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Well RAW it *is* a community but RAI would suggest otherwise.

Perhaps we should take it to you make the call?

 unmercifulconker wrote:
Or just call it Warhammer Community, cas its a community site, for the community, enjoyed by the community, for the community, community.

Wasn't the old community part of their web shop exactly like this new community page.. Just a bunch of cool articles on how to paint stuff, make terrain and some obscure rules.
Is the Gw site in the internet archives? it would be fun to link at the old version just to see how much has changed in the years

RoninXiC wrote:
No Forum.
No Comments
no Interaction.

Why is this called "Community"?

Because they did a Find/Replace with "advertising".

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

RoninXiC wrote:
No Forum.
No Comments
no Interaction.

Why is this called "Community"?

Because they did a Fine/Replace with "advertising".

Well at least they did give us links to Facebook if we wanted to chat or say something. So yes there is interaction. Thing is I don't use Facebook much so not sure how interactive it is on GW Facebook pages.

Can anyone really blame GW for not wanting to host a community forum in light of what the community is actually like online?

They want to control the narrative around their product, which entails selecting what is being said. Having a forum would entail giving an endorsed platform to the same never-ending whining that goes on here ("Chaos sucks," "It's never Tzeentch," "People want SoBs and GW won't listen"). It would be a terrible move.

Yeah, trying to engage with your fanbase is always a terrible idea.

Davor wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

RoninXiC wrote:
No Forum.
No Comments
no Interaction.

Why is this called "Community"?

Because they did a Fine/Replace with "advertising".

Well at least they did give us links to Facebook if we wanted to chat or say something. So yes there is interaction. Thing is I don't use Facebook much so not sure how interactive it is on GW Facebook pages.

They do reply ( see my post in the duardin thread) but not constantly.
The reason why this is a community is that it will have articles on it by the community. They already have one by Dan Heelen.
They also feature the work of the community, with at least three featured armies so far. They will have links to podcasts by the community.
The default response of many people here is cynicism. It is an unfortunate truth that people who are angry are much more likely to comment than those who are happy. By keeping the comments off to one side, it allows those who just want to enjoy the articles do that without having to worry about whether it is ok to like something or not.
If you do wish to engage, the Facebook stuff is there. The talk of extreme censoring there is nonsense. There are plenty of negative posts which have not been taken down.
I am wondering if I should try writing something and see if it gets up there. I encourage those who are actually interested in making the site better, to do the same.
Edit- a little something to illustrate my point

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Yeah, trying to engage with your fanbase is always a terrible idea.

It is when your fanbase is mostly comprised of piss-smearing little trolls with no other purpose than to moan and cry about every little thing you *don't* do.

Have you read any of their facebook posts? Or were you too busy smearing piss? It should be obvious that purposely interacting with hostile audiences is bad for business - even if handled well, it simply becomes an outlet for negativity, and the only time negativity ever sold anything was....well, the 9th age, Kings of War 2, etc. If you can not wrap your mind around the notion of GW not interacting with a toxic community, then just keep on at it then - you are probably part of the toxic community.

In all fairness, they probably have plans to one day. But its too early, the community is still too toxic and spurned. GW has to win back our trust with Baby steps.
Baby steps.

Whatever happened to Emma?

I just realized that there's been no one but Duncan for a couple months now.

Mr.Church13 wrote:
Whatever happened to Emma?

I just realized that there's been no one but Duncan for a couple months now.

she has left GW...
she can still be found streaming her painting on Twitch...

https://www.twitch.tv/electriceve

cheers
jah

really liked that photo taking tutorial, definitely got a couple of good tips out of it.

Also seeing Duncan's first mini was pretty awesome, I think we all have one like that hiding out somewhere.

Really like the site; only just got back in to the hobby after some time off. loads of useful info on there

jojo_monkey_boy wrote:Can anyone really blame GW for not wanting to host a community forum in light of what the community is actually like online?

They want to control the narrative around their product, which entails selecting what is being said. Having a forum would entail giving an endorsed platform to the same never-ending whining that goes on here ("Chaos sucks," "It's never Tzeentch," "People want SoBs and GW won't listen"). It would be a terrible move.

Devils Advocate here now. Yes I can blame GW for this. After all they are the ones who started this toxicity. So it's ok to piss off your client base, do not give what the want, treat them like they are a joke, and on top of that, make bad rules, make not clear or concise rules where people need to argue on how they work and add to that bad business practices? It's not like GW could have avoided all this in the first place. They on purpose did what they did. So why are you blaming us the people and fans? It wasn't our fault.

That said, it's time we both change. It seems GW is changing now. If we don't change, then that speaks of us not GW this time.

Davor wrote:

jojo_monkey_boy wrote:Can anyone really blame GW for not wanting to host a community forum in light of what the community is actually like online?

They want to control the narrative around their product, which entails selecting what is being said. Having a forum would entail giving an endorsed platform to the same never-ending whining that goes on here ("Chaos sucks," "It's never Tzeentch," "People want SoBs and GW won't listen"). It would be a terrible move.

Devils Advocate here now. Yes I can blame GW for this. After all they are the ones who started this toxicity. So it's ok to piss off your client base, do not give what the want, treat them like they are a joke, and on top of that, make bad rules, make not clear or concise rules where people need to argue on how they work and add to that bad business practices? It's not like GW could have avoided all this in the first place. They on purpose did what they did. So why are you blaming us the people and fans? It wasn't our fault.

That said, it's time we both change. It seems GW is changing now. If we don't change, then that speaks of us not GW this time.

Yeah... these days I'm looking more and more at FFG as my go to gaming company. I'm very optimistic about their upcoming Runewars Miniatures Game, which looks to be a replacement for your rank and file fantasy needs. Assuming success, I could easily see a science fiction version in the future.

FFG has a community forum that isn't filled with toxicity. You know how rules debates go on their forum? "How does XYZ work?" "Page 5, Paragraph 6." "Thanks." FFG puts out regular FAQs and with games like X-Wing and Armada, makes sure that every faction sees at least one product in every release wave. They simply don't give their fan base many reasons to complain.

If GW wants the same lack of toxicity, they need to give their fan base fewer reasons to complain. I believe they're trying to do this, but definitely aren't there yet.

 Kriswall wrote:
If GW wants the same lack of toxicity, they need to give their fan base fewer reasons to complain. I believe they're trying to do this, but definitely aren't there yet.

People were complete douchebags to one another (not just to GW) even back in the early 2000s. It's why GW shut down their old forums and why Dakka has moderators. Gamers are toxic by default.

FFG also have much simpler rule sets and a far smaller range to maintain.

It's not really the case that ffg = good GW = bad.

People talk like GW went round twirling their moustache. They really didn't do anything so horrific.

They had some years where they arguably let prices inflate too much and they didn't have a good strategy to engage with customers. They didn't go round clubbing seals on a corporate level.

I read these websites for rumours about a number of different games I'm interested in. Warhammer 40,000 is one of them. I'm an old-schooler GW fan, too; I have incredibly fond memories of Rogue Trader, of buying my very first RTB 01 "beakies", as well as my first Space Marine battalion in 6mm when they issued the Epic plastics. Real old-school.

GW, for me, went downhill a little in the 90s, like it did for many old timers, but really I grew up and developed other interests like girls, guitars and booze. Then I noticed in the mid to late 2000s that they were still turning out really great figures and got into the painting side of it. It was an expensive hobby. It had always been an expensive hobby. Always.

But the forums... Oh man. The forums. Just wall-to-wall childish whining. No other fandom posts stock market figures or annual finance reports for their chosen hobby vendors with such wild, rampant and, disturbingly, hopeful speculation about the imminent downfall of the market leader. It's absurd and grotesque and turns me off massively.

I don't think it's restricted entirely to GW: most of the internet is now the sole preserve of people complaining about one thing or another. I love the internet. But we've turned ourselves into a community of Mary Whitehouses, just with slight variances on our chosen bugbears. Beta males upset that girls think they're beta males, so they smash the new Ghostbusters to pieces because it has women in it (obscuring the fact it was actually just a bad movie regardless). Conservatives upset that the truth has a well-known liberal bias so they create their own versions of wikipedia to redress the balance. Liberals upset that South Park won't take their side. Women upset that basement-dwelling children repeatedly violate their self-declared safe spaces, as if the declaration of such a space wasn't an active and irresistable invitation for trolling to juveniles in the first place.... (Of course, I'm also being a bit of a devils advocate with these examples, too).

And people whining that plastic figures are too expensive/have too much/too little detail/aren't for the specific faction they're interested in/changed the paint range/changed the base sizes/changed the rules/didn't make enough changes are pretty much par for the course on almost anything related to GW. I'm even joining in the negativity by pointing it out.

So, no, they're not going to open themselves up to the poisonously negative minority, and I don't blame them. Engagement needs to be fun and positive, and their light trolling in the recent videos is them tentatively dipping their toes in that water. In spite of that, there are still plenty of sharks waiting to bite their toes off and ruin it for the rest of us. I don't know if they'll ever go away.

But, as a customer, I'm actually really very happy. So whether it happens or not, I'm not that bothered. And I'm seeing the negative, poisonous individuals who tend to find any excuse to complain about GW using the fact that they won't open themselves up to more engagement to criticise them yet further and I'm finding it wonderfully absurd.

Self-awareness can go an incredibly long way.

 Kriswall wrote:

Davor wrote:

jojo_monkey_boy wrote:Can anyone really blame GW for not wanting to host a community forum in light of what the community is actually like online?

They want to control the narrative around their product, which entails selecting what is being said. Having a forum would entail giving an endorsed platform to the same never-ending whining that goes on here ("Chaos sucks," "It's never Tzeentch," "People want SoBs and GW won't listen"). It would be a terrible move.

Devils Advocate here now. Yes I can blame GW for this. After all they are the ones who started this toxicity. So it's ok to piss off your client base, do not give what the want, treat them like they are a joke, and on top of that, make bad rules, make not clear or concise rules where people need to argue on how they work and add to that bad business practices? It's not like GW could have avoided all this in the first place. They on purpose did what they did. So why are you blaming us the people and fans? It wasn't our fault.

That said, it's time we both change. It seems GW is changing now. If we don't change, then that speaks of us not GW this time.

Yeah... these days I'm looking more and more at FFG as my go to gaming company. I'm very optimistic about their upcoming Runewars Miniatures Game, which looks to be a replacement for your rank and file fantasy needs. Assuming success, I could easily see a science fiction version in the future.

FFG has a community forum that isn't filled with toxicity. You know how rules debates go on their forum? "How does XYZ work?" "Page 5, Paragraph 6." "Thanks." FFG puts out regular FAQs and with games like X-Wing and Armada, makes sure that every faction sees at least one product in every release wave. They simply don't give their fan base many reasons to complain.

If GW wants the same lack of toxicity, they need to give their fan base fewer reasons to complain. I believe they're trying to do this, but definitely aren't there yet.

FFG's still has plenty of problems, they just affect different things than GW's did. Bit less in your face.

Having this new source and outreach is better than the previous lack of it.

I've sold off / am in the process of selling off most of my warhammer after discovering the zen of historicals. This sort of outreach by GW is a plus in my books and gives me encouragement that maybe, I'll dust off the couple of forces I've kept and will play again in future. Why? Because if they're making attempts at outreach, they may take on board advice and make the game enjoyable again.

Website is blocked at work

Guess I'll check it on mobile

I visited yesterday with no problems but Chrome is yelling at me today about it:

Just tried it with Chrome on my PC. No problems or warnings.

 Brother SRM wrote:
I visited yesterday with no problems but Chrome is yelling at me today about it:

Google must have finally seen the prices for some of the recent releases.

 Freytag93 wrote:
Google must have finally seen the prices for some of the recent releases.

I lol'd!

 Freytag93 wrote:
Google must have finally seen the prices for some of the recent releases.

Thatsa ssssPICY meatball.

Kriswall wrote:If GW wants the same lack of toxicity, they need to give their fan base fewer reasons to complain. I believe they're trying to do this, but definitely aren't there yet.

Very well said. I think this is the problem right here. There are on their way to rectify it. Babysteps, this took years to build up, it's going to take time to fix and heal as well.

lord_blackfang wrote:

 Kriswall wrote:
If GW wants the same lack of toxicity, they need to give their fan base fewer reasons to complain. I believe they're trying to do this, but definitely aren't there yet.

People were complete douchebags to one another (not just to GW) even back in the early 2000s. It's why GW shut down their old forums and why Dakka has moderators. Gamers are toxic by default.

Not true. Gamers are not toxic. What is the case is Nerds/Geeks trying to be correct and only their way is the valid way. Basically everyone is a Sheldon from Big Bang Theory. So when they read a rule on how GW writes it, their way is the correct way and if someone somewhere else reads it differently they are wrong. So if GW had CLEAR, CONCISE and WELL WRITTEN rules, there would be no need for a debate/argument. Funny as the example as said, FFG's X-wing game, someone doesn't know something, the rules are still pretty much clear and concise that there is not much room for debate. On how GW goes, especially when people around the world read "English" differently and rules lawyer what a word means, goes back to "my way is the correct way". Eliminate this and we gamers are a welcoming bunch who love to try and help out other people.

So just like how Kriswall said (hopefully I didn't screw up all the quoting going on) he is correct. Eliminate reasons for people to complain about then there will be no toxicity. All GW needs to do is write clear, concise well written rules and mostly balanced points costs and "volia" no need to be toxic anymore because there is no more "My way is the correct way". X-wing doesn't do this and I don't see this coming from other gaming systems as bad as GW does it.

I'm choosing to be optimistic. it's a step in the right direction, and away from the complete lack of interaction with hobbyists which is what kind of pushed me away in the first place.

Its a step in the right direction to me. You couldn't pay me enough to moderate a GW forum though. The old GW forums were the most toxic and degenerate forums I have ever been to in the history of my being on the internet spanning back to the mid 90s.

 ekwatts wrote:
I read these websites for rumours about a number of different games I'm interested in. Warhammer 40,000 is one of them. I'm an old-schooler GW fan, too; I have incredibly fond memories of Rogue Trader, of buying my very first RTB 01 "beakies", as well as my first Space Marine battalion in 6mm when they issued the Epic plastics. Real old-school.

GW, for me, went downhill a little in the 90s, like it did for many old timers, but really I grew up and developed other interests like girls, guitars and booze. Then I noticed in the mid to late 2000s that they were still turning out really great figures and got into the painting side of it. It was an expensive hobby. It had always been an expensive hobby. Always.

But the forums... Oh man. The forums. Just wall-to-wall childish whining. No other fandom posts stock market figures or annual finance reports for their chosen hobby vendors with such wild, rampant and, disturbingly, hopeful speculation about the imminent downfall of the market leader. It's absurd and grotesque and turns me off massively.

I don't think it's restricted entirely to GW: most of the internet is now the sole preserve of people complaining about one thing or another. I love the internet. But we've turned ourselves into a community of Mary Whitehouses, just with slight variances on our chosen bugbears. Beta males upset that girls think they're beta males, so they smash the new Ghostbusters to pieces because it has women in it (obscuring the fact it was actually just a bad movie regardless). Conservatives upset that the truth has a well-known liberal bias so they create their own versions of wikipedia to redress the balance. Liberals upset that South Park won't take their side. Women upset that basement-dwelling children repeatedly violate their self-declared safe spaces, as if the declaration of such a space wasn't an active and irresistable invitation for trolling to juveniles in the first place.... (Of course, I'm also being a bit of a devils advocate with these examples, too).

And people whining that plastic figures are too expensive/have too much/too little detail/aren't for the specific faction they're interested in/changed the paint range/changed the base sizes/changed the rules/didn't make enough changes are pretty much par for the course on almost anything related to GW. I'm even joining in the negativity by pointing it out.

So, no, they're not going to open themselves up to the poisonously negative minority, and I don't blame them. Engagement needs to be fun and positive, and their light trolling in the recent videos is them tentatively dipping their toes in that water. In spite of that, there are still plenty of sharks waiting to bite their toes off and ruin it for the rest of us. I don't know if they'll ever go away.

But, as a customer, I'm actually really very happy. So whether it happens or not, I'm not that bothered. And I'm seeing the negative, poisonous individuals who tend to find any excuse to complain about GW using the fact that they won't open themselves up to more engagement to criticise them yet further and I'm finding it wonderfully absurd.

Self-awareness can go an incredibly long way.

Exactly

And when someone wants to contact GW there are enough channels available already

 ekwatts wrote:

Spoiler:

I read these websites for rumours about a number of different games I'm interested in. Warhammer 40,000 is one of them. I'm an old-schooler GW fan, too; I have incredibly fond memories of Rogue Trader, of buying my very first RTB 01 "beakies", as well as my first Space Marine battalion in 6mm when they issued the Epic plastics. Real old-school.

GW, for me, went downhill a little in the 90s, like it did for many old timers, but really I grew up and developed other interests like girls, guitars and booze. Then I noticed in the mid to late 2000s that they were still turning out really great figures and got into the painting side of it. It was an expensive hobby. It had always been an expensive hobby. Always.

But the forums... Oh man. The forums. Just wall-to-wall childish whining. No other fandom posts stock market figures or annual finance reports for their chosen hobby vendors with such wild, rampant and, disturbingly, hopeful speculation about the imminent downfall of the market leader. It's absurd and grotesque and turns me off massively.

I don't think it's restricted entirely to GW: most of the internet is now the sole preserve of people complaining about one thing or another. I love the internet. But we've turned ourselves into a community of Mary Whitehouses, just with slight variances on our chosen bugbears. Beta males upset that girls think they're beta males, so they smash the new Ghostbusters to pieces because it has women in it (obscuring the fact it was actually just a bad movie regardless). Conservatives upset that the truth has a well-known liberal bias so they create their own versions of wikipedia to redress the balance. Liberals upset that South Park won't take their side. Women upset that basement-dwelling children repeatedly violate their self-declared safe spaces, as if the declaration of such a space wasn't an active and irresistable invitation for trolling to juveniles in the first place.... (Of course, I'm also being a bit of a devils advocate with these examples, too).

And people whining that plastic figures are too expensive/have too much/too little detail/aren't for the specific faction they're interested in/changed the paint range/changed the base sizes/changed the rules/didn't make enough changes are pretty much par for the course on almost anything related to GW. I'm even joining in the negativity by pointing it out.

So, no, they're not going to open themselves up to the poisonously negative minority, and I don't blame them. Engagement needs to be fun and positive, and their light trolling in the recent videos is them tentatively dipping their toes in that water. In spite of that, there are still plenty of sharks waiting to bite their toes off and ruin it for the rest of us. I don't know if they'll ever go away.

But, as a customer, I'm actually really very happy. So whether it happens or not, I'm not that bothered. And I'm seeing the negative, poisonous individuals who tend to find any excuse to complain about GW using the fact that they won't open themselves up to more engagement to criticise them yet further and I'm finding it wonderfully absurd.

Self-awareness can go an incredibly long way.

And then the reasonable, truthful and thoughtful post was buried forever beneath a ceaseless mound of rage, never to see daylight again.