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H.B.M.C. wrote: I think a larger issue than timelines in AOS is how formless the world is, specifically because it's not a world. With WFB you knew where everything was (for the most part... things to the east got a little hazy at times). AoS presents these realms and gives maps for areas with which we have no grounding, recognition, or attachment. Part of that is being a symptom of being a new setting created out of nothing, but beyond that the rest of it ends up just being visual noise most of the time. It ends up being as arbitrary as the fluff itself.
Because you have no attachment to AoS's world doesn't mean it doesn't exist. There are maps, there are cities, there are people. Plenty of reasons to defend / destroy with your own armies.
Granted, it's on a bigger scale than the Old World. And there are portals to move your armies on great distances as well.
The way AoS is designed is actually more clever than Warhammer Battle was on that matter to justify how all these factions still manage to fight each other anywhere ("sure guys, the tomb kings just followed the river back in the heart of the Empire for that campaign").
]Heh. You think GW's price increases are driven by inflation.
No, I'm just lucid enough to understand it did play a role - and still does right now. Otherwise, poor Mantic Games wouldn't have raised their prices as well. Oh wait. Maybe it's because it's also a corporation trying to make profit ? Gosh, what a scoop !
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/10/11 22:56:45
But dates really aren't as important as they're being made out to be. This talk of context is mostly nonsense. We know exactly what the fallout was because it was detailed in Broken Realms. The Celestant Prime and Morathi spent a day in discussion and the annexation was allowed for a promise of assistance later. There's even a group of Stormcast who have formed their own group to retake the city and erase the stain of being beaten.
Besides, the devs have expilcitly said they don't want a calendar because they don't want to be boxed in. They want to be able to return to events and expand upon them without upsetting the history, which would happen if everything gets locked.
Besides, the devs have expilcitly said they don't want a calendar because they don't want to be boxed in.
Exactly. A tight calendar doesn't leave much place to insert your own battles for coherency within the world. Otherwise, the Empire would have already be left in the dust if you had to put all of your battles without time to replenish all these losses.
Overread wrote: If Nuln fell to Skaven we'd have understood the impact.
Its was a research and technological region that developed the Empires weapons of war. If that city fell we'd have a date it fell and we'd be able to establish what the impacts of that would be on the Empire in the story of the game itself. GW could tie to to new models or even models being changed in rarity. Eg seeing black powder become more expensive points wise. Story wise we'd have location, dates, key figures and elements. Yes the Old World had a lot of regions where war could have almost no impact - the Border Princes could lose and gain ground for generations and it would have no effect on the main narrative; however we'd still understand why that was the case and where they were and what might happen if one started to unite or conquer all the others.
The problem with AoS is that losing or gaining things is harder to put into context - we've had morathi take over a City of Sigmar; a massive undertaking in the setting. But we don't have a date for it so we've no idea how that correlates to the events in other regions. We've no idea of the political fall out or the loss of this city to the greater whole of the Cities of Sigmar.
It's hardly a fair comparison to make though is it? Comparing a setting with 7 years of development to one with 33 years of development until the End Times and that continues to be developed in the form of games like Total War.
Also, the CoS aren't the main focus of AoS. Generally speaking, it's Stormcast + another Grand Alliance (Chaos, Death, then Destruction). Stormcast have had multiple Chambers added depending on the expansion of the story and each of the Grand Alliances has gotten new armies to coincide with events (Nighthaunt getting a glow-up because of the Necroquake, Ossiarchs getting made when the Stormvaults got opened, Slaaneshis getting new stuff cos their patron god finally returned). If you weren't playing the game you wouldn't know what these things are and if you didn't have an interest then you also wouldn't know.
The majority of people who don't play it and complain about AoS say they don't get these events to which I say "Ok but why would you?". It would be like being surprised that someone who isn't into 40k didn't know what the Horus Heresy or the 3rd War for Armageddon were. At least all the AoS stuff has actually been in order unlike most of 8th Ed 40k where some of the books released took place before the Great Rift even opened. I mean the Vigilus books didn't have any indication of time for the conflict at all and the lack of dates was so bad that fans were saying all the stuff released in 8th was M42 and the BL/GW writers were all saying they assumed it was still just M41.
We've not even see it actually have any real game change for Cities of Sigmar - though Daughters of Khaine could take an allied force now under an expansion book (which is another thing - it was contained in an optional expansion)
CoS haven't had a book yet because they're the refugees of the Old World armies that haven't managed to fit in anywhere else. The first book (while pretty neat) was very much an "Eh get it done so we can start the next edition". The army as a whole has seen expansions on which armies it can take as part of a force and how they interact with different city rules. CoS actually got more content than most other armies in the Broken Realms series, it's just all separated out which is irritating. But there is a new CoS book coming with actual new models as well, it's just not a priority compared to other armies.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/10/11 23:14:56
Sarouan wrote: Because you have no attachment to AoS's world doesn't mean it doesn't exist. There are maps, there are cities, there are people. Plenty of reasons to defend / destroy with your own armies.
But none of it means anything. It's not set out and defined. A new map comes out and it's just squiggles on a page and a bunch of silly-sounding place names.
Some of this is simply because of the age of the setting - it's not as if The Old World appeared at once, fully formed - but as it stands there's nothing really concrete or tangible within AoS. It's all so... ephemeral!
Sarouan wrote: The way AoS is designed is actually more clever than Warhammer Battle was on that matter to justify how all these factions still manage to fight each other anywhere ("sure guys, the tomb kings just followed the river back in the heart of the Empire for that campaign")
It's not "more clever", it is as I said before: Arbitrary.
40k gets away with this because the galaxy is a big place, and they've gone out of their way to show that anyone can appear anywhere (Splinter Fleets, Votann spreading out from the Deep Core, Tau Expansion fleets getting lost, the webway, etc.). With AoS right now it's basically all meaningless, as nothing has a sense of place or permanence.
Sarouan wrote: No, I'm just lucid enough to understand it did play a role - and still does right now. Otherwise, poor Mantic Games wouldn't have raised their prices as well. Oh wait. Maybe it's because it's also a corporation trying to make profit ? Gosh, what a scoop !
You clearly aren't lucid enough to gather the examples given, like plastic models replacing metal ones yet somehow being more expensive (ie. the Goldsword example given on the previous page - and they were just the start!). Inflation is a minor part of GW's prices, and prices were a major part in the death of WFB due to barrier to entry. Trying to explain this away as being inflation is trying to give GW a 'get out of jail' free card. Their own absurd prices caused the downfall of this game, not a year-on-year change in currency valuation.
H.B.M.C. wrote: It's not "more clever", it is as I said before: Arbitrary.
40k gets away with this because the galaxy is a big place, and they've gone out of their way to show that anyone can appear anywhere (Splinter Fleets, Votann spreading out from the Deep Core, Tau Expansion fleets getting lost, the webway, etc.). With AoS right now it's basically all meaningless, as nothing has a sense of place or permanence.
Sorry, hold on. How does a galaxy get a pass on being fine to be a massive sandbox but essentially infinite realms of which there are nine (including the realm of Chaos, 10 if we include the Allpoints) isn't. 40k is fine to have all the factions all over the place because space travel but it's not ok for AoS which has gateways that connect the realms together. The various locations in AoS are just as permanent as the homeworlds of Guard regiments or Space Marine Chapters but that doesn't count.
Where the heck did you pick up that logic?
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2022/10/11 23:31:14
Sarouan wrote: Because you have no attachment to AoS's world doesn't mean it doesn't exist. There are maps, there are cities, there are people. Plenty of reasons to defend / destroy with your own armies.
But none of it means anything. It's not set out and defined. A new map comes out and it's just squiggles on a page and a bunch of silly-sounding place names.
Some of this is simply because of the age of the setting - it's not as if The Old World appeared at once, fully formed - but as it stands there's nothing really concrete or tangible within AoS. It's all so... ephemeral!
So...the same as WHF then? As that's exactly what you've just described. A bunch of silly names on a made up squiggle.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2022/10/11 23:44:33
One reason 40K gets a pass is the predominant regions of space operate by rules we understand.
The Mortal Realms don't - even without chaos the realms don't "work" how we expect. There aren't horses, cattle, wheat and barley, soil and water.
Some realms are made of metal with quicksilver lakes, gold and rare minerals popping out of the ground; others have leviathans so vast that whole cities are built atop their backs; others have nothing but shades and the vast uncounted legions of the undead (seriously considering how insanely violent and long the history is Nagash should have swept the Mortal Realms entirely even with only a portion of the dead).
The Realms don't "function" like the real world. So its much harder to fit in the missing bits of story. When Gotrek and Felix take a walk through the Riekland the author only has to sketch the story, we can fill in a huge amount of the blanks ourselves.
When Gotrek takes a walk through the Realm of Metal we get a sketch but instead of letting us fill in the blanks it raises more and more questions. How do you farm when there are rust dust-storms; what animals live there; how do you deal with seas that boil and rivers of quicksilver (which would drive you mad as a hatter with exposure to it). What does an average human or dwarf do for food and water supplies; how does trade function when most rare minerals are plentiful and the realmgates heavily limited in access so your average small settlement can't just trade with another realm for easier food?
Right now the Khadoran's seem to be the cop-out a bit in how things move around, but even so there are just so so so many questions. These are questions GW created by creating the setting they did in the way they did. Sure its only 7 years old - no wait probably closer to 9 years if you consider development time itself. Even so these are things you'd expect any author to really have written down, established and created.
My problem with the setting is not so much what it is, but what GW hasn't told us. Which fits with their style of story telling which is often very light on description of things because that way when the thing changes visually because of a new model; the old lore still kinda works with it in a general sense.
I love the idea of the setting in itself - of a setting that feels like its ripped off the album artwork covers of metal bands from the 70-90s. It's got a modern and yet classical super high fantasy twist to it. I really love that. What I don't like is that GW isn't helping fill in the blanks.
The only thing I hate about Age of Sigmar is that they destroyed Warhammer Fantasy to create it. The weird pocket dimension thing could be cool, but the models don't really inspire me to learn about any of the lore.
I called my local GW about the Spire of Dawn box and forgot that High Elves have a different name. The AoS names are the second worst thing about it.
‘What Lorgar’s fanatics have not seen is that these gods are nothing compared to the power and the majesty of the Machine-God. Already, members of our growing cult are using the grace of the Omnissiah – the true Omnissiah, not Terra’s false prophet – to harness the might of the warp. Geller fields, warp missiles, void shields, all these things you are familiar with. But their underlying principles can be turned to so much more. Through novel exploitations of these technologies we will gain mastery first over the energies of the empyrean, then over the lesser entities, until finally the very gods themselves will bend the knee and recognise the supremacy of the Machine-God"
- Heretek Ardim Protos in Titandeath by Guy Haley
Overread wrote: One reason 40K gets a pass is the predominant regions of space operate by rules we understand.
The Mortal Realms don't - even without chaos the realms don't "work" how we expect. There aren't horses, cattle, wheat and barley, soil and water.
Some realms are made of metal with quicksilver lakes, gold and rare minerals popping out of the ground; others have leviathans so vast that whole cities are built atop their backs; others have nothing but shades and the vast uncounted legions of the undead (seriously considering how insanely violent and long the history is Nagash should have swept the Mortal Realms entirely even with only a portion of the dead).
The Realms don't "function" like the real world. So its much harder to fit in the missing bits of story. When Gotrek and Felix take a walk through the Riekland the author only has to sketch the story, we can fill in a huge amount of the blanks ourselves.
When Gotrek takes a walk through the Realm of Metal we get a sketch but instead of letting us fill in the blanks it raises more and more questions. How do you farm when there are rust dust-storms; what animals live there; how do you deal with seas that boil and rivers of quicksilver (which would drive you mad as a hatter with exposure to it). What does an average human or dwarf do for food and water supplies; how does trade function when most rare minerals are plentiful and the realmgates heavily limited in access so your average small settlement can't just trade with another realm for easier food?
Right now the Khadoran's seem to be the cop-out a bit in how things move around, but even so there are just so so so many questions. These are questions GW created by creating the setting they did in the way they did. Sure its only 7 years old - no wait probably closer to 9 years if you consider development time itself. Even so these are things you'd expect any author to really have written down, established and created.
My problem with the setting is not so much what it is, but what GW hasn't told us. Which fits with their style of story telling which is often very light on description of things because that way when the thing changes visually because of a new model; the old lore still kinda works with it in a general sense.
I love the idea of the setting in itself - of a setting that feels like its ripped off the album artwork covers of metal bands from the 70-90s. It's got a modern and yet classical super high fantasy twist to it. I really love that. What I don't like is that GW isn't helping fill in the blanks.
No it doesn't. 40K works by the worst case of science fantasy hand wavium you can imagine. They get around literally by punching a hole through hell and hope to the emperor nothing is able to get in. It gets a pass because of the age and it's what the fan base accepts as normal now.
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TheBestBucketHead wrote: The only thing I hate about Age of Sigmar is that they destroyed Warhammer Fantasy to create it. The weird pocket dimension thing could be cool, but the models don't really inspire me to learn about any of the lore.
I called my local GW about the Spire of Dawn box and forgot that High Elves have a different name. The AoS names are the second worst thing about it.
Ok? So you judge it because of what came before it rather than on its own merits. Not the best way to do it but you do you.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/10/12 00:00:43
Besides, the devs have expilcitly said they don't want a calendar because they don't want to be boxed in.
Exactly. A tight calendar doesn't leave much place to insert your own battles for coherency within the world. Otherwise, the Empire would have already be left in the dust if you had to put all of your battles without time to replenish all these losses.
You don't need a completely tight calendar with each and every step of events taking place in it, but an overall calendar helps. Broad strokes - knowing the years of World War 1, and the year of the Russian Revolution, and the fact that several empires completely collapsed in the aftermath of it gives context without drowning you in detail.
A fantasy writer doesn't need to go into every single battle, every single minute detail of a war, or every single bit of peacetime. They can brush in broad strokes and then if an event or war seems interesting to them can later elaborate on it in a campaign or book. Hell, a big ass war in year X between Faction A and B can explain why a campaign later in year X (or X +1) does or doesn't include those two factions. If it does, it could be due to them seeking allies or fighting via proxies/vassal states. If it doesn't include them, well of course, they are too busy blowing each other up!
And as for replenishing losses, that is something GW is just kind of bad at writing about, see how so many battles in 40k take place in like 990-999 m.41, involving the same forces. But doesn't Sigmar already do this to an extent? I thought there were time skips between each edition as we jump forwards a decent chunk of time and the new edition is based on how the pieces settled at the end of the previous edition (Nagash's pyramid, the Lumineth doing their thing, etc). If they do, its even easier to make dates - and leave nice gaps to fill in later if the writers want to.
Gert wrote:
The majority of people who don't play it and complain about AoS say they don't get these events to which I say "Ok but why would you?". It would be like being surprised that someone who isn't into 40k didn't know what the Horus Heresy or the 3rd War for Armageddon were. At least all the AoS stuff has actually been in order unlike most of 8th Ed 40k where some of the books released took place before the Great Rift even opened. I mean the Vigilus books didn't have any indication of time for the conflict at all and the lack of dates was so bad that fans were saying all the stuff released in 8th was M42 and the BL/GW writers were all saying they assumed it was still just M41.
.
Part of the problem,and I could be wrong here, but I'm pretty sure GW just up and decided to retcon a 100 year time skip at the start of 8th. Originally I think it was the Great Rift erupted, chaos ensued, and the Imperium was gathering its strength for Reconquista: Space Edition. Guillaman spent about 100 years gathering forces, building up the Primaris Marines,and constructing warships to launch the Indomitus Crusade.
Then I believe they retconned it so that the Indomitus Crusade began like 5 years after the Great Rift opened.
No it doesn't. 40K works by the worst case of science fantasy hand wavium you can imagine. They get around literally by punching a hole through hell and hope to the emperor nothing is able to get in. It gets a pass because of the age and it's what the fan base accepts as normal now.
Most of the 40K Galaxy operates by rules we understand - where it deviates GW explains it.
Sure its a sci-fi setting, but humans still operate by the same rules we do today. The worlds they live on are broadly very similar - sure some are highly toxic and there we see mutations, afflictions, breathing problems, disease and technologies that try to overcome those issues. Things work within a structure we can envision and understand. Partly because 40K lifts from many other similar sci fi of its era and because GW has explained many of those things to us through the story. Sure some parts have shifted over the years as the lore evolved and some parts were mysteries.
The thing is AoS has too many questions and not enough answers and where we do get those answers they are sometimes not repeated often enough in other works to make them reinforced. As I noted many of the Realms, the basic building foundations, don't even operate in ways we can understand. AoS is almost akin to every realm being a bit like a Chaos Realm. Some are easy the Realm of Beasts is fairly normal it just has some huge mega-fauna which are really deadly. Others like death, shadow, metal and fire are much harder because they lean into more extremes. Sure we know that interiors are more wild and exteriors are less wild, but those interiors still cover vast swathes of land.
Again its not that AoS can't work, its that many of the fundamental worldbuilding blocks are either missing, poorly developed or just not explained. It makes it harder to tell your own story; to envision how stories connect together and all. When GW says they don't want dates because it ties them down this, I think, highlights that their world building skillbase has some big gaps in the team. Dates shouldn't restrict you, they should free you. Especially when AoS hasn't got a fixed end date like 40K has (40K is "trapped" to a 1K time period story wise - they can't suddenly shift gets to 41K). AoS has a fully open end. There IS no marketing tied to anything save it being the Age of Sigmar which is more linked to story and plot than any kind of date system. Heck they can even shift it around a lot - Sigmar could go from Saviour to Invasive Dominating forces and have a huge shift around and it would still be the same "age"
Overread wrote: One reason 40K gets a pass is the predominant regions of space operate by rules we understand.
The Mortal Realms don't - even without chaos the realms don't "work" how we expect. There aren't horses, cattle, wheat and barley, soil and water.
Some realms are made of metal with quicksilver lakes, gold and rare minerals popping out of the ground; others have leviathans so vast that whole cities are built atop their backs; others have nothing but shades and the vast uncounted legions of the undead (seriously considering how insanely violent and long the history is Nagash should have swept the Mortal Realms entirely even with only a portion of the dead).
The Realms don't "function" like the real world. So its much harder to fit in the missing bits of story. When Gotrek and Felix take a walk through the Riekland the author only has to sketch the story, we can fill in a huge amount of the blanks ourselves.
When Gotrek takes a walk through the Realm of Metal we get a sketch but instead of letting us fill in the blanks it raises more and more questions. How do you farm when there are rust dust-storms; what animals live there; how do you deal with seas that boil and rivers of quicksilver (which would drive you mad as a hatter with exposure to it). What does an average human or dwarf do for food and water supplies; how does trade function when most rare minerals are plentiful and the realmgates heavily limited in access so your average small settlement can't just trade with another realm for easier food?
Right now the Khadoran's seem to be the cop-out a bit in how things move around, but even so there are just so so so many questions. These are questions GW created by creating the setting they did in the way they did. Sure its only 7 years old - no wait probably closer to 9 years if you consider development time itself. Even so these are things you'd expect any author to really have written down, established and created.
My problem with the setting is not so much what it is, but what GW hasn't told us. Which fits with their style of story telling which is often very light on description of things because that way when the thing changes visually because of a new model; the old lore still kinda works with it in a general sense.
I love the idea of the setting in itself - of a setting that feels like its ripped off the album artwork covers of metal bands from the 70-90s. It's got a modern and yet classical super high fantasy twist to it. I really love that. What I don't like is that GW isn't helping fill in the blanks.
Pretty much all of these questions have been answered though. The realms have all that wild magic at there edge but the closer you get to the centre the more normal they become. The centre of the realm of metal has iron rich soil which is actually pretty good for farming. The rare materials are the realmstones which are not only difficult to come by but also have some pretty strong side effects along with their potency. If you put too much of the ghur realmstone in one place it causes people to lose their self control. It is essentially a bit like radioactive material in the real world- powerful but risky.
Each realm has numerous sub currencies but there is a global currency in the form of aqua Ghyranis, which are vials containing drops of water from the realm of life. This water is essentially a super fertilizer and restorative in one. Etc. etc.
A lot of this development has been done in the rpg as was the case for Warhammer fantasy early on, but the third edition core book has incorporated a lot of these details.
Many of the complaints about AoS relative to fantasy were absolutely valid when AoS first came out but the gap in lore detail between the two settings has narrowed consideravly in the last 8 years.
People forget that Gotrek didn't appear until Warhammer was 6 years old. Tyrion and Teclis first showed up in year nine.
Inquisitor Gideon wrote: So...the same as WHF then? As that's exactly what you've just described. A bunch of silly names on a made up squiggle.
Except it's not the same. The Old World was set, defined and, most of all, finite. It had borders and locations and clear territories and there was always a sense of place involved. Characters, culture and conflicts were informed by geography. If something big happened, everyone could point to where it occurred as everyone had the same baseline to work from.
AoS, by comparison, is a formless floating maelstrom of absolutely arbitrary writing that is defined and undefined as often as the plot demands.
I had this discussion at another site a few months back, and there was someone else there who was putting it all into words quite well. I'll find what he wrote:
Spoiler:
The longer answer is that AoS' setting is well-designed for what AoS specifically wants to do, which is to say endless decontextualised armies of bad ass people fighting each other for eternity. It works very well as a backdrop for miniature wargaming. However, it is quite a narrow setting, and does not work well for pretty much anything else. AoS does one specific thing well and almost nothing else. But if you like that one specific thing, then it's great. Every now and then AoS comes out with an idea I like, or a novel that has a good moment in it, or a little cultural quirk I think is neat, but every time that happens I am tempted to just nick the good idea and reuse it in an original setting, because AoS' setting as a whole is not very good for roleplaying or storytelling or anything that isn't little miniature fighters slamming into each other repeatedly.
I think it's also that it's all just islands? There's no texture or sense of place to it. If you look at, say, Season of War: Thondia, it's just a random city surrounded by random landmarks without any clear sense of historical or geographic relationship. Everything about AoS' setting feels so very... "What is the point of this?""
But, the thing is, [the AoS map you posted is] completely meaningless. Putting a dot on a map there doesn't tell you anything. What is it near to? How has it effected the development of those places? How are they connected? What's happened historically? What do I do with any of this? The context is important. The problem is that they're still islands. The 'Lair of Dathuselai' is near 'Skavenskrol' next to the 'Great Cleaving River', on an unnamed peninsula north of a place called 'Lendu's Claw', and a distance away from 'Everquake City'. Okay. But would it make any difference whatsoever if the Lair of Dathuselai were on the other side of Thondia? Any at all? Has the lair influenced Skavenskrol in any way? Do the people who live around the Cleaving River (do any people live around the Cleaving River?) stay away from the Lair, or raid it, or use it to dispose of unwanted goods? Who was Lendu? Who lives in Everquake City, and what relations do they have to their neighbours? Random pins on a map don't mean anything by themselves.
Compare this to a map of Reikland. Notice how roads and rivers are marked, and with the benefit of supporting information, we can see how these places are connected. You can see how several towns are built over the mountain passes that lead to a neighbouring kingdom, and how towns follow the shapes of rivers, which are useful for travel, trade, drinking water, and irrigation. You can trace out the Altdorf-Weissbruck-Bogenhafen-Helmgart trade route without needing it specifically indicated to you. If you've read the book you know that the Reikwald is famously a home for bandits, and if you look at the map you can clearly see how that makes sense - it's large, dense, and probably has lots of place to hide, and it's easy to raid out from in order to attack the Bogenhafen-Ubersreik road (which itself seems to exist because there is no convenient water access between Ubersreik and Bogenhafen), and it gives you access to the river Teufel and the road from Bogenhafen to Altdorf. You can see how Castle Grauenberg has been deliberately built in this central location, probably ideal for checking customs coming out of Bogenhafen as well as dispatching relief forces to any of the surrounding towns, whereas Castle Reikguard is clearly a border watch. And so on. There are logical connections between the places. The point of a map is to see how places are spatially related to each other. Connections are the point. What are these places, and what do they have to do with each other?
To take a non-WFRP example, something like Atlas of Rokugan is satisfying because it does this. You can see how all the provinces are related to each other, you get some short notes on each one, and this lets you build up a picture of the country in some detail.
[quote=Inquisitor Gideon 782431 11442318 022b790ae04777a5de718767b58d7eb8.jpg
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TheBestBucketHead wrote: The only thing I hate about Age of Sigmar is that they destroyed Warhammer Fantasy to create it. The weird pocket dimension thing could be cool, but the models don't really inspire me to learn about any of the lore.
I called my local GW about the Spire of Dawn box and forgot that High Elves have a different name. The AoS names are the second worst thing about it.
Ok? So you judge it because of what came before it rather than on its own merits. Not the best way to do it but you do you.
I don't judge AoS because of what came before it. I said that was the one thing I hate about it. Not dislike. The pocket dimension thing could be cool, but I don't care for it. The names tend to be a bit daft. The models, while high fidelity, tend to look stupid to me. I don't really care for the elves riding sharks, as an example. I don't like the rule system. Having the to wound and to hit on the weapon is odd.
But, the fact that they destroyed Warhammer Fantasy is annoying, because I like the world, I like the characters, I like the way armies got into conflict, I like the lore, and I love my Skaven. They didn't have to destroy Warhammer Fantasy to have Age of Sigmar. Well, to have it as it is, they did. But an alternate, chaos realm invasion setting, with skirmish rules could have existed.
I imagine you wouldn't be very happy if 40k was blown up, and the Age of The Emperor came out, making 40k a rank and file game, where Custodes and Space Marines were replaced by Super Duper Pinky Boys and the Squirt Cannons.
Skaven and Vampire Counts are the only two armies I care about, and while Vampire Counts did get some neat models, I'm not a fan of how most are. Skaven have two new models, other than the board game, and neither interest me. I got one because it came in a pack with other models I wanted.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/10/12 02:26:34
‘What Lorgar’s fanatics have not seen is that these gods are nothing compared to the power and the majesty of the Machine-God. Already, members of our growing cult are using the grace of the Omnissiah – the true Omnissiah, not Terra’s false prophet – to harness the might of the warp. Geller fields, warp missiles, void shields, all these things you are familiar with. But their underlying principles can be turned to so much more. Through novel exploitations of these technologies we will gain mastery first over the energies of the empyrean, then over the lesser entities, until finally the very gods themselves will bend the knee and recognise the supremacy of the Machine-God"
- Heretek Ardim Protos in Titandeath by Guy Haley
Eh... I will defend AoS' storytelling to a degree. The Realms aren't isolated from one another; the events defining both second and third edition are explicitly events of one realm affecting all of them. Regular mortal humans still matter and still play big roles, yeah they are often overshadowed by larger figures but that's no different than WHFB. Locations of import still matter--yeah losing some fort off in some wilderness doesn't, but that was the same in WHFB. Both AoS and WHFB are also much better than 40k on all these points yet 40k receives comparatively sparse criticism for it.
That said there is still a lot of meat to the criticisms here, and I do not mean to discount them. I think GWreally needs to remember that the normal needs to exist for the abnormal to stand out, and making every part of every realm a super-death-trap just makes it seem like the danger is entirely overblown. Ditto for the exaggeration levels in army books (by all means hype the army, but it's pushed to ridiculous extremes), though that's a long-term Warhammer problem.
Inquisitor Gideon wrote: So...the same as WHF then? As that's exactly what you've just described. A bunch of silly names on a made up squiggle.
Except it's not the same. The Old World was set, defined and, most of all, finite. It had borders and locations and clear territories and there was always a sense of place involved. Characters, culture and conflicts were informed by geography. If something big happened, everyone could point to where it occurred as everyone had the same baseline to work from.
AoS, by comparison, is a formless floating maelstrom of absolutely arbitrary writing that is defined and undefined as often as the plot demands.
I had this discussion at another site a few months back, and there was someone else there who was putting it all into words quite well. I'll find what he wrote:
Spoiler:
The longer answer is that AoS' setting is well-designed for what AoS specifically wants to do, which is to say endless decontextualised armies of bad ass people fighting each other for eternity. It works very well as a backdrop for miniature wargaming. However, it is quite a narrow setting, and does not work well for pretty much anything else. AoS does one specific thing well and almost nothing else. But if you like that one specific thing, then it's great. Every now and then AoS comes out with an idea I like, or a novel that has a good moment in it, or a little cultural quirk I think is neat, but every time that happens I am tempted to just nick the good idea and reuse it in an original setting, because AoS' setting as a whole is not very good for roleplaying or storytelling or anything that isn't little miniature fighters slamming into each other repeatedly.
I think it's also that it's all just islands? There's no texture or sense of place to it. If you look at, say, Season of War: Thondia, it's just a random city surrounded by random landmarks without any clear sense of historical or geographic relationship. Everything about AoS' setting feels so very... "What is the point of this?""
But, the thing is, [the AoS map you posted is] completely meaningless. Putting a dot on a map there doesn't tell you anything. What is it near to? How has it effected the development of those places? How are they connected? What's happened historically? What do I do with any of this? The context is important. The problem is that they're still islands. The 'Lair of Dathuselai' is near 'Skavenskrol' next to the 'Great Cleaving River', on an unnamed peninsula north of a place called 'Lendu's Claw', and a distance away from 'Everquake City'. Okay. But would it make any difference whatsoever if the Lair of Dathuselai were on the other side of Thondia? Any at all? Has the lair influenced Skavenskrol in any way? Do the people who live around the Cleaving River (do any people live around the Cleaving River?) stay away from the Lair, or raid it, or use it to dispose of unwanted goods? Who was Lendu? Who lives in Everquake City, and what relations do they have to their neighbours? Random pins on a map don't mean anything by themselves.
Compare this to a map of Reikland. Notice how roads and rivers are marked, and with the benefit of supporting information, we can see how these places are connected. You can see how several towns are built over the mountain passes that lead to a neighbouring kingdom, and how towns follow the shapes of rivers, which are useful for travel, trade, drinking water, and irrigation. You can trace out the Altdorf-Weissbruck-Bogenhafen-Helmgart trade route without needing it specifically indicated to you. If you've read the book you know that the Reikwald is famously a home for bandits, and if you look at the map you can clearly see how that makes sense - it's large, dense, and probably has lots of place to hide, and it's easy to raid out from in order to attack the Bogenhafen-Ubersreik road (which itself seems to exist because there is no convenient water access between Ubersreik and Bogenhafen), and it gives you access to the river Teufel and the road from Bogenhafen to Altdorf. You can see how Castle Grauenberg has been deliberately built in this central location, probably ideal for checking customs coming out of Bogenhafen as well as dispatching relief forces to any of the surrounding towns, whereas Castle Reikguard is clearly a border watch. And so on. There are logical connections between the places. The point of a map is to see how places are spatially related to each other. Connections are the point. What are these places, and what do they have to do with each other?
To take a non-WFRP example, something like Atlas of Rokugan is satisfying because it does this. You can see how all the provinces are related to each other, you get some short notes on each one, and this lets you build up a picture of the country in some detail.
There seems to be a LOT of people packing this thread with discussion that's better suited elsewhere solely because they prefer World Of Warcraft played like 40K with bows instead of Tolkien-esque fantasy played like historical regimental combat.
How does us who DO prefer regimental combat getting our Official Games Workshop Fantasy Game back adversely affect you? It must, or else you wouldn't be spamming a News and Rumors thread with your opinions about Realmgates or the inability to understand why people would cross oceans in boats to explore/conquer. I mean, it's not like we had Norwegians doing the same thing in boats not really built for it in an equivocal time period here on Earth...
Dawnbringer wrote: Well, at least until 6th, cannons and most other seige weapons affected larger units more, through the use of templates (cannons impacted in a straight line, so unless flanking a target pretty much just hit one model per row).
Also, I'm pretty sure most of the massive units started after 6th due to changes to flanking and rank bonus.
And you would be wrong. Very rarely would you see a unit pass 20 models.
And yeah, war machines still used templates with the exception of cannons amd bolt throwers, and cannons could still fire a grapeshot template.
Umm, explain where I'm wrong? I was arguing that until at least 6th edition (never really played 7th) cannons and warmachines worked better against larger units, thus not encouraging units 30-40 models in size, which was being argued above my post.
I also stated the large units started after 6th, now perhaps it went from 20 for 6 and 7, then suddenly jumped to 40 at 8th, but I suspect it was more gradual than that.
You stated that Large units started in 6th, which was wrong, and you inferred that template/high casualty war machines stopped at 6th. Both of which were wrong.
Dawnbringer wrote: Well, at least until 6th, cannons and most other seige weapons affected larger units more, through the use of templates (cannons impacted in a straight line, so unless flanking a target pretty much just hit one model per row).
Also, I'm pretty sure most of the massive units started after 6th due to changes to flanking and rank bonus.
And you would be wrong. Very rarely would you see a unit pass 20 models.
And yeah, war machines still used templates with the exception of cannons amd bolt throwers, and cannons could still fire a grapeshot template.
Umm, explain where I'm wrong? I was arguing that until at least 6th edition (never really played 7th) cannons and warmachines worked better against larger units, thus not encouraging units 30-40 models in size, which was being argued above my post.
I also stated the large units started after 6th, now perhaps it went from 20 for 6 and 7, then suddenly jumped to 40 at 8th, but I suspect it was more gradual than that.
War machines were still templates in 7th and 8th and indeed 8th added whole unit save or die spells, the problem was large units got so many attacks as well as being necessary to absorb those levels of attacks they became necessary.
Unit size went up from 16-20 to 20-25 with 7th (in both cases giving max ranks plus one as ablative wounds).
In 8th however:
1) you fought in 2 ranks rather than one and if you struck second everyone still got to attack rather than being reduced by casualties (in 6th/7th it was common for only characters and champions to be able to attack if you lost too many models).
2) if you were 10 wide (‘horde’ formation) you got to fight in 3 ranks rather than two, meaning 40 was the minimum for both max attacks and max ranks.
The additional effect of these was anvil units also needed to be similarly massive to absorb the sheer number of attacks put out by these units, leading to the 5x8 ‘bus’ formation as a 20-25 sized unit would just get deleted by the sheer volume of attacks.
This cat here pretty much covered it, but I want to go on record and say that rather than spew misinformation/flat out lies about what did or didn't happen in an edition, you go out of your way to do some research and find out. Parroting something someone else got wrong does you no favors, nor meta comments when one wasn't part of the meta back then. Grinds my gears before we take into consideration how fractured the community already is.
Just Tony wrote: There seems to be a LOT of people packing this thread with discussion that's better suited elsewhere solely because they prefer World Of Warcraft played like 40K with bows instead of Tolkien-esque fantasy played like historical regimental combat.
Fair enough. It indeed ends up being 2 sides, one that hates AoS and another that doesn't. You can't really have arguments when emotions cloud reason.
I'll just say that Battle's name was originally Warhammer Fantasy Battles , and in it there is the word "fantasy". Fantasy isn't about copying reality or make it relevant...Even if you hate AoS's direction or world building, you should never forget that Warhammer Battle at the beginning was exactly that (remember the first artworks with floating rocks in the sky and ship rolling on the ground ?), and AoS isn't so far from its ancestor in more than one way. I'm old enough to remember its true roots, I can understand if others don't and think AoS isn't relevant. In reality, AoS is making "new" from old WFB stuff, just free from the shackles it made itself as editions keep piling on the same crowded planet. (And comparison with 40k is really funny, because more than SF, it's leaning a lot more on Fantasy.)
In the end, the question is about what inspiration is felt more "valid" than another. In the days of the creation of WFB, there weren't the same sources than in the days of the creation of AoS. That question is, to me, completely unnecessary. You always take inspiration of what's existing at the time of the creation, so of course it keeps constantly moving. It doesn't make new sources of inspiration worst than the old ones, just different.
But well, that is a question of generation conflict. The grumpy old timers don't want to aknowledge the new blood, and lead the new blood to think the grumpy old timers are too grumpy for their own good.
Which will be very interesting to follow for this Old World project, because we will be in the exact same situation. Source of its inspiration will obviously be WFB, but not only...pretty sure they'll be inspired of what they did with AoS as well. And I'm certain it will also lead to the same AoS haters to reject some of their design choices when it will be released, for the exact same reason they hate AoS. We already have a glimpse with Kislev and its ice-magic weapons or Cathay and...well, everything in Cathay, actually (the map of Cathay in Total War Warhammer 3 is completely going on full fantasy, with lots of floating rocks in the skies that would be really fitting in AoS's world ).
2015, here we'll go again...(year of the first launch of AoS with WFB fans clashing with AoS fans about similar lines)
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Overread wrote: AoS 2015 wasn't really old fans clashing with new
It was more most of GW's current fantasy customers and fans clashing with GW
I think you don't remember these times as well as me. Sure, there was the usual dakkadakka crowd blaming GW for well existing, but in the game subforums / dedicated forums elsewhere or even in clubs / stores, it was very much about the clash between old WFB fans who didn't accept the death of their favored game and those who accepted it and wanted to try the game as it was proposed to them.
Of course, there was the infamous rule of using no points to build your army or measure from any part of the model while ignoring the base, and amongst those who lashed at it, there were more than a disgrunted WFB fan that never wanted to try the game and just pointed out at absurdities that never happen in game simply to discredit it. Those who did usually never played the game or intended to at the very start. They were just angry with this new game and wanting it to fail.
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I'm only a WFB fan since 8th edition, so maybe I'm not as dug-in as some. I have no issue with retconning/adding to the history of the game/world.
Suddenly one morning a Lustrian island appears off the coast of Brettonia, some Slann mages having moved it there somehow because they want to go looking for a single sacred plaque that is in the Old World? "Now you have a reason to have Lizardmen in the setting."
I have no problem with that!
AoS is waaay too hand-wavy with the world history, geography etc etc from everything I've seen of it. Having a coherent "please don't sue us Tolkien Estate" old fashioned fantasy world doesn't have to be some iron shackles for the setting. GW have been tweaking and retconning forever.
40k walks a great fine line, because if you ever want to justify why X is fighting Y on Z planet "uh a warp storm, some ships from 5000 years ago appeared so that's why" works perfectly fine. It seems they wanted that for AoS yet threw the baby out with the bathwater. They've gone all in on fantasy-world-salad both in specifics on characters/units/factions AND the world itself which I personally can't stand. Even 8th edition WFB (or at least some army books) got a tad too on the nose with fantasy-word-salad for me, but then you always had to take it with a grain of salt that each book discussed the faction from a very over the top manner, either from the race themselves or their enemies.
I always find it a bit sad when people seem to be really entrenched in WFB as a LORE IS SRS BSNS fantasy setting when it's a fun and very very silly generic mashup with football hooligan orcs, medieval knights who turn their noses up at ranked musket firepower yet somehow succeed and chaos knights wearing more plate metal than a Panzer tank yet still somehow remaining upright.
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That's why I believe the Old World project will suffer the same clashes / critics when it will be released, because I'm sure it will be different from the days of Warhammer Battle. Not just talking about rules, but the lore too. They'll definitely add new stuff that won't satisfy some people who think their interpretation of the lore is the only one that is valid, for -insert random nitpicking reason-.
I mean, just look at HBMC and read his reactions to Kislev and Cathay stuff, or his own comments here. It doesn't take to be a genius to see he won't be satisfied with the Old World project, because it will never be what he wants it to be : the old Warhammer Battle world exactly as he remembered and loved. Because the people designing it will be clearly different / older than the ones who did design Warhammer Battle at that time, and their interpretations / sources of inspiration change too.
Things change, even when you try to remake the past for nostalgia business...it will never be exactly the past you remember.
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Good thing the vaaaaast majority of players aren't all online forum whingers and will either say "meh" and move on, or enjoy it
The market they gain from the Total Warhammer games alone will be insane. I believe it's the only reason they're even doing The Old World, and if they had a crystal ball back in the day and saw how successful the series would be then they would never have killed off WFB in the same way.
Overread wrote: AoS 2015 wasn't really old fans clashing with new
It was more most of GW's current fantasy customers and fans clashing with GW
I think you don't remember these times as well as me. Sure, there was the usual dakkadakka crowd blaming GW for well existing, but in the game subforums / dedicated forums elsewhere, it was very much about the clash between old WFB fans who didn't accept the death of their favored game and those who accepted it and wanted to try the game as it was proposed to them.
Of course, there was the infamous rule of using no points to build your army, and amongst those who lashed at it, there were more than a disgrunted WFB fan that never wanted to try the game and just pointed out at absurdities that never happen in game simply to discredit it. Those who did usually never played the game or intended to at the very start. They were just angry with this new game and wanting it to fail.
There 100% was fans VS GW - not on the message boards because GW at that time didn't even interact with the internet nor have anywhere online you could talk to them in public. The battle there was with cash.
And yes fans were against each other because a huge subset of fans got a game they loved taken away and replaced with a non-game entity that saw several armies worth of models removed; several armies shattered into component parts (some of the official armies had 1 model to their name on the GW store) and the entire structure of what they liked lost. Replaced with a "take what you want and if you've got a beard your dwarves get +1 attacks" style of rules. Of course there was conflict. AoS was replacing a product line (with the same models broadly speaking) and product with an entirely different market focus.
I also know that at that time people who wrote their own rules enjoyed a period of, at least local, acceptance and found it way easier to get home-brew games going because there really was no official structure to the game.
As for "Situations that never arose" I assume you mean where two people came to a game with wildly imbalanced lists - which doesn't maen one person has to bring 20 dragons they bought and built that weekend (less likely); but it does most certainly happen very easily if there's no, even crude, ability to weigh powers of things against each other.
I didn't realise 'floating rocks' was the definitive mark of how fantastical a setting is...
It comes down to context for me; something like that appears in Ulthuan or Athel Loren or Troll Country then nobody bats an eyelid. If it occurs in random little Gersomethingstadt village in Reikland then it's a significant event (for the locals at least). I think there's a perception (perhaps unjustified at this point), that AoS doesn't make that distinction and everything everywhere is constantly 'turned up to 11' and every aspect of life being infused with something magical. So it's not a case of 'high fantasy magic' not existing in The Old World; it's how regular an occurrence it is within the respective parts of the setting and (particularly early) AoS probably felt like it didn't have a baseline level of 'normality' for the average farmer (or whatever) to work from.
Which I think guys like Phil Kelly seem to have realised was becoming problematic as there's been a definite tonal shift in how they're approaching some parts of the AoS setting and more recent creations (and the upcoming crusader stuff) seems to be a conscious effort to make factions and places that are more grounded. Some of that is just endemic of the writers working with a more established setting and it's actually interesting (and valid) to explore how basic functions such as growing crops or building a wall interact with the idiosyncrasies of the individual 'Realms'. It's arguably one of the more interesting aspects of the setting. Some of that is also probably a recognition that there's a lot of the fanbase who want explicit references to the Old World, certainly in terms of characters, because it's easier to engage with familiar names and faces than 'yet another' Stormcast with an overblown copyrightable name.
When it comes to things like the Ice-weapons in the Kislev design then it probably was a bit of an over-reaction; I know I was guilty of getting unnecessarily annoyed by it seemingly being everywhere in the design when it's really exclusive to a pretty small facet of Kislev's Total War unit roster. I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to be wary of GW being prone to 'Flanderization' of a faction's design though. The Ice-Sled is still a bit dumb. Funnily enough I don't recall much moaning about Cathay's design in that regard. They have a lot of very 'non-magical' troops backed up by some powerful constructs etc. and it fits right in. Their rulers are, very openly, divine shape-shifting dragon wizards (something that's been at least hinted at for a long time) so there being an element of more fantastical units in their roster doesn't feel at all 'off'. Again; context.
JimmyWolf87 wrote: I didn't realise 'floating rocks' was the definitive mark of how fantastical a setting is...
It comes down to context for me; something like that appears in Ulthuan or Athel Loren or Troll Country then nobody bats an eyelid. If it occurs in random little Gersomethingstadt village in Reikland then it's a significant event (for the locals at least). I think there's a perception (perhaps unjustified at this point), that AoS doesn't make that distinction and everything everywhere is constantly 'turned up to 11' and every aspect of life being infused with something magical. So it's not a case of 'high fantasy magic' not existing in The Old World; it's how regular an occurrence it is within the respective parts of the setting and (particularly early) AoS probably felt like it didn't have a baseline level of 'normality' for the average farmer (or whatever) to work from.
Which I think guys like Phil Kelly seem to have realised was becoming problematic as there's been a definite tonal shift in how they're approaching some parts of the AoS setting and more recent creations (and the upcoming crusader stuff) seems to be a conscious effort to make factions and places that are more grounded. Some of that is just endemic of the writers working with a more established setting and it's actually interesting (and valid) to explore how basic functions such as growing crops or building a wall interact with the idiosyncrasies of the individual 'Realms'. It's arguably one of the more interesting aspects of the setting. Some of that is also probably a recognition that there's a lot of the fanbase who want explicit references to the Old World, certainly in terms of characters, because it's easier to engage with familiar names and faces than 'yet another' Stormcast with an overblown copyrightable name.
When it comes to things like the Ice-weapons in the Kislev design then it probably was a bit of an over-reaction; I know I was guilty of getting unnecessarily annoyed by it seemingly being everywhere in the design when it's really exclusive to a pretty small facet of Kislev's Total War unit roster. I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to be wary of GW being prone to 'Flanderization' of a faction's design though. The Ice-Sled is still a bit dumb. Funnily enough I don't recall much moaning about Cathay's design in that regard. They have a lot of very 'non-magical' troops backed up by some powerful constructs etc. and it fits right in. Their rulers are, very openly, divine shape-shifting dragon wizards (something that's been at least hinted at for a long time) so there being an element of more fantastical units in their roster doesn't feel at all 'off'. Again; context.
That's interesting. Yes, early AoS world was very vague at best, but I think it's a question of how you begin to present a new world to your audience. In the beginning, they wanted to give people the general idea of the new world's shape, so they did start with the different realms and their basics without entering into details. Those were destined to be filled in later.
When Warhammer Battle began at first, do you think they started by showing a farmer's life in this world ? No. They started with the general shape directly involved with the context of their battles (and it was very vague too, which is understandable since they were making miniatures for D&D).
Now we're in the phase where details can be added and it gives more substance to the world indeed. But the fact AoS's economy doesn't rely on money and more on fantasy stuff doesn't make it less relevant than your Empire farmer using mondane means - it just changes the ways you picture them in your head while imagining what it could be, based on your own references in reality. One draws more to imagination than the other, and that's to me the real point of fantasy. If it's just referring too much to historical references...what's the point of using fantasy at all ? Go historical the full way. That's what it felt in Warhammer Battle in editions that were referencing too much on that to me...and why people loving it were discrediting new miniatures deemed too "high fantasy" to them when they were released, like the demigryph knights for the Empire or the infamous flying chariots of the High Elves.
Giving the past articles on Kislev and Cathay, I expect the Old World project being more on fantasy than reality on that matter. Maybe using portals to move armies, who knows ?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/10/12 09:53:03
That's interesting. Yes, early AoS world was very vague at best, but I think it's a question of how you begin to present a new world to your audience. In the beginning, they wanted to give people the general idea of the new world's shape, so they did start with the different realms and their basics without entering into details. Those were destined to be filled in later.
When Warhammer Battle began at first, do you think they started by showing a farmer's life in this world ? No. They started with the general shape directly involved with the context of their battles (and it was very vague too, which is understandable since they were making miniatures for D&D).
Sure but I think there's a tangible difference between a setting being loosely construed in the 1980s as a side-angle to use models being made for D&D then gradually, organically, becoming more distinct over time as it gained popularity (and the company gained commercial success) and one that was (in theory...) consciously built from the ground up by a modern, concentrated design focus as a direct replacement of the previous, beloved setting. It's baffling that the regime at the time couldn't see where it would lead by having practically nothing of substance. I agree that there was an understandable desire to have a world with less constraints (and opportunity for more expansive model design) but the execution was utterly dire in that first instance. There's having a broad, open canvas to work with in terms of building a setting and then there's asking players to just draw stick-figures using the ashes of the Old World whilst they're still a bit warm.
Now we're in the phase where details can be added and it gives more substance to the world indeed. But the fact AoS's economy doesn't rely on money and more on fantasy stuff doesn't make it less relevant than your Empire farmer using mondane means - it just changes the ways you picture them in your head while imagining what it could be, based on your own references in reality. One draws more to imagination than the other, and that's to me the real point of fantasy. If it's just referring too much to historical references...what's the point of using fantasy at all ? Go historical the full way. That's what it felt in Warhammer Battle in editions that were referencing too much on that to me...and why people loving it were discrediting new miniatures deemed too "high fantasy" to them when they were released, like the demigryph knights for the Empire or the infamous flying chariots of the High Elves.
Which is your preference for a more 'fantastical fantasy' setting (which is fine by the way); I don't necessarily agree that it allows for more imagination on the players' part or that having nods to historical sources (or literary pop culture in many instances) negated the relevance of the Old World as a fantasy setting. Far from it; it was arguably a significant part of its charm.
Giving the past articles on Kislev and Cathay, I expect the Old World project being more on fantasy than reality on that matter. Maybe using portals to move armies, who knows ?
I don't personally; if anything, given the time period they've chosen to work with it might conceivably been even more mundane than previously; it looks like it's pre-Great War against Chaos so in terms of the Empire at least, a lot of the more escoteric elements of the faction hadn't been established yet and, with basically any part of Old World history to choose from, it's possibly quite telling that then is where they landed. I know you're joking on that last part but I'll still hate that it was even suggested
I'm hoping The Old World reappears as a mirror/split universe situation, with AoS continuing as it's own parallel universe and an alternate timeline where chaos was pushed back at great cost as a setting for The Old World.
Something like the situation in 40k where the great rift made things a lot more unstable, but stopped short of exploding the entire galaxy.
It would be nice to have the game back in a manner where the timeline and background can continue as normal rather than being a historical setting. Special characters who crossed over into the mortal realms could be lost forever from TOW universe and other changes like that to refresh the setting.
If Star Trek can do it and keep everyone happy...
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2022/10/12 10:41:32
I think that ship has sailed, all of the content seen so far puts it as a prequel set several hundred years in the past.
I agree that setting it after the Storm of Chaos/End Times could have been a nice way to soft reboot the setting and potentially move some players around, along with increased support for alternative game sizes. Probably retcon some of the ET lore like the United Elves, but a setting in which Archaon lost or even dies, along with the Elves and Lizards migrating East and the Empire rebuilding itself from the ashes.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/10/12 10:49:55
WarOne wrote:
At the very peak of his power, Mat Ward stood at the top echelons of the GW hierarchy, second only to Satan in terms of personal power within the company.
