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 Overread wrote:
Meanwhile at the top end there is a LOT of power behind that faith. You can't just sweep it under the carpet in one go. Remember in this setting the Faith is very tightly bound to the military on many levels even to having their own women at arms (Sisters of Battle).
If you declared the faith in the Emperor null and void you're trying to go against 10 Thousand years of training and indoctrination, power bodies and more.

Years ago, my personal headcanon was that the Imperial Church was a means of the Emperor fulfilling his original 'make mankind a psychic species' plan, and all the miracles and acts of faith were actually psychic potential being unlocked in the faithful. Extra points for the most anti-psyker faction actually being the most psychic.

Since then, GW has gone on to explicitly state that faith is completely distinct from psychic powers, which makes me sad.

 Shakalooloo wrote:
Since then, GW has gone on to explicitly state that faith is completely distinct from psychic powers, which makes me sad.

So the Emperor's apotheosis is now canon?

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:
Anyone else wondering if Guilliman might actually try to get rid of the whole 'faith' thing? After all, the Emperor never wanted to be worshipped as a god, and Guilliman would know that.

Yr he wanted and Claimed otherwise as it suited him.


Afterall heresy went more or less as he planned

 Overread wrote:
You can't just stop Imperial Faith. In some ways its the only thing holding the Imperium together as a single operating functional body of humanity.

Meanwhile at the top end there is a LOT of power behind that faith. You can't just sweep it under the carpet in one go. Remember in this setting the Faith is very tightly bound to the military on many levels even to having their own women at arms (Sisters of Battle).
If you declared the faith in the Emperor null and void you're trying to go against 10 Thousand years of training and indoctrination, power bodies and more.


He might be almost second to the Emperor in theory, but don't forget his brothers fell to darkness and him denying the divinity of the Emperor would be just the kind of thing a fallen one would say.

He has to play within the politics of the age he is in now. To do otherwise would run the risk of causing the Imperium to suffer a second civil war

And that is indeed again something addressed in the lore once he’s back.
That it’s necessary and he can’t do much about it, whatever his thoughts on it.

 His Master's Voice wrote:

 Shakalooloo wrote:
Since then, GW has gone on to explicitly state that faith is completely distinct from psychic powers, which makes me sad.

So the Emperor's apotheosis is now canon?

It has been since the very first set of Heresy books when Keeler manifested miracles in the Emperor's name through faith alone.

Euphrati Keeler was the one present at the banishment of the Chaos Spawn summoned by Kyril Sinderman. Keeler invoked the name of the Emperor in confrontation (as she was a follower of the Lectitio Divinitatus likely due to her encounter with Samus on 63-19) and it was the Lidless Stare of the Vengeful Spirit's Navigator that finally killed it. Keeler then fell into a coma and became an object of worship for the followers of the Divinitatus with the Silent Sisterhood theorising she may have in fact been a latent Psyker.

Fixed.

 KidCthulhu wrote:
I think that's just it; I liked them better when they didn't have a POV.
Probably because I'm nostalgic for their 2nd Edition incarnation.

It's kinda funny how people who never played DoW (or read Xenology, or any of the other dozen+ sources but these two are the most prominent) think old Necrons didn't have 'personality' when they absolutely did:

https://youtu.be/n0FEo2WSLBM?t=196 [I so miss DoW quips, good humor and better writing than 95% of GW output...]

New Necrons are not only far more grimdark than old incarnation, but Trazyn and co were one of the best additions to 40K canon in the last two decades. Also, 5th edition Codex was one of the best transitions from one trick pony same-same "army" into a real, fleshed out in both lore and diverse minis faction in the four decades of the setting. Also, funnily enough the book left in place option of having one dimensional Oldcrons still with several canon examples but no one does this as it is just trash in comparison and just boring.

 Geifer wrote:
It'll just be more Saturday morning cartoon villainy like anything Necron from the past fifteen years, and that just isn't for me.

If you think actual characters with backstory, motivations, goals and quirks are more 'Saturday morning cartoon' than faceless mooks with none of that and zero depth existing only to provide good shooting targets in literal cardboard Saturday morning cartoon villain copy-paste I have no idea what to tell you

 Irbis wrote:

 KidCthulhu wrote:
I think that's just it; I liked them better when they didn't have a POV.
Probably because I'm nostalgic for their 2nd Edition incarnation.

It's kinda funny how people who never played DoW (or read Xenology, or any of the other dozen+ sources but these two are the most prominent) think old Necrons didn't have 'personality' when they absolutely did:

https://youtu.be/n0FEo2WSLBM?t=196 [I so miss DoW quips, good humor and better writing than 95% of GW output...]

New Necrons are not only far more grimdark than old incarnation, but Trazyn and co were one of the best additions to 40K canon in the last two decades. Also, 5th edition Codex was one of the best transitions from one trick pony same-same "army" into a real, fleshed out in both lore and diverse minis faction in the four decades of the setting. Also, funnily enough the book left in place option of having one dimensional Oldcrons still with several canon examples but no one does this as it is just trash in comparison and just boring.

 Geifer wrote:
It'll just be more Saturday morning cartoon villainy like anything Necron from the past fifteen years, and that just isn't for me.

If you think actual characters with backstory, motivations, goals and quirks are more 'Saturday morning cartoon' than faceless mooks with none of that and zero depth existing only to provide good shooting targets in literal cardboard Saturday morning cartoon villain copy-paste I have no idea what to tell you

Some people were sold on Necron as "terminator robots but in space and without Swarzennager" and apparently took that so deeply to heart that anything different must be the work of the devil.

But seriously, lore changes but it doesn't define your army. if you want to play your Necron as faceless emotionless robots that never have an iota of personality other than 'kill all life', go for it. If you want your Necron overlord to be an over-the-top Broadway-type drama-king, go for it. What other people do, and even what GW prints, does not have that big of an impact on how you define your own models.

I don't think I'll prolong my subscription this year and I have a gut feeling I am not the only one. The announcement of Pariah Nexus for summer is actually making it worse tbh. Because that means it will come out in what normal people call fall, so Season 3 most likely.

The simple reason is, the service is drying up fast. It's been almost 6 months into season 2 and of the promised 5 or so shows, only the final cuts (filler content), the finale of Interrogator, the Angels of Death prequel and 2 H&B have materialised. We are down to something like 1 animation per month and it is steadily declining even if the quality is somewhat increasing. They went from 4 WDs down to 2 per week, with one week of 1 WD of the current publications. It's understandable, since this is a limited resource and they are running out of them in about 4 years (at this pace), but still. they couldn't even hold the timing for the annual season mini, but instead had people paying for their annual membership and only fixed that up months later.

There are no updates to the interfaces. The vault is a mess, I still get an advertisement for the service I have already subscribed to (that is very basic UX no go) and there is no ordering, taggin, filtering besides a simple search. Which is terrible considering that the only real saving grace is that the vault is by now actually quite full of nice lore. And don't get me started on the horrible reader. The TV page is still riddled with bugs (sometimes I am signed in, but it tells me I need to sign in to watch, if I fast forward/backward more than 3 times in a row the player just goes belly up most of the time etc.)

And the 40K app.....is still steaming pile of remains on rails.

Yes I am aware that the quality of the content is getting better, but there is so much else that is stagnating that the only saving grace for annual subscription is the mini. So it better be really good and on time or else I rather see myself at purchasing a single months subscription every 12-18 months and probably watch the entire new content on a saturday afternoon once a year.

It's not like GW is not having funds ready for investment, we know their annual numbers.

Weren't we also promised a Crusade app for 40k at some point?

And where's my Imperial Knight show GW?

i wish i can buy to own. i hate renting for eternity. i mean, how can i watch these animations, when games workshop discontinues the warhammer tv service

shadowsfm wrote:
i wish i can buy to own. i hate renting for eternity. i mean, how can i watch these animations, when games workshop discontinues the warhammer tv service

That is my biggest complaint with the whole move toward streaming. GW are very much not alone; there are a lot of streamed shows now which might get entirely lost because the companies streaming them will see no need for DVD/Bluray releases and if they do do them they might be the collectors style. So very limited production run; limited sale window and likely a very high price with other collectable items inside. So neat, but not the kind of thing you can just grab on a whim and not the kind of thing that will sit long in the market to give you a chance too if you're not right there at the release window.

Welcome to the new world, where you will own nothing, but still pay for it.

There must be a way of getting them into some video converter or something?

There are.
Videos of them all exist out there. For all the other video content too.
I thought about grabbing them, but to be fair, once watched on WH+ I haven’t gone back to any since.

 Overread wrote:
That is my biggest complaint with the whole move toward streaming. GW are very much not alone; there are a lot of streamed shows now which might get entirely lost because the companies streaming them will see no need for DVD/Bluray releases and if they do do them they might be the collectors style.

Never mind videos, as that at least is easy to capture and a lot of people do that to share the works with countries where said streaming service doesn't run. There as a lot of online only games, often with amazing art and stories, that only give a client to players and will be completely dead and gone once the servers shut down. Sure, people do summaries and youtube playthroughs, but all that does preserve is one path out of many and it's only a tiny slice of real experience...

Interesting update from GW's financial report. They mention that they have 115 thousand subscribers for Warhammer+. That's more than I expected.

Chikout wrote:
Interesting update from GW's financial report. They mention that they have 115 thousand subscribers for Warhammer+. That's more than I expected.

And almost one bit of content for every subscriber!

Nice to get hard numbers. It makes sense, though, doesn't it? GW's profits started to soar when they introduced start collecting boxes as a more affordable way to get into the game for those not interested in the respective edition's starter box armies, and when they turned the 40k rules into something they could market as beginner friendly with 8th ed. It's only been going up for GW since then. That suggests a healthy and broad customer base.

That was Kirby's failing after all, trying to get more out of the existing customers instead of getting more people interested.

 Geifer wrote:
Nice to get hard numbers. It makes sense, though, doesn't it? GW's profits started to soar when they introduced start collecting boxes as a more affordable way to get into the game for those not interested in the respective edition's starter box armies, and when they turned the 40k rules into something they could market as beginner friendly with 8th ed. It's only been going up for GW since then. That suggests a healthy and broad customer base.

That was Kirby's failing after all, trying to get more out of the existing customers instead of getting more people interested.

50 quid per year is also shrewdly chosen as the classic 'whatever' price point you'd reasonably gift someone or buy for yourself for a threat - it's about-ish what a recent B-list console or PC game would cost without DLC, and pretty attractive due to the 'vault' stuff.

 Geifer wrote:
Nice to get hard numbers. It makes sense, though, doesn't it? GW's profits started to soar when they introduced start collecting boxes as a more affordable way to get into the game for those not interested in the respective edition's starter box armies, and when they turned the 40k rules into something they could market as beginner friendly with 8th ed. It's only been going up for GW since then. That suggests a healthy and broad customer base.

That was Kirby's failing after all, trying to get more out of the existing customers instead of getting more people interested.

Actually as I recall it Kirby was very pro new customer, but the staff training under him was very anti long term customer. I seem to recall the USA staff training was hyper focused on getting new customers and not as much interested in maintaining old ones.

In fact Kirby was famed for saying that he didn't need polls or consumer surveys, that he and his management understood their customers purely by instinct. Which was a core issue, they didn't. It led to insanity like the Age of Sigmar launch where the management were convinced customers were only interested in collectable models and I think they were even hoping to kind of lean into the thing that Comics and Magic the Gathering have been through - limited production run high profit model releases for collector/investor customers. Certainly AoS wasn't a game, it was a model collection at launch.

The other issue was a fear of modern marketing. Kirby management feared the internet and did not use it. They fought against it constantly. Meanwhile relying on a paid magazine as their main marketing tool.

The result was a management system that was built around getting new customers in the door with a view of short term profits in those early days, with little to no concern of retaining or returning long term customers.
They had a similar view to their products, things like Dreadfleet or Space Hulk making short term returns for quick cash injections with little to no desire to stretch them out into long products. There was also pressure on investment to find the best to invest in, which meant a hyper focus on Marines because nothing made a better return. Heck at its height GW decided to double the amount of marines by releasing primaris alongside regular marines instead of just doing a sculpt upgrade and releasing a new edition of marine models (which I'm convinced was the original conception for Primaris based on the fact that their army composition is almost identical to the core marine force)
There were also hiccups like the whole Lord of the Rings bubble bursting


Current management is using far more modern marketing and has reconnected with its actual playerbase. GW is running/sponsoring events again; they are marketing online every single day of the year; they are pushing out updates based on user feedback; they are responding to actual consumer surveys. The massive sales surges after Kirby left I think are a result of reinforcing the policies and methods for getting new people in the door; but also a massive amount of people who were customers returning to the fold. Bringing back old games; focusing investment outside of marines; etc...




In short Kirby management loved new customers and wanted to love established ones, but they didn't really understand either and they understood established ones the least.

Tsagualsa wrote:

 Geifer wrote:
Nice to get hard numbers. It makes sense, though, doesn't it? GW's profits started to soar when they introduced start collecting boxes as a more affordable way to get into the game for those not interested in the respective edition's starter box armies, and when they turned the 40k rules into something they could market as beginner friendly with 8th ed. It's only been going up for GW since then. That suggests a healthy and broad customer base.

That was Kirby's failing after all, trying to get more out of the existing customers instead of getting more people interested.

50 quid per year is also shrewdly chosen as the classic 'whatever' price point you'd reasonably gift someone or buy for yourself for a threat - it's about-ish what a recent B-list console or PC game would cost without DLC, and pretty attractive due to the 'vault' stuff.

And don't forget the plasticrack. No matter the quality and quantity of the digital content, getting something tangible you can enjoy even after your subscription is canceled gives people who aren't sold on the service and its price something different they may find appealing.

Yeay! New episode

Yep! Mechanicus being all Mechanicus!

dark eldar vs imperial guard vs iron warriors. joy

Iron Within was fairly good.

Just when I think I should give up on WH+, they shoestring me along a little further. Iron Within is good.

Yeah and I like that they released it in one go instead of broken into weekly parts. Good fun and a great watch.


Animation can be a bit stiff here and there, but overall solid

Iron Within was really good, shame the title spoils the 'twist' and that the animation models haven't been re-scaled much from their miniature versions - those Dark Eldar knives are huge!

 Shakalooloo wrote:
Iron Within was really good, shame the title spoils the 'twist' and that the animation models haven't been re-scaled much from their miniature versions - those Dark Eldar knives are huge!

I think, based on the last few seconds, it has another somewhat surprising twist? But yeah, I presume they need to attract viewers with the title.