Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I mean, I basically live on the internet when it comes to these games. I'm simultaneously browsing and commenting on dakka while also doing the same on reddit, facebook, and discord. I don't really interact with any other communities or hobbies. I also have a pretty great memory and thats the kind of thing I absolutely would have noticed because its kind of an out there take. So uhh... if I haven't noticed it, I am inclined to think that its not really a thing aside from maybe an absolutely tiny minority of individuals.

Maybe you're in a "ultracasual community oriented tabletop gaming fan group" on facebook which is giving you that echo chamber effect to amplify the signal, but aside form that I don't see it.

Nah. I'm on bog standard groups that bristle whenever you complain about bad balance, and the canned response is the balance isn't the main reason you play these games.

Thats ok. We're just talking around each other at this point so there's not much else to comment on this topic with you.

chaos0xomega wrote:
ehhh. I don't know that "they spent the money they were spending on WHFB previously on 40k instead" really flies as an explanation for why there wasn't a bigger decline.

I just know the player base in the wargaming scene here around but there was the historical crowd who had not much to do with GW games, the GW crowd, and later the LotR crowd who had not much to do with the other GW people

yet from the GW crowd, there were not many who only played WHFB or 40k, most it an army for each and with the end of an edition and the rules decline in quality, everyone changed to the other system
it was the whole Club and the 2 FLGS either playing 40k or Fantasy, which ever got the new Edition and sales for the shops were based on bringing your collection up to date

and they played both because the games were different, no one wanted to have a 40k but with Fantasy minis as for this he could just play 40k instead

looking at the people there now, one difference is the the 2 FLGS were replaced by 1 GW store and the AoS and 40k group are different people
the former Warhammer players who still play are all doing 40k now and avoid AoS because no interest in a similar game with different setting, and the AoS people avoid 40k for the same reason

and this also let the community grow, in the past it was one community with the same people, now there are 2 of them

 auticus wrote:
Do I think the Old World will die? Nope. I think Kings of War, 9th age, and Conquest players right now are sweating (and are being quite vocal about it in other social media hubs) because they know that they are going to lose some players as well back to the GW mothership because a lot of WHFB players would have kept playing WHFB but only started playing KOW or 9th or whatever because their game that they loved vanished overnight.

those KoW players who are just there until GW comes back with something are not a lot, they are rather with T9A or other community rules
what I have seen is that people who like KoW for the rules will never go back to GW type of rules, those people already struggle with T9A for that reason
same for Conquest, those games are too different to GW style that once you are used to it, it is hard to go back and just play the game and enjoy it

The dumbest forum/internet trend is to decide that anecdotal evidence is meaningless.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Whenever I am in a balance conversation in a forum, facebook, discord, wherever, inevitably there will always be responses that say "I dont care about balance, I just want to hang out with my friends playing what they are playing and chucking dice."

YOU LIE MISTER!

I am very active in online communities for these games, I have literally never once seen someone say that

I say it all the time. Am I invisible?

From my experience there is a small but vocal subsection of gamers who care deeply about balance, and the majority just try not to engage with them.

 auticus wrote:
lol hahaha. Its all over the dakka aos forum. Like... in dozens if not hundreds of places over the years. There was a subsection in one of the total warhammer facebooks I'm in now on why balance is secondary to community. The TGA forums ... again littered everywhere. Commonly stated. The Conquest discord we talked about that fairly regularly. Same thing.

Its literally everywhere. If you have never seen anyone say that community is what matters most and balance is not their primary reason they play, you are simply willfully blinding yourself to it being said.

Yeah I have absolutely seen this a lot too. Comes up on Dakka every once in a while; just look at any of the 'how important is balance to you' threads.

 Olthannon wrote:
The dumbest forum/internet trend is to decide that anecdotal evidence is meaningless.

it is the only one we have (as there are not official numbers for anything, neither a collective GW community side)

and during the early days, some 20-30 years ago, the not-historical wargaming community was small enough that anecdotal evidence was good enough

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Gert wrote:

 auticus wrote:

AOS players dropping napalm on The Old World does not surprise me at all because no one wants their playerbase fragmenting off. There ARE a lot of AOS players that want to play the Old World, and that means less time for AOS (in some cases, people only play one game or another so thats a permanent loss for some). No matter how you slice it, its at the very least going to remove some players from the aos player pool for a time, and THAT is where a lot of the "its going to die lol" comments come from. A gatekeeping attempt to keep AOS the primary game.

I find this quite funny because I've not seen any large number of AoS hobbyists hoping for TOW to fail or being afraid it's going to kill AoS. In fact, all I have seen is legacy WHFB people baying for the death of AoS and praising GW for returning WHFB. The TOW Facebook group is particularly toxic towards AoS and I've seen more comments on how AoS sucks and should be replaced with TOW since its announcement, that it's kind of souring the whole thing for me. I love TW:WH and the Old World has its own merits as a setting but I'm not jumping into a community that's already filled with chuds before the game has even been released.

Indeed. I've seen plenty on facebook - and in this thread - predicting or hoping for AoS demise. Admittedly I've seen a few predicting or hoping for TOWs demise as well, but an absolute minority by comparison. The overwhelming attitude of AoS fans interested in TOW - such as myself - is basically "calm the feth down and check your expectations". EDIT - I suppose to a WHFB diehard anything short of "hail our lord and savior, the second coming of Warhammer Fantasy Battle. May it deliver us from the great Satan of Age of Sigmar!" might seem like hate or a desire for TOW to die an inglorious death, but that perspective is a "you" problem.

I can kind of understand WHFB fans wanting the world of AoS to be destroyed in hellfire (or the bubbles popped, whatever). After all, it's what happened to them, and a lot of the time they get called out as moaning grognards simply because they subsequently dared to complain that GW decided to terminate the hobby that they loved.

They could have kept playing the game that they still had all the rules and models for or moved to AoS where most of the Old World armies still exist and there is no actual requirement for round bases.
Instead many chose to spend the last 6 years being prats and trolls. I have 0 sympathy for a WHFB hobbyist who thinks it's OK to be a prat to an AoS hobbyist just because a company changed the game.

were to you get that people did this instead of continue playing that game?

I mean there are so many fan rules and communities out there, there could not be many left that are prats and trolls

 Olthannon wrote:
The dumbest forum/internet trend is to decide that anecdotal evidence is meaningless.

Well, anecdotes by definition are unreliable. Its usually why folks who use anecdotes in good faith preface their statement with “I know its anecdotal, but…” as opposed to folks who use anecdotes as a statement of irrefutable truth.

Much like "in my opinion" to me is a waste of words because any given opinion is of course an opinion and not a fact, "i know its anecdotal" to me doesn't need stated because if one is stating something from their own experience, it is by default anecdotal unless they are citing a solid reference.

In the case of wargaming, there are no solid numbers anywhere that anyone can use and so all of our opinions are opinions and all of our experiences are anecdotal without needing to state that they are.

At least to me. That might be my technical writing portion of what I do coming out but we eliminate needless words in our communication if it is an understood default.

Anyone speaking as if their opinion and anecdotes were global fact are of course not correct in their assumption that their opinions etc are facts.

 Gert wrote:
They could have kept playing the game that they still had all the rules and models for or moved to AoS where most of the Old World armies still exist and there is no actual requirement for round bases.
Instead many chose to spend the last 6 years being prats and trolls. I have 0 sympathy for a WHFB hobbyist who thinks it's OK to be a prat to an AoS hobbyist just because a company changed the game.

GW ripped most of the armies to pieces, you can't build a proper WHFB army even if you wanted to. I would have started a new army or two if they sold the damn models, paying extortionist ebay prices is out of the question for many.

They also removed the square bases from a lot of the packages, I got a couple boxes of marauders recently and they don't have squares.

Not only did they destroy WHFB but they tried to force everyone to convert to AoS or piss off. It should be easy to understand that there's a lot of resentment there.

Yes but its 5 years old now its time to move on.

They could have kept playing the game that they still had all the rules and models for or moved to AoS where most of the Old World armies still exist and there is no actual requirement for round bases.

In my community - and in communities that I have heard /anecdotally/ - but from my experience in my community - nobody is excited to play a dead game.

So yes its technically possible to play whfb. But you are likely going to be playing with yourself.

Goose LeChance wrote:

GW ripped most of the armies to pieces, you can't build a proper WHFB army even if you wanted to. I would have started a new army or two if they sold the damn models, paying extortionist ebay prices is out of the question for many.

Weird cos I can build a whole army of what is basically the Empire, Dark Elves, Wood Elves, Skaven, Warriors of Chaos, Beastmen, Lizardmen, Chaos Daemons, Vampire Counts, or Ogre Kingdoms. On top of that Orcs & Goblins are now both fairly expansive armies of their own.

They also removed the square bases from a lot of the packages, I got a couple boxes of marauders recently and they don't have squares.

And yet nothing is stopping someone who already has a square base army from playing AoS nor is it stopping you from getting square bases for your own army.

Not only did they destroy WHFB but they tried to force everyone to convert to AoS or piss off. It should be easy to understand that there's a lot of resentment there.

Did they come into people's homes and burn their 8th Edition army books and rules? Did they rip all the square bases off their models and replace them with circular ones? I even remember how in AoS 1st Edition, Narrative Play was suggested as a way to relive Old World battles using the new system.
I could understand resentment initially but 6 years on? No. Not at all.

 auticus wrote:

They could have kept playing the game that they still had all the rules and models for or moved to AoS where most of the Old World armies still exist and there is no actual requirement for round bases.

In my community - and in communities that I have heard /anecdotally/ - but from my experience in my community - nobody is excited to play a dead game.

So yes its technically possible to play whfb. But you are likely going to be playing with yourself.

Which is what I do , but I do have at least 3 occasional opponents, who will be much more frequent when TOW actually releases.

Rihgu wrote:

 auticus wrote:

They could have kept playing the game that they still had all the rules and models for or moved to AoS where most of the Old World armies still exist and there is no actual requirement for round bases.

In my community - and in communities that I have heard /anecdotally/ - but from my experience in my community - nobody is excited to play a dead game.

So yes its technically possible to play whfb. But you are likely going to be playing with yourself.

Which is what I do , but I do have at least 3 occasional opponents, who will be much more frequent when TOW actually releases.

Same here. There will be a TOW group all ready to go on release. Can't say the same for saying "hey guys who wants to play a dead version of warhammer?" which will 99 times out of 100 yield no response.

Its pretty exciting times.

 auticus wrote:

In my community - and in communities that I have heard /anecdotally/ - but from my experience in my community - nobody is excited to play a dead game.

So yes its technically possible to play whfb. But you are likely going to be playing with yourself.

My counterpoint would be that if WHFB was so great and superior to AoS, why did people not keep it going in a meaningful way?

 Gert wrote:

 auticus wrote:

In my community - and in communities that I have heard /anecdotally/ - but from my experience in my community - nobody is excited to play a dead game.

So yes its technically possible to play whfb. But you are likely going to be playing with yourself.

My counterpoint would be that if WHFB was so great and superior to AoS, why did people not keep it going in a meaningful way? Instead, they moved to AoS/KoW/9th Age.

Isn't that what 9th Age though? An attempt at making a 9th Edition of WHFB?

Goose LeChance wrote:

 Gert wrote:
They could have kept playing the game that they still had all the rules and models for or moved to AoS where most of the Old World armies still exist and there is no actual requirement for round bases.
Instead many chose to spend the last 6 years being prats and trolls. I have 0 sympathy for a WHFB hobbyist who thinks it's OK to be a prat to an AoS hobbyist just because a company changed the game.

GW ripped most of the armies to pieces, you can't build a proper WHFB army even if you wanted to. I would have started a new army or two if they sold the damn models, paying extortionist ebay prices is out of the question for many.

They also removed the square bases from a lot of the packages, I got a couple boxes of marauders recently and they don't have squares.

Not only did they destroy WHFB but they tried to force everyone to convert to AoS or piss off. It should be easy to understand that there's a lot of resentment there.

this is a very interesting thing as during the time were Warhammer still was there, no cared to buy the original models for the exorbitant prices GW sold them and was looking for alternative models
now there are more "Warhammer" models available than in the best days of GW, for much less money so starting an army won't cost a 800€ for the base

but now that the game is dead, it is important to everyone to only use official GW models to play with house-rules, were back than it was the other way around

everyone who claims he cannot start a Warhammer army because there are no models just never tried and is searching for a cheap excuse of not doing it

PS: and why are people thinking new prices will be better?
I guess as soon as the first boxes with 5 models for 40€, and you need 15 for a minimum sized unit, come up people will again claim that only official rules must be used but buy the cheapest models available while at the same time claiming that they only play the game for the superior models GW make


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Isn't that what 9th Age though? An attempt at making a 9th Edition of WHFB?

9th Age started as a "better balanced 8th Edition" and is now transforming into their own game with 8th Edition mechanics as their core

Warhammer Armies is the project that tried to make a 9th Edition by doing the best of every Edition thing

 Gert wrote:

 auticus wrote:

In my community - and in communities that I have heard /anecdotally/ - but from my experience in my community - nobody is excited to play a dead game.

So yes its technically possible to play whfb. But you are likely going to be playing with yourself.

My counterpoint would be that if WHFB was so great and superior to AoS, why did people not keep it going in a meaningful way?

If AOS were to suddenly stop being supported today with no future content or models for AOS and they just went back to WHFB full on, you would have the same situation in AOS land. You'd probably have a community driven version of AOS the same as you have 9th today.

Also - WHFB being so great and superior to AOS would depend on who you talk to. That sounds like trying to say the old world failed because no one wanted to play it.

Which is objectively false.

Or that AOS is superior because it has more people interested in it. Which doesn't really matter. AOS probably does have more people interested in it because the rules are super simple and the tactics etc super simple which gives it a wider appeal.

That doesn't negate or diminish a return to WHFB as an alternative product. The only thing that it does is make people that like AOS feel better that they are playing a game that the majority plays. However not only is that not provable as the numbers will differ from locale to locale (in Louisville in 2015 when AOS died, we had 30+ campaign players actively playing a whfb campaign, the largest AOS tournament we had in the six years since was 18 players so /anecdotealy/ in Louisville, whfb was 2x more popular than AOS - but Louisville is Louisville and not the whole of the US or global. Additionally the vast majority of our playerbase in Louisville loved WHFB... but never bought anything retail. GW never saw a dime because they got their models second hand or from cheaper sources - so to GW it was a huge failure because even though we had a lot of players - they could never move retail product to most of us) it largely doesn't matter.

When I play WHFB when its out again, I have no care that more people enjoy AOS over WHFB. That literally doesn't matter to me. Same as when I watch football, I dont care if more people like baseball where I am. All that matters is that I can get in games and have a community for it again without having to make community building my second full-time job which is what you have to do with any non-gw game or fan based system.

 Gert wrote:
My counterpoint would be that if WHFB was so great and superior to AoS, why did people not keep it going in a meaningful way?

because they were not happy with the rules in the first place but just played it because it was "official" and everyone else played it

as soon as it died, the projects to make a better version started growing and the better ones are still out there
Warhammer Armies, Fluffhammer, WarhammerCE and 9th Age are the ones that are played here as each community takes the one that fits their needs

there are also many groups out there playing 6th with ravening hordes

yet AoS itself is short of filling any tournament here beyond 30 people, were Warhammer was filling several 100+ events a year

Goose LeChance wrote:

 Gert wrote:
They could have kept playing the game that they still had all the rules and models for or moved to AoS where most of the Old World armies still exist and there is no actual requirement for round bases.
Instead many chose to spend the last 6 years being prats and trolls. I have 0 sympathy for a WHFB hobbyist who thinks it's OK to be a prat to an AoS hobbyist just because a company changed the game.

GW ripped most of the armies to pieces, you can't build a proper WHFB army even if you wanted to.

Yet I literally just bought and built a square based 6000+ point Orc army for 8th Ed in the past year. And the only eBay stuff were some of Ruglud's Armored Orcs, a discounted 'Ard Boyz box, and a job lot of the 6th ed starter Orcs. The rest were sourced from cheap lots on Facebook, clearance tables from local stores, and other collectors. It's very possible to still build a proper WHFB army with patience and knowing where to look.

Not sure what you're talking about to be honest, I wouldn't care if someone else proxies their entire army with cardboard cutouts. I'd advise them not to pay for GWs rulebooks while they're at it.

I doubt anyone here thinks the prices "will be better" so I don't know where you're coming from with that either.




Or just play other games, buy everything you need from your favourite stores, and wait for GW to come to their senses.

You can hunt ebay, facebook, or travel to mars and build a new WHFB army, or you can just play a different game. It's an easy choice for most.

 kodos wrote:

 Olthannon wrote:
The dumbest forum/internet trend is to decide that anecdotal evidence is meaningless.

it is the only one we have (as there are not official numbers for anything, neither a collective GW community side)

and during the early days, some 20-30 years ago, the not-historical wargaming community was small enough that anecdotal evidence was good enough

Haha yes I know, I was saying there's nothing wrong with anecdotal evidence. But some people just refute it, but there's not enough actual data to make it any more reliable.

Goose LeChance wrote:

Spoiler:

 CMLR wrote:

 auticus wrote:

Can't wait for the boomers to celebrate the impeding fall of AoS in MySpace and Blogpost.

Much like social media today is rife with AOS fans saying this will die as soon as it comes out because no one wants to play a game like warhammer fantasy today.

Yet AoS has been alive well for over a lustrum and the nayers keep telling that next BT will kill the game for real this time, meanwhile AoS players know that the WHFB is already extremely fractured and that having so many flavours to appeal make it harder to nail a ruleset that satisfies the broader playerbase possible.

I would also like to compare this to the Nostalgia effect from remasters/remakes/revivals/reboots; see WoW Classic and TBC Classic as examples (don't include pirate servers numbers up, A., they are not "private" servers: the official servers ARE THE PRIVATE ONES because you have a monthly fee to access it, it is not a P2P or F2P game, B., they can lie about numbers): lots of hype, then a notorious steep because people didn't liked for whatever reason or just didn't wanted to pay for the month. This was even worst with TBC because executive meddling to give the playerbase "the best experience for everyone possible".

 CMLR wrote:
I want to play the game and see it thrive (so I can get plastic Kroxigors), but I'm just pointing out that AoS already has a playerbase and only two real editions of the game, while TOW will have to engage people from different systems, ever since 6th Edition. And they just said that they will partially base the game on 8E. That already is a "No" for diehard detractors of that Edition that don't wan't anything to do with it.

Goose LeChance wrote:
Gatekeep everything AoS, including model design. If you want to play AoS just play AoS.

You know that won't happen. Good luck getting Finecrap/metal Greater Daemons. What about the new, plastic Ogor Tyrant? can't anyone just base him on a square base instead of using a lame resin one?

Such a dumb mentality; again, looks a lot like "#NoChanges" from WoW Classic. I knew people that legitimately thought that Classic was going to be hard as nails, and then they left because raiding MC "was not the same".

You can't compare WHFB players to World of Warcraft players.

WoW players are always chasing the next content high, they devour DLC/Expansions in a month and get bored, it's only natural they would lose interest in Classic.

WHFB players have kept the game going long after GW told them all to go away. Either through old editions or alternative companies, they'll be around until they die.

I can compare them and I will. Don't be obtuse.

Overgeneralization too much?: not everyone will want what everone else wanted (I don't play current expansions until their first +50% discount and I play for the actual RP that imply questing, for example, and I'm well aware that I'm on the extreme minority), and WoW was divided by those who didn't care about Classic and those who did tantrums for it, and the later half was in a big number only wanting to do Classic because "it is actually hard/good", then the game only lasted for the guys who really wanted the official experience and stay in Classic forever, which was about one to three in the entire server, meanwhile, the rest of players started to leave in flocks once they realised that the game is extremely primitive and that the sweet, sweet memories where because they didn't readed the manual, or because they couldn't use X or Y addon, they didn't liked that there is no refreshing, you have to sub to it for what it's worth, drop/xp/other rates, etc. First imprensions matter and you are not always going to revive the experience the first time.

There are no DLCs and people don't burn content as you put it out, not to mention that Current players as a majority can't give any less of a dump for Classic.

This happens everywhere every single time something changes, can't you see?

WFHB zealots condemned GW for killing off the Old World, some because they killed the setting (technically murdered, but AoS is happening on the same Universe so they didn't full-on deleted Fantasy), some other because they got half-assed ABs and ther would no longer get support (if they had one in 8E, imagine those who still had to use 7E ABs), then the new playerbase slowly grew up alongside the remainig payers who just wanted to keep buying new, pretty toy soldiers, but meanwhile level-headed veterans said "not for me, thanks, but have fun if you can", "I'd rather stay on my favourite edition", "game was dead since 6th" and so on.

See this? It is an example, but the overall topic here is NOSTALGIA, which can and will bring satisfaction to the minority that want the product for what it was worth it, but when you start a bandwagon hyping a product, expect it to derail, crash and burn, more when you have to factor in that people will want different stuff because everyone is nostalgic for specific parts of a product, rather then the entirety of it.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

SamusDrake wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

I don't really remember any outright insults, but the previous CEOs attitude (to which he made clear verbal/written statements to) was that they were a miniatures company and that only a minority of their customers actually played their games.

Oh, I see. Cheers.

There was that one investor report where Kirby was high on crack and said they sell to people genetically predisposed to hoard toys or some such, and also mentioned losing the Chapterhouse case because legislation was written with swine theft in mind, not IP.

Judging by that one Reddit post of a guy who bought 5000pts of Mechanicus stuff in one go, only one of those things may be false.

It's not that he was wrong about the customers, the customers just don't like hearing it. They are a miniature company and they make a lot of money off people who aren't going to paint and play with, or possibly even assemble, the stuff they are buying for months or years to come.

 auticus wrote:

They could have kept playing the game that they still had all the rules and models for or moved to AoS where most of the Old World armies still exist and there is no actual requirement for round bases.

In my community - and in communities that I have heard /anecdotally/ - but from my experience in my community - nobody is excited to play a dead game.

So yes its technically possible to play whfb. But you are likely going to be playing with yourself.

Depends simply where you are asking.

I admit I am helped by the fact I'm still in touch with friends still having their WFB armies and rules, so we can just keep playing 8th edition if we want. We'll be playing a good old 3000 pts night goblins vs dwarves this weekend, by the way.

Still possible to find fellow nostalgic players who don't care about playing a dead game - just about playing the game they loved and have fond memories with, and more than glad to make more of them.

Just need to keep trying and not giving up at the first absence of answer, thinking "it's not worth it anyway".

Hell, I even know a forum where new players in 8th edition build their armies from scrap. If they can do it, it can be done elsewhere.



Even though, to me, the Old World project won't be the rebirth of WFB. It will be a new game, inspired by its ancestor, but I'm expecting it won't be like 8th. They said they'll take mechanisms from a bunch of previous editions but also new ones. I'm pretty ready to bet it will these new mechanisms that will horrify the people expecting the WFB savior here.

And besides, I still have a lot of time to keep playing 8th edition with my group of friends until it's finally released...not even talking about all the miniatures needed to build a new army that won't be able to be made from AoS boxes to be available. If it follows the Horus Heresy pattern of releases, or Necromunda or Bloodbowl...it's going to be a huge disappointment if you put the expectation/hype bar way too high.