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Honest question. I know frusturations with GW are rising, and lately I've noticed less and less people coming to the local game store's weekly meeting, and those who do come in are playing sigmar, X-wing, and other games. Is Warhammer 40k a dying hobby, or is it just my local store?

My store has had less people turning up. A friend of mine has also stopped buying from GW, and has gone other routes to get his models. Heck, I've stopped buying from GW entirely.

If they don't get their gak together soon, then I dunno. But I feel 40k is on a downward slope. 8th edition will have to be pretty damn good to bring people back into the game.

It's certainly shrinking, I dont think anyone can reasonably argue against that. Objectively, it has been displaced as the #1 best selling tabletop miniatures game for the first time in probably 20+ years by X-Wing, and GW's revenue continues its year after year decline. Does that mean that 40k overall is dying? Who knows, but it's definitely not what it once was.

Anecdotally, it is absolutely dying. Cost keeps new people out as prices have increased over the last decade out of all proportion to inflation, while the rules have become so convoluted, bloated, and unbalanced that vets are dropping out much faster than in previous eras. In my own experience, 40k is rapidly shrinking with the advent of 7E. The place I games at hasnt had enough people to show up for events to actually hold them in months, where once we routinely pulled in two dozen people in 4E and 5E.

7E 40k works for the small, tight knit gaming group that makes up their own stuff and plays with lots of self imposed house rules and restrictions (be they implicit or explicit), essentially rewriting the game. It no longer works as a pickup game or an event/league oriented game, but still fundamentally tries to operate like it does.

I honestly don't understand what all the fuss is with 7th, but I am a new player. The store in EastGate Ohio seems to be doing well, and they offered the battle buddy credit for the box set of Dark Vengeance was a pretty cool deal, you got a lot with that, and it covered paints I needed for the set too. Had a good crowd in the store and another store near me has a pretty good crowd as well. That said, I have found some serious deals on models and things to get my army going but I will play at both places =D

Dying? No. Shrinking? Undoubtedly. The biggest reasons as said already is the huge cost of entry, even for a small army (easily several hundred dollars) and rules that basically require you to have a small close knit group of friends you play with to ignore the glaring imbalances.

I'm not sure 'dying' is the right word - I think it's more that the IP is changing. Tabletop is seemingly shrinking, but Video Games based on the IP are getting more common than ever.

 Robin5t wrote:
I'm not sure 'dying' is the right word - I think it's more that the IP is changing. Tabletop is seemingly shrinking, but Video Games based on the IP are getting more common than ever.

No, see tabletop is growing. Just GW is shrinking.

I think Games Workshop has been losing "long term" gamers...but the product itself is hugely attractive to new players, so I'd imagine the majority of their business is still new players dropping $200-300 (even if they ditch it in a few months) vs. players actively playing/supporting the game for 5-10-15 years.

GW is like the Imperium. They have been losing the Long War since it began, and we are entering the End Times. Seriously, think about it. The light of the Astronomican is fading. The Emperor (GW) is slowly dying. Many worlds (gamers) are lost to them and they barely know it.

I'm serious. Take this quote from the end of Talon of Horus, and think of it applying to GW. It is eerily correct:

‘These are not reports on a screen to me, inquisitor, or reams of casualty figures to be easily discarded. The Emperor’s Light is fading across the galaxy. How many fleets of vessels have been lost these last decades, to flickers in the Astronomican? Thousands? Tens of thousands? How many worlds have cried out in rebellion in the last ten years alone, or screamed in psychic distress? How many have fallen silent in the shroud of the warp, now home to nothing but the tread of daemons? Here, on Terra... Can you hear any of Segmentum Pacificus’s thousands of worlds? A quarter of the galaxy has fallen silent. Do you know why? Do you know what wars they are fighting, while cloaked in silence and shadow?’

Yes and no. It's shrunk from what it was, but the emergence of the Start Collecting boxes and GW trying to return to tournies as well as writing the Draft FAQ is stemming the tide of blood loss.

Shrinking, not dying. Other companies have sprung up and eaten up the market share they abandoned.

40k is dying and 6th+ edition holds the bloody knife and vials of poison. The players are accomplices, blood-thirsty partakers in the deed.

The wraithknight and imperial knights stand as veritable embodiments of the tools of 40k's demise:

Price creep. Power creep. Scale creep.

40k's bloated, diseased bulk, I think, is in its agonizing death throes.

And the overly dramatic award goes to...

Well, people have been posting threads on forums asking if GW is "dying" since I started playing in 5th edition. Every time such a thread pops up, the responses seem to include something to the effect of, "Totally! This thing that irritates me is obviously the last nail in the coffin. The game will be dead by this time next year."

So several editions later, the game is still kicking around and actually spitting out way more fresh content than when I started. If 40k is dying, it's taking a very, very long time to do so.

While I can't speak to other places, my anecdotal experience is that we've had a lot of new people showing up to play 40k at my local stores. Those who don't show up at the store that used to have either moved away (and presumably kept playing elsewhere) or consist of the crowd that very much enjoy complaining about how much better the game was back in the day.

So my slightly sour personal opinion is that it's not dying; it's just that complaining about GW is an eternally popular part of the hobby, right up there with painting and modeling.

That said, yes other gaming companies exist that didn't exist before, and yes, some people are playing those games instead of 40k now. GW doesn't have the market cornered the same way it used to, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I feel that many of the more positive moves GW has made recently might actually be a (slightly belated) response to the increased competition.

I think games workshop have realised they royally fethed up with AOS. Even at Warhammer World the shop space for AOS in both the normal shop and forgeworld is slowly shrinking.

However the get started boxes are basically a return to the old £30 battleforces and the FAQ's are helping the bloating rules. I doubt 40k will stop shrinking, but hopefully in a couple of years it will be at a scale that GW can actually manage.

 Traditio wrote:
40k is dying and 6th+ edition holds the bloody knife and vials of poison. The players are accomplices, blood-thirsty partakers in the deed.

The wraithknight and imperial knights stand as veritable embodiments of the tools of 40k's demise:

Price creep. Power creep. Scale creep.

40k's bloated, diseased bulk, I think, is in its agonizing death throes.

Cheery aren't you?

pm713 wrote:

 Traditio wrote:
40k is dying and 6th+ edition holds the bloody knife and vials of poison. The players are accomplices, blood-thirsty partakers in the deed.

The wraithknight and imperial knights stand as veritable embodiments of the tools of 40k's demise:

Price creep. Power creep. Scale creep.

40k's bloated, diseased bulk, I think, is in its agonizing death throes.

Cheery aren't you?

To be fair, he has a point, even if somewhat hyperbolic. 6E was the start of the shrinking trend we are seeing now. Price creep, power creep, and scale creep are are very real issues that are negatively impacting the 40k community. Elements of the community seem to embrace these things and drive them ever onward at the cost of others.

Vaktathi wrote:To be fair, he has a point, even if somewhat hyperbolic. 6E was the start of the shrinking trend we are seeing now. Price creep, power creep, and scale creep are are very real issues that are negatively impacting the 40k community. Elements of the community seem to embrace these things and drive them ever onward at the cost of others.

"You can't beat my scatter bikes and wraithknights with your tactical marines? L2P, scrub."

Yep. That sure makes me want to buy more models and books and dig myself even deeper into the 40k hole. [/sarcasm]

 Traditio wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:To be fair, he has a point, even if somewhat hyperbolic. 6E was the start of the shrinking trend we are seeing now. Price creep, power creep, and scale creep are are very real issues that are negatively impacting the 40k community. Elements of the community seem to embrace these things and drive them ever onward at the cost of others.

"You can't beat my scatter bikes and wraithknights with your tactical marines? L2P, scrub."

Yep. That sure makes me want to buy more models and books and dig myself even deeper into the 40k hole. [/sarcasm]

Pot calling the kettle black there.

That's hardly an accurate representation of the entire community.

Just roll it off.On a 4+ it's not dying.

GW may be losing some (marginal) profits, but buying/selling 40k on places like Ebay is a huge market - I always see plenty of people buying and bidding. I think a lot of good moves are being made at GW right now.

 Retrogamer0001 wrote:
GW may be losing some (marginal) profits, but buying/selling 40k on places like Ebay is a huge market - I always see plenty of people buying and bidding. I think a lot of good moves are being made at GW right now.

Do note:

GW doesn't make money from ebay. The fact that buying stuff from ebay rather than GW is very common is a good indication that GW is in trouble.

Yes no, maybe. I dont know. can you rephrase the question?

My group died along with all the game stores near my location.

we play occasionally, but 40k hasn't been played for the most part.

not that we lost interest in the models. just playing the game is way too tedious to warrant pulling everything out.

we had a blast playing a ton of AOS though.

Yes, it is dying. But like with the IoM it takes time. And it can still be revived. But not with that chaotic pile of a 7th edition.......

 Vaktathi wrote:

pm713 wrote:

 Traditio wrote:
40k is dying and 6th+ edition holds the bloody knife and vials of poison. The players are accomplices, blood-thirsty partakers in the deed.

The wraithknight and imperial knights stand as veritable embodiments of the tools of 40k's demise:

Price creep. Power creep. Scale creep.

40k's bloated, diseased bulk, I think, is in its agonizing death throes.

Cheery aren't you?

To be fair, he has a point, even if somewhat hyperbolic. 6E was the start of the shrinking trend we are seeing now. Price creep, power creep, and scale creep are are very real issues that are negatively impacting the 40k community. Elements of the community seem to embrace these things and drive them ever onward at the cost of others.

I'm not sure that it's fair to say 6E is really the start of price creep, power creep, etc. though. As someone who started in 5th edition, I recall the heavy emphasis placed on bringing transports and vehicles in general. Where previous editions allowed you to field an army with virtually no vehicles (or so I'm told), 5th edition gave players a strong incentive to buy a ~$50 transport to go with every $30 box of infantry they bought. So the way I see it, earlier editions allowed you to buy up your basic infantry units and enjoy those, 5th edition gave you a reason to buy a bunch of vehicles if you hadn't already, and 6th/7th reduced the cost of basic troops a bit so that you had a reason to buy either the new superheavy centerpiece for your army or else purchase a few extra squads now that your 1500 point list is a 1300 point list.

So while I can't speak to anything pre-5th edition, I don't feel it's entirely fair to say 6th edition is where the price hike started.

As for power creep, power imbalances seem to have always been a thing (with the exception of the early 7th edition books). Right now, we're complaining about eldar/tau/formations. In 6th edition, people were terrified of hell drakes. In 5th edition, grey knights and blood angels scared everyone thus usurping space wolves as the most broken thing ever after SW usurped IG and orks. In 4th edition, people complained about harlequin flying circuises. In 3rd edition, people had a hate for the chaos codex that still haunts chaos players to this day (even if they never played with that book).

So while I don't disagree that the power level of the game has crept up, power creep is neither a new thing nor a thing that began with 6th edition. I'd love to see the overall power level go down (without taking away the flavor of armies like the early 7th books did), but 40k has survived power imbalance for a long while now.

Power creep isnt new, absolutely true, but its been taken to a much higher level than in the past starting with the tail end of 6E, and ramping way up with 7E. Likewise pricing. It had been getting bad in the middle of 5E but 6E was when they really kicked up the reboxing, Finecast, and FW level prices for new plastic characters and started lushing bigger and more expensive models like Knights.

40k's power imbalances have caused problems in the past, most notably the 2E-3E reboot.

They seem to be toning down price now. Or at least they're starting to.

Wyldhunt wrote:I'm not sure that it's fair to say 6E is really the start of price creep, power creep, etc. though.

Be that as it may, to my understanding, 6E is when GW noticeably started to see declines in sales. Furthermore, as a corollary to this, there seems to be widespread consensus among at least a substantial portion of the current and previous player-base that 5th ed. was better than what we have now. That may or may not be nostalgia talking, but the fact remains, so far as I'm aware, that this sentiment is reflected in GW's 40k sales.

This isn't to deny that previous editions had problems. However, with 6th edition, we saw a drastic shift in the "normal" 40k game. Fliers became a thing. An expanded psychic phase became a thing. Big giant robots became a thing.

And when they did, things like lascannons and boltguns basically became obsolete.

Not even to mention the fact that, in addition to all of that, most infantry-based assault armies became basically useless.

GW didn't squat most of pre-6th edition 40k. But if you simply consider the current competitive meta, they might as well have.

So far as I'm aware, these kinds of dramatic shifts weren't really a thing in previous editions.

 Traditio wrote:

 Retrogamer0001 wrote:
GW may be losing some (marginal) profits, but buying/selling 40k on places like Ebay is a huge market - I always see plenty of people buying and bidding. I think a lot of good moves are being made at GW right now.

Do note:

GW doesn't make money from ebay. The fact that buying stuff from ebay rather than GW is very common is a good indication that GW is in trouble.

Basically I meant that the game itself maintains a huge market aside from the official financial situation over at GW - people DO like to play 40K. Is the game dying? I honestly don't think it is. This is a common thread on Dakka, resurrected once a week at least, and it's usually the same go-around. I personally think the same discussion will be happening in ten or twenty years time, with GW still going and people still buying models.

pm713 wrote:
They seem to be toning down price now. Or at least they're starting to.

I think GW realized it's finally hit/surpassed the price acceptance band for a lot of its kits. That, coupled with the diminishing value of kits in a game (as 40k has ballooned in scale and units are worth less in the game itself) means that people don't feel like they're getting the "bang for their bucks" anymore.

The "Start Collecting" boxes and a bunch of other changes GW has made recently are certainly positive as far as the future goes...I just don't think GW has been thinking with a long-term mindset for so long that it'll be years before the damage is resolved. One of 40k's most valuable assets is/was its ubiquity, a fleeting quality that is hard to maintain and even harder to reacquire.

So we'll see! I say that 40k is shrinking, and I believe the changes they've been making are helping stabilize the game (on its previous pathway, it would have probably legitimately died). I'm personally holding out to see if 8th edition signals a true turn for 40k before I do much more purchasing.