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I’ll believe it when I see it.

I know what tomorrow is, but to those that think it's a joke: April Fool's is also how we got a reboot of Blood Bowl and Voltann.

It's still a little in the air, but all we can do is wait for the time being.

 Mr_Rose wrote:
It would have been cooler if the more diffuse and wibbly parts of the Realms got separated off into a gas giant type setup with all the habitable bits of the planes turned into moons.
The Kharadron could have a roaring space trade, the totally-not-dark elves could get their black arks back for… similar purposes, relmgates would still have a point…
Everyone has to deal with the new cosmology but suddenly the magic is everywhere in spaaace so there’s people out there trying to make a living without ever touching solid ground.

Call it Warjammer.

You act like Broken Realms didn't already give us an actual AoS space battle.

This is the dumbest GW rumour I've ever heard, so it must be true.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
This is the dumbest GW rumour I've ever heard, so it must be true.

The fact that ToW sold better than they expected and that total war has remained popular IMO is telling the corporate pigs that WFB was always more valuable for a range of reasons and their decade long meander into cynical corporate washing to try and make something that would sell better just isn't working for them anymore.

This may all be a hilarious joke by some twisted people, but AoS never had any creative credibility - it was a cynical managerial direction that looted another IP and tried to resell the same product with different labels. If ChatGPT had existed back then I would have thought that's what they used to make it...

Will be interesting to see whether this goes anywhere or not. With WFB back, I am less concerned with what happens to AoS. Except unapologetic schadenfreude at GW's management.



IMO it would have been better to turn ToW into the 'last world' with all the realms surrounding it, with ToW being the fulcrum that ultimately decided the fate of reality.

GW took a risk, and they hit it big. Personally, it would be suicidal to retcon the entire thing after 4 editions. I seriously I think it's an April Fool's joke to mess with the only group of fans that refused to switch to AoS....

... or tell me, did you jump ship, and stick to just rank and file games like IXth age, only to come back to GW once ToW was teased...?

 parakuribo wrote:
GW took a risk, and they hit it big. Personally, it would be suicidal to retcon the entire thing after 4 editions.

Well, sounds just like another era, not a retcon. So... Age of Sigmar: The Old Realms as a future specialist game?

 Hellebore wrote:
This may all be a hilarious joke by some twisted people, but AoS never had any creative credibility - it was a cynical managerial direction that looted another IP and tried to resell the same product with different labels. If ChatGPT had existed back then I would have thought that's what they used to make it...

Originally, perhaps - I was certainly one of the haters back then, here on Dakka included. But it has done an incredible job of developing its own identity since. I am almost done reading Skaventide and it's genuinely fantastic. I'd say it easily has more creative merit than the bulk of Space Marine books, and that's all the bar it needs to clear to justify itself (and I am being conservative, really).

Personally I like the idea of it.

Don't get me wrong, in concept I like the idea of the AoS setting being one that you can come up with anything in, but the model ranges never really supported that concept too well. And the vastness of the setting, and the really poor job GW did at giving any kind of concrete history, and how long it took to start giving any locations at all enough lore to start caring about... didn't do it much good.

A single world allows for the development of cultures and factions and histories between them. More opportunities to find something interesting and dive in, and having the feeling of 'bigger stakes' even though actually it's really just a minor border war between two factions who can barely be bothered.

I'll get a few boxes of the AoS Marauder guys, and play some WarCry with them.

My Lost and the Damned skirmish game I was promised years ago.

In addition to the 4 factions listed by Boole in his quote on pg 134, Whitefang says there are actually 5 factions, and Boole elaborates.

Boole :

Thanks

Yeah, there's actually a fifth one — there's a new Chaos faction in the 5th Core Book called the Blacksteel Autarchy

They specialize in using guns and even have their own dedicated illustrations

Honestly, though, they feel a bit like they overlap with Helsmith and Skaven

Still, the main race in this faction is humans

This is an obvious April Fools, like the time GW announced they were bringing back squats on April 1.

I can't believe people fall for these things.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
This is an obvious April Fools, like the time GW announced they were bringing back squats on April 1.

I can't believe people fall for these things.

Well the information about this was released a week ago, with these comments as follow ups, so it's an odd April Fool's joke to happen a week in advance. not impossible, just weird.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Porsenna wrote:
Personally I like the idea of it.

Don't get me wrong, in concept I like the idea of the AoS setting being one that you can come up with anything in, but the model ranges never really supported that concept too well. And the vastness of the setting, and the really poor job GW did at giving any kind of concrete history, and how long it took to start giving any locations at all enough lore to start caring about... didn't do it much good.

A single world allows for the development of cultures and factions and histories between them. More opportunities to find something interesting and dive in, and having the feeling of 'bigger stakes' even though actually it's really just a minor border war between two factions who can barely be bothered.

How the worm turns. The concept of a single world was one of the leading arguments about the killing of WFB, as it didn't have the 'scope' that 40k had, restricting people's creativity and freedom to largely explored kingdoms.


It always amuses me how the arguments are always right for the choice's GW is currently making, despite their hypocrisy.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
This is an obvious April Fools, like the time GW announced they were bringing back squats on April 1.

I can't believe people fall for these things.

To be fair, they kinda did....

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
This is an obvious April Fools, like the time GW announced they were bringing back squats on April 1.

I can't believe people fall for these things.

well, by now everything I have seen us on 8th Edition 40k level "progressing the story", so for an April Fool's joke rather lackluster

The first statement is almost certainly April Fool's nonsense, I'm surprised they didn't have a mortally wounded Sigmar being kept alive by his golden throne amongst all the 40k titbits they copy/pasted over.

The second, I dunno, it still sounds pretty stupid, but is a tad more believable (And I do quite like the idea of Stormcast being merged with Cities of Sigmar), I'm just not seeing why GW would shake things up so much.
Plus this wouldn't be the first time someone has put a lot of effort into trolling the AOS community, remember those very detailed descriptions of the first AOS starter box (That, sadly, were actually much more interesting that what we got)?

Admittedly, as someone who's just in it for the models, it doesn't really matter to me where GW takes the game (As long as it continues to come with nice minis), it just feels like a shame to can the whole Mortal Realms concept.

The conjecture from Rob (honest wargamer) was that 4th didn't sell well and so 5th is a bigger rejig to try and get it back to selling well.

He is vastly better placed to comment on it than me, so I am just relaying the comment on.

 Hellebore wrote:


How the worm turns. The concept of a single world was one of the leading arguments about the killing of WFB, as it didn't have the 'scope' that 40k had, restricting people's creativity and freedom to largely explored kingdoms.


It always amuses me how the arguments are always right for the choice's GW is currently making, despite their hypocrisy.

I do not have a history of defending AoS, so stop projecting your frustrations with other people on me.

 parakuribo wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
This is an obvious April Fools, like the time GW announced they were bringing back squats on April 1.

I can't believe people fall for these things.

To be fair, they kinda did....

Kid is just being Kid. There was no kinda, GW put up an entire post afterwards about how that announcement was poorly timed.

Vorian wrote:
The conjecture from Rob (honest wargamer) was that 4th didn't sell well and so 5th is a bigger rejig to try and get it back to selling well.

He is vastly better placed to comment on it than me, so I am just relaying the comment on.

While this would make sense, I would expect it to be more like how 8th edition 40k was a bigger departure from 7th, not something as devastating as this.

"Devastating" is variable.

IT really depends on how it impacts armies and models. If we see sweeping removals/cutdowns/changes there then 100% it will be a problem because that's where you burn people out entirely on the whole firm not just the game.

Even if many might come back one day its still burning bridges.


If the lore changes its just story-advance. People cry that the story doesn't advance as much as they do when it does.



Thing is for a lot of people the story is the fluff; its nice to have; its great to have a good story and it 100% hooks people on the setting; but its still an optional fluff to the models. Many only dig as deep as their battletome/big rulebook and not much further.



Again the big question isn't the lore its the armies and how it impacts peoples model collections that they've invested way more money and time into.

I think you are vastly underestimating how much lore changes matter to the players.

All WHFB armies were playable in 1.0 AoS. Initially you didn't even have to rebase them. Yes, the rules were ridiculous and generated their own fair share of mockery, but that's not where the bulk of the complaints were, the complaints were about the lore.

I like AoS, but never enjoyed the constant rules changes (in any GW games tbh) so have happily stuck with first edition, though I did like the expansion of lore and armies that came with 2nd and 3rd editions. I've kept up with most of the big releases of the game, but I stopped buying rules with 1st edition and battletomes with 2nd and only really buy campaign books now (Rulebooks which come with big starter sets which have models I like are always welcome though, I always like new art and lore)

But if this is anything more substantial than a gakky April fools, then I'd be done with any further lore/book/campaign book collecting/updates as well.

It sounds dire. I like the differences between WFB and AoS and don't need AoS to be a zanny imitation of the old world landscape. I like the realms as they are, and even though I can continue to ignore big updates to the lore, eventually a big change like this is just going to push me away from purchasing anything new.

I run my gaming group and most of my group are not really warhammer hobbyists, but rather folk that just want to hang out and play some sort game together. They are happy to play Warhammer/AoS as long as I keep us in painted miniatures. If I'm not painting AoS miniatures for us/them, then they'll happily also drift away from the game. If I'm not excited for the changes, I'll paint something else. So radical changes to the lore is likely to push us all to playing more WFB or tackling more of the LotR backlog.

Honestly, even if it there is some truth in it just another year of this talk spreading around and people constant talking about it with out any actual facts will be off putting enough to push me away from purchasing anything AoS related on the chance that in a years time I'm going to be pushed away anyway. It almost feels like this could be its purpose, seeing as these rumours are coming from such a negative angle.

Going to be honest, it does not make much sense to me to have both these settings dilapidating models/races from one set to another... You can have multiple different games on the same setting. It's really kind of convoluted the logic behind all of this.

Nice models all around but what a mess.

Vorian wrote:
The conjecture from Rob (honest wargamer) was that 4th didn't sell well and so 5th is a bigger rejig to try and get it back to selling well.

He is vastly better placed to comment on it than me, so I am just relaying the comment on.

Both the 3rd and 4th starter boxes feel like they were overproduced, which doesn't necessarily mean they sold poorly, but implies that GW expected them to sell better.

The Thousand Year time skip I think is what upsets folk.

Because either the characters and realms you have formed an attachment with are long, long dead and gone...

OR a Thousand Year time skip (going from William the Conqueror to today in a blink) doesn't matter and everything is the same.

Either way it means nothing that happened matters.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
The Thousand Year time skip I think is what upsets folk.

Because either the characters and realms you have formed an attachment with are long, long dead and gone...

OR a Thousand Year time skip (going from William the Conqueror to today in a blink) doesn't matter and everything is the same.

Either way it means nothing that happened matters.

More likely they will skip a 1000 years, and Gotrek, Morathi etc will still be about as their models/books sell well which makes the whole thing a pointless jump. The god like beings were always going to remain past any time jump, and especially for those few of us that like anything outside of Immortal god beings and want the more grounded stuff like the eight lamentations and stories of the regular folks. So 99% of characters won't change.

Fantasy time jumps in IPs made by studios to me just feel like they are there for a new batch of interns to make their mark when the old guard retire/step down and the company don't want to step on previously established lore. Gives them a clean slate. Stops people nick picking any mistakes, stops any legal issues if any previous writers own any characters or ideas (unlikely in GWs case but not impossible) and lets the studio roll back if the 'new' timeline sucks gak.

This is a big part of why I dislike april fools, people just inherently mistrust any news/rumour around this time of year because some people think it's still an april fool if you do it in March

 Ashiraya wrote:
I think you are vastly underestimating how much lore changes matter to the players.

All WHFB armies were playable in 1.0 AoS. Initially you didn't even have to rebase them. Yes, the rules were ridiculous and generated their own fair share of mockery, but that's not where the bulk of the complaints were, the complaints were about the lore.

Technically yes, but

They didn't have any points
Everything had to be rebased to rounds/ovals (if you wanted to play right)
Even accepting the loose rules the entire system went from rank and file to freeform movement (that is a big change)
Several of the armies flat out stopped being sold
Several more got shattered into multiple "subfactions" on the GW webstore, telling people that those factions were going to possibly expand but not the original army
This was after 2-3 months of the entire product line being pulled from stores. Keep in mind at that stage no one expected the game to return - GW were 100% silent and even rumours were a mess at that time. There was no "we are blowing it up and then in 1-2 months returning with a new game) marketing at all.


I'm not saying lore has no impact, but that an advance of the AoS lore is very different to the mess that was the Old World to AoS transition. AoS 1.0 (if you can even call it that) wasn't just lore changes, it was basically everything changed.

My point is its a LOT easier to bite the pill of new/updated/advanced lore than it is a product removal

 LunarSol wrote:

Both the 3rd and 4th starter boxes feel like they were overproduced, which doesn't necessarily mean they sold poorly, but implies that GW expected them to sell better.

I assume GW is basing their assessments on sales data from across the franchise, not just starters. It's perfectly possible for a big box to underperform while the rest of the range sells record numbers.