I am losing interest...

[Erik Setzer]

Especially about the Old World blowing up! When did that happen and how? Who did it?
I dont recall reading anywhere how that happened.
Help! I want to like AoS!

At the end of the End Times series of books (Nagash, Glottkin, Khaine, Thanquol, Archaon), the collected Incarnates, Sigmar included, weren't able to stop Chaos. Chaos succeeded in opening a rift that started devouring anything close to it. (There's even a passage from Malekith's POV where he basically feels his memories obliterated before his physical form is also snuffed out, as if all trace of him was being erased from ever having happened.) The rift engulfs the world, Chaos has their fun, then get bored and leave. It's left with Sigmar floating in space clutching something, hinted strongly (it might have outright said it, I can't recall at the moment) that it was the heart of the old world.

Fast forward to AoS, and in the first book it talks about how Sigmar's built a fortress around a massive ball of molten rock, even referencing it as the core of "the world-that-was." He's intent on protecting it. (There's a neat illustration of it in the book.) So from that, you can pretty much assume he kept the core of the world intact and protected it... but it doesn't hint at why.

Nagash, Alarielle, Tyrion, Teclis, Malekith (now Malerion), and, of course, Sigmar appear in the new story. It mentions some of them waking up and wondering, "What happened? Where am I? Where have I been?" The Elves went after Slaanesh because he ate all their Elf kin and I guess they're intent on getting them back. So clearly they remember what happened before.

Only, there's some oddities there, like how Malekith's name changed, and the racial names changed. The existence of races matching the old races, except pretty much everyone but the humans forgot who they were and ended up making up new names. Gork and Mork being merged together (unless/until they're not... that's an odd one). The fact there's eight realms, each with one of the eight realms of magic bound to it. Prior technomancy tribes, the dwarfs (duardin) knowing how to build realmgates, etc.

Now, the obvious answer to some of those is "copyright." But let's forget that and put the tin foil hat back on. (For those who don't know, it's a nod to a column I love on a World of Warcraft site, where they don a TFH to guess at where the lore is headed or what the answer to a question might be.)

What if the Old Ones tried to help save "the world-that-was?" Only there wasn't much left. They remade the races, but in an imperfect form. While Chaos resurrected their own heroes, the Old Ones brought back heroes on the other side of the conflict. They found pieces of the world that hadn't been completely destroyed and they bound the winds of magic to them and protected them as much as possible. They taught the races technology (which, to many, would seem like magic, i.e. the realmgates). And then left them to their own devices, but led a great drake (I forget his name right now... our coffee machine here is broken, please forgive my brain) to find Sigmar and bring him to where those realms were set up. It's even possible that all of this exists in some pocket of the universe, where the Old Ones tried to protect it as much as possible, which would help explain why a Stormcast Eternal talks about driving Chaos out of the universe. If he can see stars in the night sky, wouldn't he possibly recognize there's more out there? But what if the realms were their own "universe," so that the people living there thought that was the whole universe?

Okay, tin foil hat off now. That's enough to lead people down a few rabbit holes.

[nsc]

I like the idea that the old ones tried to recreate the world that was, hence the fractured realms and ghosts of heroic souls.

Also, I more meant that people complain there aren't any lore but they're not buying the lore books. It amuses me.

[chipset35]

Thanks Guys! Yep, I have the Age of Sigmar book, but somehow I missed the part where the gate at the poles tears the world apart.
Well, I guess after catching up reading all this, I can see the issue at least for me.
I think GW did too much of a "fast forward" in setting the scene for AoS.
It left some of us blinking in shock.
IMHO, I would have preferred the world not be destroyed and instead have at least some vestige of it left in the form of races, characters, locations, ruins of famiiar places.
Instead, I find the slate wiped clean and the Storm Hosts just to antiseptic for me.
But thats just me.
I will continue to follow AoS though as I want it to succeed.

[Erik Setzer]

The destruction of the world isn't really mentioned much in AoS. I think there's a brief mention of it. To get the full story (well, the most important part, the end of it all), you'd need either the End Times: Archaon book, or Lord of the End Times (novel). If you can borrow both, it's interesting to read the slightly different versions of the ending.

AoS starts well separated from the End Times, and skipped ahead a good few thousand years. The biggest problem there is that the time period they skipped over sounds a lot more interesting than right now. Various cultures? Technomancers? Barbarian tribes? All these hints to the past... And there would have been actual stakes then, too. If you put the setting there, we don't already know that Chaos can't win.

I'm trying to read the novels, but so far it's making me more annoyed with the writers, because their depiction of the few survivors of Agshy, for example, makes no sense. To make it sound all grim and dark, they keep talking about how practically no one gets past 20, and very few make it to 20, and when they run from the Bloodreavers, the children and "elderly" (eh?) are the first ones caught and eaten. So already you have a serious population issue, that kind of situation, especially this far down the line where they're looking for the last few survivors and most everyone is dead (or Chaos), means that humanity is extinct, at least on Aqshy. There's also no mention of how they even survive to begin with. We can skip the lack of sunlight with "because magic!", but that doesn't explain how it describes the land as poisoned, no crops, the plants are poison, the water's poison, and there don't seem to even be any animals. In other words, the only sustenance is other people, meaning the *only* way these people can be surviving is the same cannibalism they're condemning in the Bloodreavers. They're not really that different. And how can you restart civilization with a malnourished band of cannibals numbering in the hundreds at best? (And that still doesn't answer the point that people need water, but all the water is poisoned, so how the heck are they getting water?)

At some point, the suspension of disbelief is bent so badly that it just shatters into millions of pieces. It's horrible storytelling. They tried to create a dystopian vision and instead made something so unrealistic and trope-ish that it's gone past being funny and is now just sad.

So maybe telling people to read the books isn't the best idea...

[Xodis]

Don't distract Dan Abnett, he's got Gaunt's ghosts books, the next Eisornhorn/Ravennor book, and whatever else they want for the heresy from him to do.

You also forgot the He-man comic book series going on right now....its awesome

[Psychosplodge]

I didn't, I wasn't aware/didn't care (delete as appropriate) as I covered the ones that mattered

[Just Tony]

I imagine things will pick up a bit again when new 40k starts dropping, ZPGs only good for lols at this stage, like

[url]http://warhammerworld.games-workshop.com/2015/08/03/the-battle-for-the-realmgates-the-eight-realms/[/url]

and

[url]http://warhammerworld.games-workshop.com/2015/08/04/the-battle-for-the-realmgates-the-eight-realms-2/[/url]

for example.

Side splitting stuff.

Maybe they need to introduce a Realm of Resin with rules appropriate, then they can try to seduce people into buying Finecrap.

Well I see the dance around while rubbing your belly aspect of the game is still alive and well... maybe we're just playing this thing at the wrong level of intoxication.

- - - Updated - - -



For me this has always been a GW board so I don't bother posting much about the other games here since you get better and broader feedback on them elsewhere.

Case in point, there isn't even a subforum for Star Trek Attack Wing. If I want to have ANY sort of discussion, I have to go elsewhere. However, coming here over the past month or so has resulted in only a couple WFB/AOS threads being responded to at all and the general mood of the place feeling like a ghost town.

I'm losing interest in anything but Classichammer at this point.

[Caitsidhe]

Maybe they need to introduce a Realm of Resin with rules appropriate, then they can try to seduce people into buying Finecrap.



Case in point, there isn't even a subforum for Star Trek Attack Wing. If I want to have ANY sort of discussion, I have to go elsewhere. However, coming here over the past month or so has resulted in only a couple WFB/AOS threads being responded to at all and the general mood of the place feeling like a ghost town.

I'm losing interest in anything but Classichammer at this point.

Yep. Forums like this are canaries in the coal mine. I've said this before and been told I'm crazy. However, there is a direct correlation between activity on Forums and interest/sale of a product. If what is happening around the internet is any indicator (and I am submitting that it is) then AOS is going down like a submarine with screen doors. The sad thing is there is also a steady decline in conversations about 40K too. It seems to mirror the slow but sure decline in discussions and interest online that befell WHFB. Food for thought.

[Auticus]

Thats very true. However - the facebook groups that are centered around Age of Sigmar seem to have a high post count that I am on.

A lot of people have said they got off forums because they were tired of the hostile attacking posts.

Now whether or not those people in the age of sigmar forums make up the difference - I cannot say. I know I'm in a couple that have a few thousand members each and am part of another few that have hundreds of members with regular traffic but I cannot say that they make up for the forums silence.

[Mr Mystery]

And how much is there to discuss?

If you enjoy the game, you're busy playing it. Without points, many topics of conversation are unnecessary. Consider other games. You have a finite points value to meet, so many conversations revolve around how to make the best use of them. X-Wing, Warmahordes, Infinity, 40k - all ripe for such topics, from 'how to create beardy lists' to 'how do I get the most out of this unit', and myriad topics in between.

AoS? Well, the topic just isn't there. You take whatever you want, with about the only rule for selecting your force being 'don't be an anus to your opponent'.

Background discussion? Well, that's still developing. I've got a thread charting the events of the various books so far (which reminds me - I need to grab Hammers of Sigmar today), but with only two forces (Stormcast Eternals and Bloodbound) having been covered in any depth so far, the potential for chit-chat is far more limited.

And Caitsidhe. If this is 'canaries in a coal mine' - how do you explain the lack of discussion about anything that isn't 40k, whilst also making bold claims that everyone else is seeing business boom? Because you seem to brush that observation off time and again. Can you please link us to the direct evidence you mention? Because as far as I'm aware, GW are the only publisher that posts financial results, other than FFG's parent company - who are going through rapid expansion by buying up other companies.

BoLS has been very quiet the past couple of weeks on the whole. Why? Who knows. None of us have enough info to look into that.