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As a Necron player, it's frustrating not having ANY current official resource available to address rules conflicts.
I remember reading somewhere that FW were going to be releasing an update to the Dark Harvest to bring it in line with the current edition rules and Necron codex, but obviously that must have been false.

What happened?
There was a time fairly recently when GW were releasing new FAQs pretty frequently.
Why did they suddenly dry up?
Why did they even start just straight up removing FAQs from the errata page?

Because they care less about the wargame itself with every passing year. Upper management insists on viewing the ruleset as secondary to collecting and painting miniatures, just some stupid gak to do to piss the time away.

Why spend time FAQ'ing rules when you could spend that time writing a new rulebook to sell?

 skoffs wrote:
As a Necron player, it's frustrating not having ANY current official resource available to address rules conflicts.
I remember reading somewhere that FW were going to be releasing an update to the Dark Harvest to bring it in line with the current edition rules and Necron codex, but obviously that must have been false.

What happened?
There was a time fairly recently when GW were releasing new FAQs pretty frequently.
Why did they suddenly dry up?
Why did they even start just straight up removing FAQs from the errata page?

The real answer? They don't care.

Games Workshop does not see itself as a game company. It's very explicit about this in its statements to shareholders. In their view, GW is, first and foremost, in the business of selling collectibles, much like beanie-babies. That's how they see their market. They believe their customers just buy stuff to amass collections, based purely on the cool factor of GW's models. Rules and gameplay are secondary or even tertiary concerns.

How could a company actually think that? Why is their game fun if they dont care? You would have to be pants on head stupid to think that it wouldnt make you money to support the game that is the reason people buy these models... Unless people legitimately buy them and paint them more than they play with them on a global scale.

Im just confused. I keep hearing GW doesnt care about the game. But then why isnt it absolutely terrible and simple? It has problems, for sure, but it's still managed to convince us it was or is worth all our time we've put into it, and ive had tons of fun playing.

They wouldnt have gotten a red cent from me without a sweet game to play. How can a company not care about the revenue of my 7500 pts of daemons, templates, rulebooks, dice, etc.?

It just doesnt make sense to me. It would help if i could see a statement where they said it themselves. Even then, im sure im not the only guy who wouldnt have spent money without the game. Seems ludicrous that they could ignore that and stay healthy the way it's presented in these forums.

AncientSkarbrand wrote:
How could a company actually think that? Why is their game fun if they dont care? You would have to be pants on head stupid to think that it wouldnt make you money to support the game that is the reason people buy these models... Unless people legitimately buy them and paint them more than they play with them on a global scale.

Im just confused. I keep hearing GW doesnt care about the game. But then why isnt it absolutely terrible and simple? It has problems, for sure, but it's still managed to convince us it was or is worth all our time we've put into it, and ive had tons of fun playing.

They wouldnt have gotten a red cent from me without a sweet game to play. How can a company not care about the revenue of my 7500 pts of daemons, templates, rulebooks, dice, etc.?

It just doesnt make sense to me. It would help if i could see a statement where they said it themselves. Even then, im sure im not the only guy who wouldnt have spent money without the game. Seems ludicrous that they could ignore that and stay healthy the way it's presented in these forums.

It's a matter of degradation of what was once great. The GW of old, the legends say, were much more receptive to their consumer base, and kept the game high quality. In contrast, the last CEO not only stated that they do no market research, but acted as if it were a point of pride.

Faqs don't make money so GW don't do Faqs.

The sad truth is, if they bothered to make their game good, they would sell more models. They're extremely short sighted that way. Same reason they don't support Games Day or anything else.

I wished Hasbro bought GW out years ago...

AncientSkarbrand wrote:
How could a company actually think that? Why is their game fun if they dont care? You would have to be pants on head stupid to think that it wouldnt make you money to support the game that is the reason people buy these models...

It's what happens when management is completely disconnected from their actual markets and your CEO is also Chairman of the board for many years and one of the top shareholders, which also explains why they've done absurd things like *borrow* money to pay dividends (and roughly double said CEO's yearly income...)

Unless people legitimately buy them and paint them more than they play with them on a global scale.

GW states how proud it is that it does zero market research...so that's a question we all have

Im just confused. I keep hearing GW doesnt care about the game. But then why isnt it absolutely terrible and simple? It has problems, for sure, but it's still managed to convince us it was or is worth all our time we've put into it, and ive had tons of fun playing.

For many, this is increasingly less true, and GW's revenues, adjusted for inflation, have been declining for a decade.

They wouldnt have gotten a red cent from me without a sweet game to play. How can a company not care about the revenue of my 7500 pts of daemons, templates, rulebooks, dice, etc.?

Because they're already gotten your money

It just doesnt make sense to me. It would help if i could see a statement where they said it themselves.

GW is a public company, their financial statements are published periodically and include statements to shareholders, it's on their website.

http://investor.games-workshop.com/

You can go through their releases and statements, it's very clear they see the games themselves as a secondary component, they are, first and foremost, a miniatures company.

That's pretty depressing, really. Kind of sets a trend for the future... And i've only been knowledgeable about the hobby since the end of 6th. I've put alot of money into it in that time, and i don't make much.

Is there hope for the future with this new CEO? Are the old legnds still at least part of the design team?

As if i need economic greed to ruin my escape from everyday drudgery and economic greed. In your experience, have games companies always been better before they hit it big and made too much money to care about the customer's enjoyment and desires?

Well, since the new CEO is, well, new, and the new trend since the new CEO took over has been zero FAQ/Erratas, then odds are probably pretty good that they're not planning on doing FAQ's.

However, they have been doing some serious changes to their strategy, and some rumor guys have mentioned the possibility of ending codices, so it may be that they Age of Sigmar 40k in a sense and produce free rules. Whether that's a good thing or not is up to the execution.

One issue is that these days the upper management of listed companies changes more often than before, the average being 4,5 years currently and shrinking. For something like a miniature wargame, it causes fluctuation like this ( especially if you add some incompetence. )

It's very likely every new CEO is full of ideas how to change things ( wouldn't you be? ) and because nothing happens fast in the corporate world, you get these 180 degree turns with codices, erratas and policies midway through an edition. The new CEO has been more honest in his investor propaganda leaflets and pushed for a faster release rate of books atleast.

With the rumours being that rules would become attached to the miniature packages, free, not updating erratas for books could be seen to coincide with that I guess. If AoS is to be an example, there they have already updated some of the free rules.

 Filch wrote:
I wished Hasbro bought GW out years ago...

With that, they could put Warhammer under their Wizards of the Coast brand and have good rules writers that actually know what they are doing in charge.

Honestly, the lack of FAQs is driving me away from the game. Since C:SM and Dark Angels came out, I have bought zero Blood Angels stuff, and significantly less Space Marines stuff. The lack of communication between GW and its fans is a big turn off for me. I am regretting getting into the game at all at this point. I am going to vote with my wallet and buy something else.

A ways back GW changed its writing model from having chief individual writers overseeing certain products to more of a writers room atmosphere in which everyone works on everything. Early this year, when the FAQ releases dropped off entirely, happens to coincide perfectly with when in the schedule they would have had to sit down and begin writing the free rules for every single unit in AoS. That task was so gargantuan, it no doubt required the entire team.

The most likely scenario is that everyone has simply been too busy rewriting every whfb model into an AoS codex to bother with something secondary like FAQs. Now that this is out of the way, hopefully we'll see some FAQs later this fall along with the refocus on 40k.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 casvalremdeikun wrote:

 Filch wrote:
I wished Hasbro bought GW out years ago...

With that, they could put Warhammer under their Wizards of the Coast brand and have good rules writers that actually know what they are doing in charge.

Anyone who thinks Hasbro would do better than GW knows absolutely nothing about how badly Hasbro hamstrung WotC behind the scenes and permanently crippled the D&D brand.

^One can only hope...
Actually had heard a rumor regarding the Ravenwing HQ Problem getting FAQ'd for one, though that's on roughly the lowest rung of credibility as far as sourcing goes (someone on the 1d4chan Dark Angels tactics page claiming they heard that from GW customer support) but if your theory is true and that rumor also is, that would actually fit together.

It also gives me the image of some GW guy poking a passed-out writer with a broom while going "C'mon, fix the Dark Angels already!".

 Filch wrote:
I wished Hasbro bought GW out years ago...

Hasbro was more or less leveraged to the hilt 10-15 years ago and couldn't have even if they wanted to.

Card games and board games (and toys) are far more profitable for them than miniatures rules or wargames these days. They'll probably just wait until it collapses under the weight of its own hubris (kinda like WoTC did to TSR ) and pounce then.

 Massawyrm wrote:
Anyone who thinks Hasbro would do better than GW knows absolutely nothing about how badly Hasbro hamstrung WotC behind the scenes and permanently crippled the D&D brand.

To be blunt I can't take the thought of Hasbro owning GW seriously because I just think of all the My Little Pony/40k crossovers I've randomly run into.
And yet canonizing those would probably still make more sense than some of the things GW has come up with recently.

 Massawyrm wrote:
Anyone who thinks Hasbro would do better than GW knows absolutely nothing about how badly Hasbro hamstrung WotC behind the scenes and permanently crippled the D&D brand.

The current edition of D&D has been on multiple best sellers lists for a year. It is widely described as one of the best versions of the game available. So...there's that. Under Hasbro, Magic the Gathering has boomed into its highest sales ever.

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
^One can only hope...
Actually had heard a rumor regarding the Ravenwing HQ Problem getting FAQ'd for one, though that's on roughly the lowest rung of credibility as far as sourcing goes (someone on the 1d4chan Dark Angels tactics page claiming they heard that from GW customer support)

That wasn't so much a rumor as a direct response from customer support posted on one of the news sites. Though few of those CS responses have panned out in the last few months.

Yeah, figures as much really.
Hopefully it is just because of delays from overworking on Age of Crapmar but probably not smart to get hopes up.

We could all throw out our pet theories as to why they have been getting worse when it comes to Errata, and the truth is likely a combination of many such theories....

The sad reality is Game Workshop has always taken a position that they are a company that "sells miniatures first and foremost," using it as a shield when it comes to criticism of this very nature. This is something that I personally distaste as it means they are not tapping into certain markets very well and because it has given them a very justified reputation at being terrible when it comes to writing Rules. Both of these could become massive problems for the company as soon as a decade from now, as they fail to adapt to new technology, fail to utilize their intellectual properly correctly, and find themselves losing more 'old timers' faster then they are attracting new people to the hobby.

As for attracting new people, I can testify my friends have zero interest in the table-top game because of broken, difficult and "stupid" Rules.
They don't want to have to argue with people in new locations, who may be using different 'House Rules' to fix problems
They don't want to have to deal with poor formatting and arguments that can form over a individual poorly chosen word within a Rule
They don't want the hassle of having to purchase new Rulebooks every year or two, only to have Models they like become completely useless

Much easier to fire up Dawn of War, as it is far more loyal to the setting....
Not kidding, that was the exact line my boyfriend told me just today.

Now, a thought experiment:
What do you think would happen if Game Workshop designed a system with Rules tight enough that a computer could manage them for us?
Then created a virtual tabletop version of this system, in order to allow players the world over to enjoy the game on-line?
What if they took this virtual tabletop and designed some very beautifully 'minutures' that could be fully customized?

How much money do you think they would make charging us for software licences to use this virtual tabletop?
How much money do you think they would make selling us these virtual Models, given there is little 'publishing costs' associated with virtual media?
How much money do you think they would make charging us subscription fees to maintain the servers tracking our virtual armies?

 casvalremdeikun wrote:

 Massawyrm wrote:
Anyone who thinks Hasbro would do better than GW knows absolutely nothing about how badly Hasbro hamstrung WotC behind the scenes and permanently crippled the D&D brand.

The current edition of D&D has been on multiple best sellers lists for a year. It is widely described as one of the best versions of the game available. So...there's that.

They took a game that consistently put out 1-2 products a month every month for over a decade and turned it into one that puts out a single product every 3-4 months, while unwittingly creating their own chief rival which continues to this day to siphon away players. Also worthy of note is that what constitutes a best seller in this day and age is just a fraction of what it was just ten years ago. It's a lot like comic books that way. Seriously, while a number of folks are quite happy with the reinvention of D&D, it isn't remotely what it was 10 years ago. And that has EVERYTHING to do with the behind the scenes meddling from Hasbro.

Because they're lazy, and doing faQs imply working and thus get their freakin lazy arses off the couche in the play room they have at HQ...

 Massawyrm wrote:

 casvalremdeikun wrote:

 Massawyrm wrote:
Anyone who thinks Hasbro would do better than GW knows absolutely nothing about how badly Hasbro hamstrung WotC behind the scenes and permanently crippled the D&D brand.

The current edition of D&D has been on multiple best sellers lists for a year. It is widely described as one of the best versions of the game available. So...there's that.

They took a game that consistently put out 1-2 products a month every month for over a decade and turned it into one that puts out a single product every 3-4 months, while unwittingly creating their own chief rival which continues to this day to siphon away players. Also worthy of note is that what constitutes a best seller in this day and age is just a fraction of what it was just ten years ago. It's a lot like comic books that way. Seriously, while a number of folks are quite happy with the reinvention of D&D, it isn't remotely what it was 10 years ago. And that has EVERYTHING to do with the behind the scenes meddling from Hasbro.

You won't get an argument from me on this. The fact they went to less than 10% of the yearly products is pretty bad.

 casvalremdeikun wrote:

 Massawyrm wrote:

 casvalremdeikun wrote:

 Massawyrm wrote:
Anyone who thinks Hasbro would do better than GW knows absolutely nothing about how badly Hasbro hamstrung WotC behind the scenes and permanently crippled the D&D brand.

The current edition of D&D has been on multiple best sellers lists for a year. It is widely described as one of the best versions of the game available. So...there's that.

They took a game that consistently put out 1-2 products a month every month for over a decade and turned it into one that puts out a single product every 3-4 months, while unwittingly creating their own chief rival which continues to this day to siphon away players. Also worthy of note is that what constitutes a best seller in this day and age is just a fraction of what it was just ten years ago. It's a lot like comic books that way. Seriously, while a number of folks are quite happy with the reinvention of D&D, it isn't remotely what it was 10 years ago. And that has EVERYTHING to do with the behind the scenes meddling from Hasbro.

You won't get an argument from me on this. The fact they went to less than 10% of the yearly products is pretty bad.

I always found the shotgun of products quite daunting and a massive barrier to dnd. Then I took the plunge and loved it ever since, it was however, very hit and miss with how good some of their stuff was.

So anyone going to put those money where their mouth is and refuse to buy gw products until faq support returns? It's the only way they'll listen.

I find their reasoning that they are a model company first and foremost odd when a good amount of their releases are rules. If they were a model company first they would focus on putting out new kits to replace aging old ones like Havocs before putting resources into things like Dataslates.

 Massawyrm wrote:
A ways back GW changed its writing model from having chief individual writers overseeing certain products to more of a writers room atmosphere in which everyone works on everything. Early this year, when the FAQ releases dropped off entirely, happens to coincide perfectly with when in the schedule they would have had to sit down and begin writing the free rules for every single unit in AoS. That task was so gargantuan, it no doubt required the entire team.

The most likely scenario is that everyone has simply been too busy rewriting every whfb model into an AoS codex to bother with something secondary like FAQs. Now that this is out of the way, hopefully we'll see some FAQs later this fall along with the refocus on 40k.

To be fair, FAQ's don't require much.. Maybe three or four hours to go through questions, answer them, put them in PDF's and upload them? Documentation like that really isn't that time consuming, especially given the extremely minimal and vague nature of GW's typical FAQ's.

Captyn_Bob wrote:
So anyone going to put those money where their mouth is and refuse to buy gw products until faq support returns? It's the only way they'll listen.

I haven't bought anything GW related in 7 or 8 months I think, since Feb? Basically since very soon after the super-codex books started to come out. There's a fair number of people out there that are dissatisfied with the way things are going.

I honestly wandered into this thread thinking it was 2007!

Because when you combine brainwashing and arrogance with a gakload of acid, you get AoS, not an FAQ.