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 MonkeyBallistic wrote:
It’s really nice that GW are listening these days.

What would be even nicer is if some of the “fans” could learn how to ask for things without hurling insults and generally being rude about it.

I mean all, literally all of the GW employees I’ve met have been lovely, friendly people genuinely trying to do the best job they can. I think we owe it to them to play nicely and ask politely.

Direct customer service has always been highly ranked with GW. Their customer support is very well setup and always has been. All through even the finecast era the customer support side of GW (at least in the UK) has always been top rate. It was the management communication and support that was lacking for many years, but they've turned tables on that totally.

Heck don't forget in the past when leaks happened the old GW was likely to send lawyer letters and DMCA takedowns; last time we got a sprue leak GW released a spoiler video in under a day's worth of work (and the fact it went live online in the late evening suggests staff got overtime to work on it or had flexi-time to do it). Of course I'm sure someone somewhere in the chain got in trouble for it, but they reacted in a way that bolstered their marketing and community interaction.

The funniest thing is there's no way the weapon sprues weren't already planned, with them being announced just a day after.

I considered writing them an email with an attached pic of my four Warlords awaiting weapons.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


Which is cheaper than it would be in resin.

TBH that's pretty much how I've felt about every Adeptus Titanicus release so far. Thank the Omnissiah for Blood Bowl fans

 cole1114 wrote:
The funniest thing is there's no way the weapon sprues weren't already planned, with them being announced just a day after.

They did say this was explicitly not the case however.

 ph34r wrote:

 cole1114 wrote:
The funniest thing is there's no way the weapon sprues weren't already planned, with them being announced just a day after.

They did say this was explicitly not the case however.

And I don't believe them. They had those sprue pictures and article ready way too fast.

Regarding the cost of a weapon sprue, I would guess something around £20 - 25.

That is based on the current cost of the original warlord at £65. The box content is 3 sprues + 1 base + 1 small transfer sheet. A similar sized base is sold for £3, FW transfer sheets are at £16 for an A4, hence assuming £5 for the warlord one. Assuming each sprue is valued the same, that would give £19 per sprue as a minimum. Expecting a premium to be added to it, especially in view of the potential demand implied by the community's response to yesterday's announcement.

I personally would be quite happy to see £20 (or lower … dreams are allowed).

 cole1114 wrote:
The funniest thing is there's no way the weapon sprues weren't already planned, with them being announced just a day after.

The weapon sprue existence was a given, them being packaged separately “a few months later” is quite believable - designing a single packaging box is a lot quicker than designing a whole new sprue. GW is prone to “doh” moments like these, the big thing is in the past they’d just trundle along like nothing happened, rather than actually try to fix the issue. This is one of those few cases I actually believe that GW realized they made a screw up, and in a roundabout way, are scrambling to try to fix it, but kinda coming across as if they planned it all along.

If GW had released the modified Warlord, then two weeks later put the weapon sprue up separately, then I would believe it was planned.

This actually strikes me as similar to what happened with Shadow War: Armageddon, where the popularity was so much greater than they anticipated they ended up releasing the separate rulebook - with the PDF content enclosed; that was not originally their plan, as I recall.

 cole1114 wrote:

 ph34r wrote:

 cole1114 wrote:
The funniest thing is there's no way the weapon sprues weren't already planned, with them being announced just a day after.

They did say this was explicitly not the case however.

And I don't believe them. They had those sprue pictures and article ready way too fast.

Not really. GW has their own Photography studio setup so getting a photo of a sprue is really quick for them. Plus they already designed the sprues to work independent of each other so that, for casting, they can just cast up loads of core parts as needed and put them into different complete kits. So the weapon sprue was always going to be its own separate casting.

The rest of the article is a few lines of text. Very easy to do in a day. Chances are the longer part was discussing and reacting to the feedback, working out if they could do this financially and how they plan to release them; then agreeing to the delivery format and such. Actually writing it out and getting the photo was likely the quickest part.

Plus don't forget the release is very soon so chances are they already have or started work on the sprue photos for the product page anyway.

 cole1114 wrote:

 ph34r wrote:

 cole1114 wrote:
The funniest thing is there's no way the weapon sprues weren't already planned, with them being announced just a day after.

They did say this was explicitly not the case however.

And I don't believe them. They had those sprue pictures and article ready way too fast.

They likely already had the sprue picture ready. The warlord titan already in the store has a picture of each of the individual sprues that come in the box, and there's no reason to believe that the new weapon sprue (which is the only thing different about the new titan) hadn't already had its picture taken for use on the store page with the new titan box. The article would have taken less than an hour to write. Throw in the probably already existing pictures of the new reaver and the new weapons sprue for the new reaver (which exists for the same reason that the warlord weapon sprue would already exist), and you've got today's post.

I'm not sure why you would think that a twenty-four hour turnaround on that announcement would be "way too fast."

 cole1114 wrote:

 ph34r wrote:

 cole1114 wrote:
The funniest thing is there's no way the weapon sprues weren't already planned, with them being announced just a day after.

They did say this was explicitly not the case however.

And I don't believe them. They had those sprue pictures and article ready way too fast.

Yuh-huh, sure, what really happened is that GW purposefully released a preview article that didn't mention them, had their FB comms people pretend to have no information, have Andy Hoare make specific comments about never having promised separate sprues, wait a full day as a full scale backlash went on, and then released a pre-prepared article about something they were already intending to do.

All in order to...

Yeah that's where it breaks down a little. What's the goal here, to get people to buy the sprues? We were already going to, that's why there was a backlash. To get people to think their marketing and comms have improved? Until yesterday most folk already did. At best, executing their Very Smart Master Plan has left them exactly where they were before the initial announcement, with a community of generally satisfied if impatient people willing to buy the product. Realistically, it's left them roughly where they started but looking a bit daft, and with big chunks of their community who were previously unaware now very much aware that 3D printing is a thing that can look pretty damn good(there were a lot of comments about it both on their page and on AT fan pages).

As to the sprue pics - you mean, the sprue pics of the sprue that's going to be included in the upcoming nuWarlord box that they'd likely already taken for that box's webstore page anyway?

But sure, whatever, GW are master manipulators and the community reaction was totally futile

Sprue sales were always planned. The Titans were built with the design intention of magnetizing loadouts. Add-on sales from sprues of weapons/heads/legio armor plates etc makes absolute sense.

Was was not planned, I strongly suspect, was the negative backlash from the sale of the Warlord with new weapons and the immediate panic that this meant no sprues were going to be made available.

So when the FW FB page said 'we're doing this because of feedback', they mean the community page response and reassurance that yes, sprues will be available was a direct response to that, to soothe the nerves of those in full panic mode.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Sprue sales were always planned. The Titans were built with the design intention of magnetizing loadouts. Add-on sales from sprues of weapons/heads/legio armor plates etc makes absolute sense.

Was was not planned, I strongly suspect, was the negative backlash from the sale of the Warlord with new weapons and the immediate panic that this meant no sprues were going to be made available.

So when the FW FB page said 'we're doing this because of feedback', they mean the community page response and reassurance that yes, sprues will be available was a direct response to that, to soothe the nerves of those in full panic mode.

This. They were always planning to sell the upgrade sprue and just didn't announce it at the same time as the warlord with the weapons. They didn't expect the backlash so they announced the upgrade a bit sooner than they thought they'd need to.

In any case, the community's response probably provided them some information about how the potential demand for individual weapons' sprues might look like.

I'm happy they communicated quickly and provided us with pictures of the sprues. I think these pictures allow to answer some questions people (me included) had with regards to how best to magnetize the warlord's weapons.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Sprue sales were always planned. The Titans were built with the design intention of magnetizing loadouts. Add-on sales from sprues of weapons/heads/legio armor plates etc makes absolute sense.

Was was not planned, I strongly suspect, was the negative backlash from the sale of the Warlord with new weapons and the immediate panic that this meant no sprues were going to be made available.

So when the FW FB page said 'we're doing this because of feedback', they mean the community page response and reassurance that yes, sprues will be available was a direct response to that, to soothe the nerves of those in full panic mode.

I think GW themselves have forgotten that they don't have a good track record of being consumer friendly. Hell even today their products are generally overpriced and lack the customisability of the past. It's not a stretch to imagine they would pull some kind of asinine stunt like selling new weapons only inside complete kits. They may be generating some good will by re-releasing old games and listening to customer feedback (although they are spending a lot of that, imo, by gaking all over Warhammer and 40k), but they have a hell of a way to go before people will stop automatically assuming the worst of them.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

So when the FW FB page said 'we're doing this because of feedback', they mean the community page response and reassurance that yes, sprues will be available was a direct response to that, to soothe the nerves of those in full panic mode.

Gonna disagree here.

Yes, the weapons are magnetized. But that means that if you have one of the old titans, and get one of the new titans, then you could give both titans a plasma cannon on one arm, and a volcano cannon on the other. Or, if you just have the new titan, you can presumably swap the power claw in to replace one of the plasma cannons.

IMO, if they had planned from the start to release a weapons upgrade package right away, then we'd have also seen an announcement about a sprue with the carapace missile launchers and volcano cannons. The fact that we haven't suggests to me that this is a spur of the moment thing. They looked at the production lines and the run that they had planned for the new warlord kit, and determined that they could run an extra bunch of the new weapons sprue. I figure that there's no announcement yet about the old weapons sprue because they'd need to start up a new production line right away in order to get that done, and the schedule won't accommodate that at this time.

Good on them !

I dont care whether it was always planned or not, I am just glad they told me, I can plan what I am going to do now, thank you FW !

If the separate sprues were always the plan then yesterday when the fanbase started nerd raging the response we would of gotten would have been " don't worry guys there coming, look out for an announcement soon".

instead we got a bunch of GW employees go on the defensive saying "but we never said we would release weapon packs, you've got the wrong end of the stick, that's not our fault".

Todays warhammer community article is PR damage limitation, the decision to sell seprate weapon packs has been made in the last 24 hours.

Great news! Now instead of one incomplete kit you have two separate incomplete kits, or one kit with an upgrade sprue!

FW have found a way to look like they’re doing you a solid when in fact they’re still chipping away at your bank balance and making you buy twice.

So looking to the future there is probably one more set of weapon options for both the Reaver and Warlord to come, and then(assuming they don't change there mind about the Imperator)we are in uncharted waters as far as Titans go?

The Knights OTH look like they have plenty of existing patterns to keep them in releases for a while yet. Although I do wonder if each of the Cerastus types will get there own kit, or if they will be FW addons to the Lancer.

I recall a while back someone spoke openly that they were working on the psychic titan warlord frame so there is that to come at some stage. After that there's a fair few Knight scale patterns they can work on and a few bigger than knight smaller than reaver titans.

Plus most people fully expect them to branch off into Chaos titans; likely starting with alternative armour options on the Warlord; and then steadily getting more demonic and warped sculpts.

That said as its a titan game they might dip into areas of the lore and pull out more rare and lost to time titans and knights and the like.



Imperator I think could happen one day but its a long way off (I REALLY want to see one though - Imperator was one of the first models I ever got and built)

GoatboyBeta wrote:
So looking to the future there is probably one more set of weapon options for both the Reaver and Warlord to come, and then(assuming they don't change there mind about the Imperator)we are in uncharted waters as far as Titans go?

The Knights OTH look like they have plenty of existing patterns to keep them in releases for a while yet. Although I do wonder if each of the Cerastus types will get there own kit, or if they will be FW addons to the Lancer.

The carapace turbolasers for the reaver are a new design. The rest of the weapons already exist for the 28mm models. But now any further warlord arms or carapace guns are going to be new designs.

 Yodhrin wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Sprue sales were always planned. The Titans were built with the design intention of magnetizing loadouts. Add-on sales from sprues of weapons/heads/legio armor plates etc makes absolute sense.

Was was not planned, I strongly suspect, was the negative backlash from the sale of the Warlord with new weapons and the immediate panic that this meant no sprues were going to be made available.

So when the FW FB page said 'we're doing this because of feedback', they mean the community page response and reassurance that yes, sprues will be available was a direct response to that, to soothe the nerves of those in full panic mode.

So, once again - why did Andy Hoare intentionally go out onto FB during the backlash and specifically say in reply to someone using this exact argument that they intentionally never promised separate sprues? Not that they never promised them right away. Not that they never promised not to release them in a box with a Titan. That he was careful specifically not to say they'd be available separately?

Honestly it's genuinely a little bit sad to see some folk going full Info Wars out of desperation to maintain that the community's response was unjustified. I suppose that's the only recourse left when the response is too overwhelmingly one-sided to paint it as a disgruntled minority.

He should have said they always planned to release the sprues separately after a splash release as a new Warlord variant. By saying this was in direct response to customer feedback they sorta opened the door for this to happen again with future release decisions. I seriously hope they use this as a lesson for how they announce or plan products in the future.

I suspect there were already people within FW who thought it’d be a good idea to release the sprue separately, and they were losing the argument until the community backlash backed them up. Now they’ve given themselves 2-3 months to create new packaging for a sprue that already exists, probably less than their standard process but still reasonable.

I’m happy. Though honestly, I would have tolerated something like, “After we release three more Warlord variants, we’ll sell their weapon sprues together in a box.” It should take two more sprues to fit the Warlord’s remaining weapons. (The Reaver’s another story - it’ll be missing two carapace weapons once the new one comes out, not enough to justify a new sprue.)

I don’t think they need to worry that they’re training us to get angry; there’ve been other times when we were pretty unanimously angry and nothing happened (e.g. the FW regional pricing adventure, which we know some employees were arguing against). And more importantly, it usually isn’t unanimous.

They don't even need packaging for it. They can release the sprue as direct order only and ship it in a white bag like they do for things like the Necromunda weapons from FW or any of the "white box" items from GW direct.

 Overread wrote:
They don't even need packaging for it. They can release the sprue as direct order only and ship it in a white bag like they do for things like the Necromunda weapons from FW or any of the "white box" items from GW direct.

Ideally they'll package it for in-store sales. It'll make retailers happy with them, and less likely to turn to non-mail order solutions, such as local individuals with a 3D printer.

Man, this is so awesome of GW. Love how they respond since Rountree took over!

 Overread wrote:
I recall a while back someone spoke openly that they were working on the psychic titan warlord frame so there is that to come at some stage. After that there's a fair few Knight scale patterns they can work on and a few bigger than knight smaller than reaver titans.

Plus most people fully expect them to branch off into Chaos titans; likely starting with alternative armour options on the Warlord; and then steadily getting more demonic and warped sculpts.

That said as its a titan game they might dip into areas of the lore and pull out more rare and lost to time titans and knights and the like.



Imperator I think could happen one day but its a long way off (I REALLY want to see one though - Imperator was one of the first models I ever got and built)

I think any real work being done on the Psi Titan will be regarding it's rules, psychic powers aren't a thing at the moment in AT. Physically the only difference is the left arm cannon, which is a unique weapon to the Psi Titan.

Let's <removed> GW for Tiny Marines!

I think the timing of the imperator Titan will be very hard to predict, because we have no way of knowing how much backburner work and feasibility studies have been done on it, in either scale. In some ways a 40k scale imperator is ludicrous, but on the other hand the company know that the Warlord was profitable, if there is a market for an imperator they could Impose a huge price ticket on it, and it would certainly hit the cool factor a lot of designers would love to have under their belt. A Titanicus scale one is much more feasible and practical, and they’ll likely have at least fielded the idea and done a little concept work by now.

Plus, from some artwork we know they’ve at least decided what a modern imperator looks like.

Should we expect it soon? Not really, no. Can we accurately predict how much they’ve looked into the idea? Probably not.

I’m not sure from what I’ve seen of the game how well it would fit in from a gameplay perspective... But as a display piece I imagine it’d fly off shelves.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

RazorEdge wrote:
Let's <removed> GW for Tiny Marines!

I wish they’d do a few Admech guys as scenery. Tech priests to stand on a warlord’s balcony perhaps. maybe some secutarii for basing purposes. Just anyone who’d fit in thematically and give a sense of scale by comparison.

Though yes, if they did epic figures they’d probably prioritise marines instead.