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LOTR was never played, never had any staying power at all... if the models sold for LOTR in a few years are "success" in your mind, then why are the many more models sold over a longer period of time for 40k not also "success"

2004 remains GW's best year, both by sales and operating profits... BEFORE adjusting for inflation. Doing so makes it look truly exceptional. They really should have more of those "unsuccessful" years.

Stayng power - who cares? That money paid for the CAD design and tooling gear that made those high quality 40k models possible. It also paid for a doomed expansion of their North American shop chain, which we don't talk about.

My experience of LotR is very different from yours. Did my teacher training about that time - you could tell the day that Battle Games in Middle-Earth came out because there were literally dozens of small boys running around school clutching the magazine or sprues of figures. I ran a school club for the two years I was in training and it was ridiculously popular - again, a couple of dozen kids attending week in, week out, in a school of 400 was pretty impressive.

Like the game or not, the combination of the full game and the magazine DID draw in a lot of kids on the back of the movie. Like them or not, the simple models DID get lots of kids playing and buying minis. The sales and profits prove it. I also recall one GW article saying that about 350,000 sets of Uruk Hai had been sold - or 7,000,000 figures... Movie series ended, customers left - that was a failure on the part of GW to anticipate it and act to retain customers.

I've always maintained that GW somehow contrived to build a really sophisticated intro package to draw in new blood (and Battle Games in Middle Earth in newsagents + movie advertising were central to the game's success) and the suits never even knew what they had, never made any effort to build on it. All you hear about is "the bubble", like it was some unexpected force of nature.

LEGO launched - launched - its successful LotR line in 2012, in anticipation of The Hobbit. In the same spring, GW killed its LotR line by doubling the price on ten year old boxes. Lessons learned from the first movie triogy - none.

GW would not be as big as it is today were it not for the LOTR SBG. People who are bitter about its existence are historical revisionist ingrates.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
GW would not be as big as it is today were it not for the LOTR SBG. People who are bitter about its existence are historical revisionist ingrates.

As you pointed out earlier, people were unhappy with the game when it came out too. It was pretty heavily promoted, to the extent that GW promotes anything.

The game itself was fine, but nothing special. the problem was that the first three years all had starter boxes full of mooks, when nearly all the scenarios (and scenarios were all you could play) involved the heros.

Fair enough. I came in towards the end with ROTK in 2003.

But GW had to promote it heavily. It was a licenced game. That licence cost them a lot of money which they had to recoup by guaranteeing the game was successful. I'd say the risk paid off.

For the Hobbit? Not so much. That was incompetently handled.

FWIW: LotR sold insanely well around here. Lots and lots of games for years after the movies had come out, actually. And I know a lot of guys who came for LotR and stayed for WHFB/40K as well (though I'm glad to say most have moved on to better systems now ) - the influx of new customers it created was a huge boon to GW around here.

I came for LOTR, dabbled in 40K, then went back to LOTR and began broadening my horizons. I run D&D games with my LOTR figures. And I've got WIP armies for SAGA and This Is Not A Test.

Part of the reason why LotR was so big in the Netherlands was because of that bi-weekly magazine that included the odd mini's and paints allowing you to slowly build up armies and learning to play the game at the same time.

For what it is worth, I am seeing a few people in my local group that are mixing LotR elves with the Mantic Elves and a few Ral Partha Fantasy Armies figures for their Elf armies.

It is kind of weird - the proportions of the Mantic Elves bears very little semblance to that of the LotR elves... yet they seem to fit right in....

The Auld Grump

 Polonius wrote:


As you pointed out earlier, people were unhappy with the game when it came out too. It was pretty heavily promoted, to the extent that GW promotes anything.

The game itself was fine, but nothing special. the problem was that the first three years all had starter boxes full of mooks, when nearly all the scenarios (and scenarios were all you could play) involved the heros.

YMMV - I thought it was a pretty decent game. It really is a game of heroic combat+mooks, as you say. As for the metal heroes... Battle Games in Middle-Earth often had them on the cover. Or, you know, Boromir is the one with the black shield (I still do that...). Scenarios - count your points, line 'em up, knock 'em down, maybe something fancy like defending a house or bridge, or a treasure hunt. Not difficult.

Of course BGiME also had scenarios... and the rules... and painting guides... and IMHO better terrain-building articles than WD at the time. BGiME was a very, very smart move and had a lot of quality material in it.

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
For what it is worth, I am seeing a few people in my local group that are mixing LotR elves with the Mantic Elves and a few Ral Partha Fantasy Armies figures for their Elf armies.

It is kind of weird - the proportions of the Mantic Elves bears very little semblance to that of the LotR elves... yet they seem to fit right in....

The Auld Grump

Elves with dwarfism? Oh the irony.

Momotaro wrote:

LOTR was never played, never had any staying power at all... if the models sold for LOTR in a few years are "success" in your mind, then why are the many more models sold over a longer period of time for 40k not also "success"

2004 remains GW's best year, both by sales and operating profits... BEFORE adjusting for inflation. Doing so makes it look truly exceptional. They really should have more of those "unsuccessful" years.

Stayng power - who cares? That money paid for the CAD design and tooling gear that made those high quality 40k models possible. It also paid for a doomed expansion of their North American shop chain, which we don't talk about.

In the time period in which LoTR was popular, it probably made more money than the vast plurality of other games do in their entire existence. I agree with you in terms of the staying power. Not every game needs to last for decades, though of course, I'm sure no company minds this!

I think that there is a nostalgic desire for Games Workshop to return to the type of company it was when it was small and scrappy AND the dominant wargaming company. But that time can never be again, because the top 3 games (40k, X-Wing, WMH) are already much bigger, profit machines than GW was three decades ago. They can't concurrently be massive miniature tooling powerhouses and the innovative small shop (like Dreamforge). Sure, there are small and scrappy companies, and if you like those, you should support them: but they're not going to be a dominant company today, they won't be any time soon, and in order for them to become an ecosystem played by a lot of people and well-stocked in stores, they'll need to produce a product that will make them the kind of money that WMH, X-Wing and 40k generate -- at which point, they probably won't act like a small, scrappy company anymore.



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 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

Elves with dwarfism? Oh the irony.

Exalted!

easysauce wrote:
I mean really... wow, ok you can think that, but Id say you are wrong... one piece models are horrible to paint, hard to get details in, and mono pose... Ive painted GW models for over 14 years and the plastic kits just feel so damn nice to paint, especially in pieces

I've been painting for roughly the same amount of time, and appreciate a well-turned one-piece model.

To be frank some of the 'posing' in more recent WFB kits is not much to write home about. Especially if you want some of those scale-creep pituitary sufferers to line up on 20mm bases.

you can tell they were designed with the modeller/painter in mind.

Well, there's the problem.

Bolognesus wrote:FWIW: LotR sold insanely well around here. Lots and lots of games for years after the movies had come out, actually. And I know a lot of guys who came for LotR and stayed for WHFB/40K as well (though I'm glad to say most have moved on to better systems now ) - the influx of new customers it created was a huge boon to GW around here.

BrookM wrote:Part of the reason why LotR was so big in the Netherlands was because of that bi-weekly magazine that included the odd mini's and paints allowing you to slowly build up armies and learning to play the game at the same time.

Yeah they killed it when they came out with the overpriced hobbit set they thought they could milk the movie hobbit fans just as the GW fans, well that backfired. If they had made it cheaper and put some effort in it, they could have made a bundle.

 Vermis wrote:

easysauce wrote:
I mean really... wow, ok you can think that, but Id say you are wrong... one piece models are horrible to paint, hard to get details in, and mono pose... Ive painted GW models for over 14 years and the plastic kits just feel so damn nice to paint, especially in pieces

I've been painting for roughly the same amount of time, and appreciate a well-turned one-piece model.

To be frank some of the 'posing' in more recent WFB kits is not much to write home about. Especially if you want some of those scale-creep pituitary sufferers to line up on 20mm bases.

I've been painting GW miniatures for close to 20 years now and non-GW stuff for longer and I prefer a good monopose model made from 1 or 2 pieces. It's all subjective, there is no wrong, it's naive to not understand why some people might prefer the monopose LOTR models. Especially compared to many of the multipart models that come out at the same time which were posable in an infinite number of derpy poses.

The nice thing about monopose models is they can be given a sense of flow. Even a lot of the current GW multipose models lack that.

But yeah, LOTR was a big success. Their profits were high, the models were good AND cheap and the game was being played. Locally it displaced 40k and WHFB as the most played games.

Two part, snap fit models are certainly easier for new hobbyists, who seemed to be the driving force behind LOTR being quite possibly the most successful product line GW ever had.

 Talys wrote:

I think that there is a nostalgic desire for Games Workshop to return to the type of company it was when it was small and scrappy AND the dominant wargaming company.

If GW don't rediscover what they were doing right when they were "small and scrappy" they won't be dominating wargaming for very much longer.

Regarding LoTR being dead - GW still appear to be recruiting for new staff for it:

http://jobs.games-workshop.com/2015/11/13/middle-earth-writer-nottingham-uk/
http://jobs.games-workshop.com/2015/11/13/middle-earth-model-designer-nottingham-uk/

 Talizvar wrote:
The part that hit home for me:

“For the customers, these guys were the big brother they always wanted,”

The people who ran the stores, they loved what they did and they took the time to show you anything you wanted on the hobby.
They were social hubs.
How can GW differentiate themselves?
Just go back to their roots, it was rather innovative: an inclusive environment that gave attention to the kids.
Gaming coffee houses are getting popular around here.

So, they are a collectable trinket company... kinda sad.
I will always be grateful (to what seems to be more the old guard) for GW making modeling and hobby craft exciting and fun with an easy way to meet like-minded people.

It is sad that Kirby's group cannot see what made it great: being inclusive to it's customers.

Very much this, that whole section shows an awareness that seems totally missing from the company today:

Where other gaming companies had been content to sell their products through independent retailers, Games Workshop opened its own network of stores dedicated solely to selling the company’s own products. Sales director John Stallard was in charge of the strategy.

“We always viewed the stores as our advertising spend,” he said.

“They’re hugely expensive things to run, but they served as our billboards, our place on the high street and our primary recruitment tool. Really, they were recruitment stations with a shop attached.

“When you’re doing something something as wacky as a huge toy soldier game with goblins, it can be a bit of a tough sell. But when people can see how glorious it is, see the beautifully painted armies and all these people hooting and hollering and rolling dice, it gives you an instant idea of how much fun it is.”

The company’s expansion plan was unconventional, but effective.

“We just looked at the top division of the English football league,” Stallard said.

“We thought that if a town was big enough to support a top level football team, then it was big enough to support a Games Workshop store.

“After that we got a bit more clever. We looked for towns that had a Marks & Spencer [an up-market British department store chain] and an Early Learning Centre [a group of toy shops with a largely middle-class clientele]. We thought: ‘Well, they’ve done their research, they know where the good locations are.'”

Games Workshop stores were more than just shops – they were social hubs. They hosted events, ran tournaments and provided a place for players to share their interests. They played grunge and indie rock, and their staff were avid Warhammer players themselves, enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the games they sold.

“For the customers, these guys were the big brother they always wanted,” Stallard said.

“And if you look at what the stores achieved, it’s an extraordinary success story. To have young people – primarily boys – taking up a hobby that requires so much reading in the teeth of the computer games industry, it’s just remarkable.”

Reducing that to the sad little one-man-store affairs that permit gaming only grudgingly and regard the idea of being a social hub with the same kind of creeping horror an arachnophobe regards a bathtub full of tarantulas was an act of vandalism IMO.

Lord of the rings sold because it was lord of the rings, not because he made the right style minis.

 Rayvon wrote:
Lord of the rings sold because it was lord of the rings, not because he made the right style minis.

Didnt Pete Jackson have a hand in requesting the Perrys be put on the project as well as stating what scale they should be.

 Vermis wrote:

I've been painting for roughly the same amount of time, and appreciate a well-turned one-piece model.

With ya there V. Theoden with his sword in the air (one-piece metal) remains one of my favourite figures.

The LotR plastics are not perfect - a number dealt with the undercut problem badly, by leaving blank bits on the side of the figures. But they worked and, as with all things, some are still decent, some have not aged well, and others were poor even in 2003.

The modern snapfit/monopose models that GW makes are amazing. OK, a couple of pieces, but the Dark Vengeance Chaos models and the Mirkwood rangers are great figures.

I'd like to think there was room in the company for both multi-part AND simpler models..

 easysauce wrote:
Its one of the reasons why WMH models annoy me, so many mono pose models

Yeah it's sad .
Thanksfully, some of their release, despite being monopose, are at least multipart, so it is possible to convert them a bit.

 Rayvon wrote:
Lord of the rings sold because it was lord of the rings, not because he made the right style minis.

Hard to say now. Battle Games in Middle-Earth was certainly ridiculously popular, and it's a matter of record that many LotR gamers didn't make the jump to GW's other games after the movies stopped. Why is a good question - more expensive is one possibility, more complex is another (both games and models). Nobody knows - including GW.

The Hobbit movies were equally successful, but the GW game flopped. Again, it's hard to say why. The company did everything differently second time round - expensive models, no advertising or models outside GW. Speaking for myself only, the prices killed it, but many other factors had also changed - the messy release schedule and ugly movie designs couldn't have helped, and tabletop gaming looks very different now with lots more options.

Heck kids' spending patterns must have changed - maybe the Hobbit Kingdoms game app scratched the "battle gaming" itch this time round...

Momotaro wrote:
The Hobbit movies were equally successful, but the GW game flopped. Again, it's hard to say why. The company did everything differently second time round - expensive models, no advertising or models outside GW. Speaking for myself only, the prices killed it, but many other factors had also changed - the messy release schedule and ugly movie designs couldn't have helped, and tabletop gaming looks very different now with lots more options.

Return of the King won 11 Oscars. Battle of 5 armies was nominated for one.
Return of the King took $1.120 billion at the box office (1.45 if that isn't adjusted for inflation, which I doubt it was but wikipedia didn't say).
Battle of Five armies was only $956 million.

I don't think the Hobbit was anywhere near as successful as the Lord of the Rings.

 jonolikespie wrote:

Momotaro wrote:
The Hobbit movies were equally successful, but the GW game flopped. Again, it's hard to say why. The company did everything differently second time round - expensive models, no advertising or models outside GW. Speaking for myself only, the prices killed it, but many other factors had also changed - the messy release schedule and ugly movie designs couldn't have helped, and tabletop gaming looks very different now with lots more options.

Return of the King won 11 Oscars. Battle of 5 armies was nominated for one.
Return of the King took $1.120 billion at the box office (1.45 if that isn't adjusted for inflation, which I doubt it was but wikipedia didn't say).
Battle of Five armies was only $956 million.

I don't think the Hobbit was anywhere near as successful as the Lord of the Rings.

85% as successful from those figures

I feel kind of confused on my own response to LOTR.
First big book I read was the Hobbit in about grade 3.
These stories have been around most of my life and a part of it.
I bought only one miniature of the line (Legolas) only because my wife likes the character and I made a diorama for her (she keeps it on her desk at work).
Never bought another miniature.
I have played the strategy computer game!
But never played any of the tabletop games and never saw it played.

My best guess is that I grew up with the books, I had my own idea of how the characters looked back then.
The movies are glorious mind, but seems not enough for me to want miniatures of the characters seen on the screen.
So yeah, maybe people around my generation "missed the boat" and that is why it seemed "unpopular" to us but for the younger generations it was great.

 Polonius wrote:
Didn't GW's annual reports show huge LOTR sales for the 3-4 years of the movies?

It may not have been a successful game, but people bought the product, in huge numbers. It was, by any definition, a success as a product line.

I think it's success was due to, you know, being miniatures for LOTR movies, not due to the decision to scale them down.

Not only that, but the stuff was everywhere.

Barnes & Nobel, Borders, and even Wal-Mart, Target, and Toys-R-Us stocked the starter sets for LOTR. Barnes & Nobel and Borders would also have a number of the plastic boxed sets and the Lord of the Rings paint sets.
Borders and Toys-R-Us expanded from stocking just the LOTR stuff at the time and also had Assault on Black Reach and the WFB starter.

It was crazy whenever those two places had deals.

 Rayvon wrote:
Lord of the rings sold because it was lord of the rings, not because he made the right style minis.

There is something to be said for having an appropriate level of complexity. There's absolutely no reason for there to be multipart Mordor Orcs with 12 head options (both helmeted and unhelmeted), pouches, stowage, severed heads, 10 weapon options, 10 shield options, running legs, crouching legs, 20 arm options etc. IMHO, this would be a needless level of complexity. The parts would either be chunkier to make assembly easier, or remain truescale and be very fiddly. The posing would be more awkward to make the "multipart-multipose" work, and the resulting kit would need a lot of work to make them "on-model" for the film look. This direction would have been an expensive and inappropriate design choice and I feel that GW did the right thing going with well sculpted mono-pose. GW's current obsession with multipart, 2 (or 3 in 1) kits and uber-detail leads to a lot of sculpting compromises and I feel that a lot of GW kits suffer from this.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
Definitely agree, it gradually lost the tongue-in-cheek side and became far too po-faced and serious.

Depends. Do you consider things like Murderfang the Murderdreadnought with murderfist from planet murder who murder people to satisfy his murderlust, or Santa Space Wolf in his anti-grav sleigh tracted by wolf because WOLF WOLF WOLFY MCWOLF to be serious or tongue-in-check?

I get a strong 90's comics vibe from GW now, in that the concepts were probably honestly thought of as edgy and gritty by the creators (and 13-year-old boys), but to everyone else, they just seem like self-parody.Everything, in concept and sculpt, is just more and more XTREME, to the point where it's just deafening. Space Marines in power armour--inside bigger power armour. (DUDE!) Chaos always had skull iconography, but now they've got so many skulls, they're bursting out from the inside (WICKED!). These aren't your dad's Slayers, these are FyreSlayers who are, like, literally burning with rage (SWEET!).

I can easily imagine FyreSlayer and Murderfang teaming up in the epic BloodBound crossover, to fight the mega-villain Omnicide.

The Hobbit films were less successful, the games and figures were a lot more expensive, the games arguably were less good in themselves, and GW didn't advertise them.

GW essentially relied on repeat custom from LoTR buyers. Whether they were veterans or the many who clearly abandoned LoTR in the mid-2000s, as shown by sales figures, all the above factors would also count against the success of the game.

That said, LoTR reportedly is a good system, the figures are nice and true to the films, and it's good that GW are continuing to support it.

As regards metal versus resin versus polystyrene, mono-pose versus multi-pose versus one-piece versus multi-part, there is no single format that can satisfy every customer, and it's good that there is so much choice on the market these days.