seemed reasonable and vast (2nd edition thru 5th, Necromunda, Epic, BFG).
Immersion: they had interaction and guides and a bit of everything for every want and good scraps between codex's.

What can GW do better:

The rules they have break the 4th wall, lose immersion, somehow their "more open" rules make it all seem limited: only certain combinations work and not within the immersive stories of their IP.
They are very touchy of their IP and want it presented properly: they MUST make rules where their characters behave as they would within their universe.

To create an imbalance in power between armies is to infer in their narrative universe that everyone else will be wiped out by them.
They depend on the stalemate to set the backdrop: there is only war.

Top management will not acknowledge the story/feel of the army/model/codex triad: they are each collectable models in isolation... why do they seem like they are blind?

All of GW's competitors have proved that you don't need your own store to have gamers buy your stuff. GW should close all their stores and sell via FLG's. The perceived sales that they would lose by "little johnny" being exposed to other systems would be balanced out by the savings they make on store closures.

Oh and get your rules sorted out!!! Get the tourney scene behind you again.

 monders wrote:
If you were GW, would you bother interacting with the online community?!

Yes, I would. And I would recognize and understand that not everything is going to be sunshine and rainbows. Now obviously unconstructive hostile posts aren't okay (nor are they anywhere) but voicing complaints and issues is fine and listening to them is part of a good business.

They should definitely engage with the customer base. If a thousand people say prices are too high, maybe it's something to take a look at - maybe it's not something you need to address (or can) but you should acknowledge that some people have a problem with it, and those people are still customers (or were). Giving them the finger while pretending you can't hear them isn't helping anyone and makes you look stupid (and hey, surprise surprise GW looks stupid and that's what they did).

Same with rules concerns or issues.

 monders wrote:
If you were GW, would you bother interacting with the online community?!

If I were GW, I'd never have stopped.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 monders wrote:
If you were GW, would you bother interacting with the online community?!

If I were GW, I'd never have stopped.

But... but... people might say they aren't HAPPY with you!

I feel like GW needs to wholesale reboot their games. Move away from the codex system, it makes things much harder to balance and creates a system where (at least in the past) some factions went years without seeing any new content.

So bring everything back down to the basics. Build a ruleset, with playtesting, release the basic units for each army in the intial playtest, then add more units to each army over time playtesting all the while.

Breng77 wrote:
I feel like GW needs to wholesale reboot their games.

I agree they DO need a reboot.
They have made themselves to lean however to take a temporary hit to sales.
They want all models to sell and would need some means of having rules in place for them all.
I wonder if they have any "talent" left in their stable to do even a fraction of the writing and design needed at the moment.

Breng77 wrote:I feel like GW needs to wholesale reboot their games. Move away from the codex system, it makes things much harder to balance and creates a system where (at least in the past) some factions went years without seeing any new content.

So bring everything back down to the basics. Build a ruleset, with playtesting, release the basic units for each army in the intial playtest, then add more units to each army over time playtesting all the while.

The problem there wasn't the codex system, but their release system. All of what you mentioned could have been done, they've just chosen not to.

Talizvar wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
I feel like GW needs to wholesale reboot their games.

I agree they DO need a reboot.
They have made themselves to lean however to take a temporary hit to sales.
They want all models to sell and would need some means of having rules in place for them all.
I wonder if they have any "talent" left in their stable to do even a fraction of the writing and design needed at the moment.

I don't know how much of it has to do with 'talent' in the studio, i think a lot of what's going on is being strongly driven from 'upstairs'. I remember when battle of maccrage came out, and jervis explained how he had to fight to get a small but complete rulebook included in the box set. I suspect there's a lot that is simply outside their control.

 monders wrote:
If you were GW, would you bother interacting with the online community?!

Yes.

WotC interacts with the community.

Paizo interacts with the community (and does so very well.)

Mantic interacts with the community.

GW hides in the corner and cries when their fans call them to task for making stupid decisions.

The Auld Grump

 Azreal13 wrote:

 monders wrote:
If you were GW, would you bother interacting with the online community?!

If I were GW, I'd never have stopped.

Well if you had been GW, I doubt they'd be in this spot they are in right now.

GW's adherence to NOT speaking to their customer base is systemic of the mindset of those running the company. They don't care about their employees- hell, they've laid off most of them, and their "managers" are just laymen they can bully and fire if they can't meet the outrageous demands of a given store (given that the quotas for ALL stores are the same ). Their designers are probably good people, but unless the design comes with a big price tag, GW's uppers don't want to hear about it.

As far as games go, they murdered off all of the Specialist Games in the belief people would just buy more Space Marines. Now they've effectively killed off WHFB (with a possible resuscitation in the future, but I don't have a lot of hope for that) and they are bloating 40k so full of crap (DLC-style releases) and accelerated rules cycles that there is going to come a point when even the most diehard fans say "this is enough."

What I don't get is why people feel the need to defend GW- the only person you're defending is Tom Kirby and his Krony Krew. I get that you love 40k, but it's easy enough to differentiate between the historic GW and the entity that has taken the reins of the company and is sucking every dollar it can out of its loyal fan base.

I can tell of one weekend that well made me realise why GW is writing it's own obituary and that is the diff between GW and Hasbro (owners of Wizards of the Coast).

It was the Nagash weekend and I went into a GW store and until I had arrive at 1pm no one had entered the store and it opened at 9am, so in 4 hours no-one but me.

But next door a GW trade partner had a "Magic the Gathering" new expansion game, and the store was packed, they had all of their tables full of M:TG about 150 players and boxes of M:TG walking out of the store.
The store in question sold over the weekend five whole pallets of M:TG and as usual the producers of M:TG had provided 50 boxes to be broken up and used to reward players in competitions.

While this was going on over the weekend the trade partner had 5 staff on hand, while GW had 1, and it had to shut down at 2pm for lunch (madness) during this weekend the GW in question did not sell a single Nagash model not Nagash book.
Also while the trade partner was open on Monday and Tuesday, the GW store was closed, and the trade partner sold 5 Nagash models and 6 Nagash books at 15% off retail price, due to GW deliberately moving next door to it.

I asked the following weekend how much M:TG through the week and was told more than $400,000 of M:TG. 45% of that profit to the store equalling $180,000 cold hard profit. The GW store barely sold $7,000 the whole week, barely covering the rent, utilities and wages.

Why, well it goes like this M:TG in Australia hasn't risen in price for nearly 20 years, while GW product it too bloody expensive. Taking Nagash (the end of times) folks have to shell out more than 1,900 Pounds to get a decent Nagash collection in Australia, while you in Britain pay barely 1,100 BP. Some of my hardcore GW collectors won't touch Nagash at all, too expensive, but GW knows this, that is why they are killing off Warhammer: Fantasy in 2019 and just having WH.40,000.

It is no longer a beer and pretzels game, more like Moet and cucumber sandwiches who breed race horses for a hobby. GW is out of touch with it customers.

That is just one example of two stores next to each other in suburban Australia. This is why GW is losing 615,000 British Pounds per four weeks, go figure, GW hasn't a clue.

Achaylus72 that is not a fair comparison, MTG is about the Game while GW is about selling models, and it Cards Vs Models totally different things

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
Achaylus72 that is not a fair comparison, MTG is about the Game while GW is about selling models, and it Cards Vs Models totally different things

Ignoring the cards to model thing the indi store sold a lot more than the GW store that opened next to it because that store sells at 15% off.

GW spend a LOT of money keeping those stores open and opening next to a FLGS is a clearly aggressive move to try and muscle them out.

Everything about that is bad for GW.

that is why they are killing off Warhammer: Fantasy in 2019 and just having WH.40,000.

Uhm... Source?

To be fair Vermis, it's the only logical conclusion if you want to interpret what GW is doing.

They want to be bankrupt.

 heartserenade wrote:
To be fair Vermis, it's the only logical conclusion if you want to interpret what GW is doing.

They want to be bankrupt.

Sadly I have no logical arguement for this, given their current business model.

They'll hope for free government bailout money.

Bankruptcy?
Not likely.
There is too much overhead they can still sell off.
Kirby still wants his dividends so he will be actively looking for ways to generate cash other than direct sales.
I am seeing a little more activity in apps/games of their IP, rather garbage ones but they are getting out there all the same.
Mordeheim is getting flogged on Steam so even their "dead" IP is getting use.
GW is hardly big enough as an employer to get "bail-out money" they save that for big manufacturers with a high localized employee count.
It will shamble along until someone is interested enough to take it off Kirby's hands... for a price.