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 mikhaila wrote:
Another fruitless hour of my life wasted with GW...

-YES! This will be the biggest launch ever.
-YES! we will be supporting retailers.

..uh, no, we don't know what we are doing about the old books....even though we asked you for an inventory...

...uh, no, we don't have anything to tell you....but trust us

....uh, no. while we say we are supporting you and encouraging you to go huge with your weekend events...we don't really have anything we can say on how we are supporting you.

..Magic? What does MTG have to do with warhammer? Pre-release weekend the same week as AOS release, don't be silly, you know you love warhams.

Very Frustrating.

Is GW operating off some kind of school of business that most people aren't aware of (whether poorly implemented or not), or are they just completely unschooled amateurs?

This isn't meant as a snarky question btw; it's just that it seems so hard for me to fathom that a company that's been doing this for so long, would run things the way they do without some kind of reason... It's so weird to me how they had more of an online presence back when the internet was barely a thing, than they do today. Theirs is a game that seems to lend itself so well to developer diaries, random work in progress photos in blog posts, with 'accidental' leaks of upcoming releases in the form of a barely visible WIP new kit etc.

Yet they go for this wall of silence with a website that is 100% catalogue (at least I haven't noticed anything else at a glance), and might I add, not even a very good catalogue given what they are selling. But there has to be some logic to it, are there any other businesses that run things this way (succcessfully)? Can't think of one off the top of my head but that doesn't mean much.

Quick story.

My friend was due to be made redundant from his government job.

He knew over a year before he left, and two years before the office closed.

Three months before he left, they supplied him with a new computer. A computer which is now either still in a closed office or in some storage somewhere.

This closed office used to be owned by the UK government, but in heir infinite wisdom they sold it to a private company who them rented it back to them.

This governmental department is the one Tom Kirby worked for before entering wargaming.

The comparison someone made to videogame stores doing launches for a certain game isn't really a great one - yeah these events happen but only because the market has massive competition between major companies within the videogame industry.

GW actually has no competition on the same scale as them in their home markets. People go on about share prices, shareholders......they are, as far as I know, the ony wargaming company that even has shareholders in that sense. They have hundreds of their own stores worldwide, and sure, these are 2/1 man operations in many cases but, from the point of view of just selling stuff, that's actually more than doable and effective.

In terms of customer service they are actually really good compared to others in the industry - it's not good service when company "x" sends you the missing part for free and an extra thing, its good service when they get the parts right in the first place. I've had one issue with a GW order ever, and it was minor (the dust jacket on a book was a bit torn as the package had taken a big hit in transit, so not even their control) and they sorted it super fast with a replacement, and I could keep the original, and an extra book. All for a small bit of damage that didnt stop me using the item. By comparison I have lost count of how many times I have had to request missing parts from Warlord, Privateer and a few others and, Warlord excluded, the turnaround time is terribe.

As someone who abandoned GW several years ago when my finances meant I couldnt drop a small mountain of money into new stuff, Age of Sigmar has me anticipating the rumours being largely true. Unit cards, no scores of markers and wound tracking, one shot spells, smaller model count, wider factions and armies - win.

GW is looking to grow the market, I honest think with Age of Sigmar they've looked at what the competition is doing, figured that the old Warhammer was never going to draw many people in that are new as it had gotten to bloated hundreds of model strong 3000 points armies, and decided a clean sweep and restart is for the best. Anyone who has bought in already; they have your money and the old stuff potentially has little resale value once AoS comes out, and they know that people new to the hobby spend more in the first six months, generally, than someone who has been in for a long time.

Hopefully more news leaks before official preorders, I'm 99% sure these leaks are orchestrated by GW anyway with the fakes thrown in to add doubt and then a fair few others just extrapolating from these that they hope will be true.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Quick story.

My friend was due to be made redundant from his government job.

He knew over a year before he left, and two years before the office closed.

Three months before he left, they supplied him with a new computer. A computer which is now either still in a closed office or in some storage somewhere.

This closed office used to be owned by the UK government, but in heir infinite wisdom they sold it to a private company who them rented it back to them.

This governmental department is the one Tom Kirby worked for before entering wargaming.

Wait this was a thing?

 Azreal13 wrote:
Quick story.

My friend was due to be made redundant from his government job.

He knew over a year before he left, and two years before the office closed.

Three months before he left, they supplied him with a new computer. A computer which is now either still in a closed office or in some storage somewhere.

This closed office used to be owned by the UK government, but in heir infinite wisdom they sold it to a private company who them rented it back to them.

This governmental department is the one Tom Kirby worked for before entering wargaming.

Exalted!!!

 Desubot wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Quick story.

My friend was due to be made redundant from his government job.

He knew over a year before he left, and two years before the office closed.

Three months before he left, they supplied him with a new computer. A computer which is now either still in a closed office or in some storage somewhere.

This closed office used to be owned by the UK government, but in heir infinite wisdom they sold it to a private company who them rented it back to them.

This governmental department is the one Tom Kirby worked for before entering wargaming.

Wait this was a thing?

Hand on heart, gods honest truth, my friend even posts on here occasionally.

I've only experienced it second hand, but if you view GW through the prism of being run to feather Kirby's retirement nest, things make a lot more sense, if you then use the fact that Kirby came into private commerce from the civil service, the things that don't fit with the greed suddenly make sense too. All the apparent ADHD, investing heavily in one direction, only to drop it and do and about face, all the abortive attempts at this or that with no follow through, plus the massive disconnect between how GW do business and how a sane company would act in the same circumstance all scream public sector. Public sector "companies" are government controlled, aren't subject to any sort of commerical pressure and therefore can end up doing things in highly unorthodox and massively inefficient ways, but it doesn't matter, because you can't take your tax business or your vehicle registration or passport queries elsewhere.

I can only hope Hewitt has something to do with this.
At least Ward is finally gone. I know we said that like a year ago, but if you look at his writing credits, all the End Times books are listed in there.

You know... people keep mentioning Hewitt and hoping he helps with the game's design... You do realize he was a community manager and part-time editor for Mantic, right? Nothing more.

If my brief time working with him on the Deadzone fiction anthology (before the terrific Greg Smith replaced him) is any indication... I don't know how good at logistics and the like he is.

Well, as a game designer, he wouldn't have to worry too much about 'logistics' - other than maybe deadlines?

When I say "logistics" I am being kind. I am talking about basic organization and critical thinking skills... Stuff which would be pretty beneficial to a designer.

I organized more play-tests when I was helping design Strange Aeons 2nd Ed. than I think James played total games of Dreadball, Deadzone, etc... :-p I saw him get rules wrong in games he was community manager for... Things like that.

What kind of amateurs do they have running this show?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
What kind of amateurs do they have running this show?

Only those with the very best attitude, sir!

 Compel wrote:
The rumours I've been hearing around was, basically Fantasy had until the next financial year (April) to really pick up.

Even if Fantasy totally stalled with miserable sales, GW's smart move would be to remove any requirement for FLGS to carry Fantasy, largely remove it from their own stores, and essentially sell models and books from 8e online. They still have a large number of pretty cool fantasy kits.

On the other hand, if GW ditched Fantasy and stopped selling models, I'd make a killing selling my BNIB fantasy stuff like Nagash online -- Since I probably will never get around to building it anyhow, at least not til I have like, at least 10,000 points of every 40k faction done.

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
You know... people keep mentioning Hewitt and hoping he helps with the game's design... You do realize he was a community manager and part-time editor for Mantic, right? Nothing more.

Yeah, but the job he got at GW was as a games designer. At the very least, a bit of fresh blood in that area would be good.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 mikhaila wrote:
Another fruitless hour of my life wasted with GW...

-YES! This will be the biggest launch ever.
-YES! we will be supporting retailers.

..uh, no, we don't know what we are doing about the old books....even though we asked you for an inventory...

...uh, no, we don't have anything to tell you....but trust us

....uh, no. while we say we are supporting you and encouraging you to go huge with your weekend events...we don't really have anything we can say on how we are supporting you.

..Magic? What does MTG have to do with warhammer? Pre-release weekend the same week as AOS release, don't be silly, you know you love warhams.

Very Frustrating.

Do you sell Privateer Press stuf? If not already, did this make you consider selling it ?

I have a 40 ft wall of everything that privateer has in production, plus the entire line of Flames of war, and quite a few smaller games like infinity, malifaux, xwing/armada, bolt action, saga, All Quiet on the Martion Front,. I tend to go with the "stock it all' theory when I go into a line of games. Putting too much into one game can hurt when that game cools off.

GW used to be a mainstay for us. Our GW sales sometimes equalled other stores total sales. Ironically, if you looked at our Organized Play each week, you'd see little GW, but tons of other games. Two days a week for boardgames, Leagues for Xwing, Privateer, about 8 DnD games running various nights. MTG on 3 nights a week, Historical group meets 2 days a week. GW has been tougher to run lately, but it's an awesome time for everything else. That's sort of what frustrates me the most. We have a huge number of people in playing games, and I love my GW games, but there isn't as much excitement for them.

I really want to get a league going on Saturdays for Age of Sigmar......I just sort of need to know what it is first, and convince people they want to play with me. Nothing kicks off a new league like a big release event and being part of a group right when the new game comes out. Would love to run a big weekend for AoS, GW is just making it harder and harder to do that as weeks go by with no information.

 mikhaila wrote:


I really want to get a league going on Saturdays for Age of Sigmar......I just sort of need to know what it is first, and convince people they want to play with me. Nothing kicks off a new league like a big release event and being part of a group right when the new game comes out. Would love to run a big weekend for AoS, GW is just making it harder and harder to do that as weeks go by with no information.

Mik,

It sounds like you might just have to schedule the new league to start the 18th instead? So you have a week to roll-out/prepare/absorb the new system? That's unfortunate, of course... it still just blows my mind how GW insists on keeping this so 'hush hush' when it is supposed to be such a huge deal. Even their little 'ad' and 'teaser video' were -beyond- lame.

What part of the country are you in, btw? The way you describe your business set-up sounds absolutely awesome.

You'd think GW would at least inform LGS owners about the release and have them sign an NDA specifying what about the game they can and cannot talk about.

At least then they could sell the idea to customers to build hype.

Instead, for all we know it's a single book releasing with no box set and it's actually a graphic novel about the exploits of KISS in space. That's how much official info we have: zero.

It does reek of insanity that 15 days away from the "BIG" advance order day for AOS that we have nothing concrete about the release. It seems dead in the water before it has even happened.

Azreal13 wrote:
Nobody at GW seems to get that sometimes goodwill is more valuable than money.

Everyone likes getting a bit of something for nowt!

My wife was at Twitter HQ Dublin this week, and I asked her to ask them to get my account verified. They said no, silly man, you're not famous! But they did send me a twitter mug.

adamsouza wrote:

zacharia wrote:
If the books werent becoming obsolete why wont they still be for sale?

It doens't really matter if they are compatible or not.

The End Times Books are supplements for the Warhammer Fantasy game that no longer exists.

They are going out of their way to re-brand and reboot as Age of Sigmar

So?! It's called End Times! It's Ended!

The Dark Tower was the last book in Stephen Kings The Dark Tower series.

The story ending has no impact on my enjoyment of everything that preceded it, and I am able to re-read the saga whenever the mood takes me.

Grimtuff wrote:So, preorder on a holiday weekend and released the same day as a big MTG preorder...

I think we can assume AoS might be DOA.

Is MtG that big? I've only seen a handful of very odd people playing it at Manchesters premier stink pit, Fanboy3.

Micky wrote:
Yeah, but the job he got at GW was as a games designer. At the very least, a bit of fresh blood in that area would be good.

Today the rep have indicated that between 26 to 29 June will give us all the information about Age of Sigmar necessary to meet the launch event.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
They're not going to cancel it that quickly. Look at Dreadfleet - AOS will last at least as long as DF did.

Wasn't Dreadfleet pulled from the shelves within a year, never to be spoken of again?

Though they did keep the LE Hobbit box on the shelves for over a year.

That's a thought; do you think there's going to be an initial wave of LE AoS boxes?

Release at the same time as MTG?
I can actually imagine lots of magic players that dont follow GW rumors (anymore) that show up for the magic buzz and instead see some new fresh GW stuff in the FLGS.
Probably benefit AOS more than not, letting it ride on the magic event rather than GWs ovn marketing.
Because, lets face it, how many non WHFB players follow these rumors?
And the point of the whole remake must surely bee to draw in some new players for fantasy, right?
(gods know they dont do alot of flirting with the old player base)

If the AoS launch is on the same day as the MTG Origins (pre-)release it will get a big FU from my local game store as there will be no room for a GW event.

 Fayric wrote:
Release at the same time as MTG?
I can actually imagine lots of magic players that dont follow GW rumors (anymore) that show up for the magic buzz and instead see some new fresh GW stuff in the FLGS.
Probably benefit AOS more than not, letting it ride on the magic event rather than GWs ovn marketing.
Because, lets face it, how many non WHFB players follow these rumors?
And the point of the whole remake must surely bee to draw in some new players for fantasy, right?
(gods know they dont do alot of flirting with the old player base)

This will only realistically affect the retailers, not the game itself. As you mentioned, it might actually have a positive effect on AoS recognition. What sucks is that the stores will have to choose between two promotions, instead of having both, at different dates.

So many of GW's problems could be solved just by employing one or two "Nope Consultants". These are people who you pay a small retainer to to just look at your upcoming releases and campaigns and say the word "Nope" as necessary. Hire Mikhaila or someone of similar experience to do a couple of hours a month of just looking at the retail side to say "Nope, that release date is no good, major MtG release on the same day" etc. Hire one powergamer or tournament gamer to read each new codex etc. and say "Nope, that combo is overpowered, etc." In fact they could probably just hire Reecius to do both jobs.

Maybe they shouldn't have lost Ronney Renton?

 edlowe wrote:
Maybe they shouldn't have lost Ronney Renton?

Speaking of Herr Renton, I wonder what would happen if GW started using crowdfunding on stuff like this.
They're big enough that they could run it themselves to save the KS fees or could also go with KS.
Esp. if they use it as a pre-order system for stuff they already have in the pipeline and might restrict/delay from retail availability.
Tailor codexes so that the KS stuff has better game efficiency and there-you-go.

 edlowe wrote:
Maybe they shouldn't have lost Ronney Renton?

Maybe they should have gotten rid of Kirby immediately after his first(necessary) restructuring of the company back in the 90's, rather than allowing him to embed himself like a tick and begin running the company for his personal enrichment and the advancement of his cronies.

 monders wrote:

Grimtuff wrote:So, preorder on a holiday weekend and released the same day as a big MTG preorder...

I think we can assume AoS might be DOA.

Is MtG that big? I've only seen a handful of very odd people playing it at Manchesters premier stink pit, Fanboy3.

Magic, Big? You could say that. Magic single-handedly keeps many hobby and gaming stores in the black. If I ran a store and had to choose between a well publicised and well known about launch of Magic or a murky unknown in the form of Age of Sigmar, then Sigmar's going to be relegated to a handful of stock posters and a small display in the corner. Maybe a demo table if I had the room. Magic will be given centre stage as that's where the money and numbers lie. Plus, I'd know what to expect ahead of time, so can plan properly for it, make sure staff are about and are educated on what they need to know, arrange the store accordingly, get posters and flyers printed, take to the Internet, launch day promotions, etc etc etc.

privateer4hire wrote:

 edlowe wrote:
Maybe they shouldn't have lost Ronney Renton?

Speaking of Herr Renton, I wonder what would happen if GW started using crowdfunding on stuff like this.
They're big enough that they could run it themselves to save the KS fees or could also go with KS.
Esp. if they use it as a pre-order system for stuff they already have in the pipeline and might restrict/delay from retail availability.
Tailor codexes so that the KS stuff has better game efficiency and there-you-go.

GW spends more money refilling the coffee machine at HQ than Mantic makes on Kickstarter in a year. Why would they need to crowdfund?