Originally Posted by
Muninwing
At the end of July, i wrote this:
“i have a guess that the Age of Sigmar will eventually become something interesting, maybe even worth playing. but i started seeing what it was, heard that there was no WHF 9th, and wrote it off.”
the other day, i looked at the AoS discussion board, and the first post i saw was titled “i am losing interest” with the next titled something like "so nobody has posted here in a week" (and to their credit, even reading it later, nobody had except in the pinned posts above) -- and it made me sad on a deep level.
see, WHF and 40k are, for me, more than just games. they are creative outlets, a reminder of good times and bad -- my wife and i started dating when i was a redshirt, and we spent a lot of time in our first year doing projects together while i worked 60+ hour weeks. it was an escape from toxic roommate situations, a bonding experience with friends, an expander of social circles, and generally a positive and beneficial influence on me, even when i may have spent too much time or too much money on one project or another.
when i’ve stopped playing, it has been out of frustration… or due to a lack of opportunity… or because life gets in the way. never due to boredom.
ever since i started exploring the larger-than-life fluff created for the two leading games GW has created, i’ve been absorbed. some better than others. some writers are better than others (and some are as good as modern bestsellers, while others are as bad as some modern bestsellers... Abnett’s Grisham to Goto’s Meyer). the idea of losing interest in a game that should be riveting and fun, and in a world that is nuanced and thorough yet with plenty of room left for expansion, it boggles my mind that someone could get bored with it.
then i remember…
End Times was rushed. Age of Sigmar killed a whole developed world. change in gameplay, change in fundamental structures, change in genre, all led toward the new game being fundamentally different in nearly every way. the rallying cry of “rank and flank forever!” faded gradually, KoW and Oldhammer ate those still kicking (my local group has a 6th ed league running with houserules to tweak certain armybooks), and GW is still embargoing the results of AoS. It might have succeeded more than the stuffed shirts had expected, but rather than admit that they had made bad policies that poisoned the original, they just set the bar really low and accepted failure. because it sells models.
today (i started writing this a bit ago) there was a frontpage article about seeing WHF8th online for sale, and wondering whether it had been taken down and put back up. ultimately, it was grasping at straws, hope beyond reason that somehow GW would “see the light” and release the WHF 9th rules we secretly think they stashed somewhere. there were rumors just before ET of the Brettonian books already having been printed, and sitting in a warehouse (though i do not think they were terribly credible, since they disappeared pretty quickly), and i know a number of Brett fans who decided to just quit the game when ET razed all they loved in the game almost as an afterthought, instead of giving them the update they were long in wait for.
GW is really bad about rumors. rumors are a tool to use, not a runaway train to shape the hopes of your community. but therein lies the real issue -- they see their product like any other, like gaskets or widgets or wrenches. there isn’t a gasket aficionados club meeting every week to use their widgets. there aren’t online message boards with the volume of stories and arguments and support for wrenches. nobody has written a novel series that i am aware of about the merits and flaws and underlying archetypes of various brands of gaskets, read by people who may have gasket brand tattoos or display cases full of their own gasket collections at home.
i would lose interest in gaskets. i already have in widgets. i like Malifaux in concept, but i rarely play because it has not succeeded in capturing my interest. had there been more to the background, more to the story, more influence locally, and more of a narrative campaign to go along with the game itself, i’d probably still be playing that week after week. in contrast, even though i took the 40k’s 5.5 era off out of annoyance at the obvious bad quality control of OP lists and bad support, i found that i will come back to it in different forms time and time again. there’s a weight to it that gaskets do not have. and how sad that WHF had that weight and that story, but AoS cut itself off from effectively utilizing any of it? it is no wonder why many communities have struggled or rebelled against AoS as an alternative to other games.
community is something that love of the game and competitive play created. it does not need to be WAAC, or fluffy, or anything but what you make it. it doesn’t need to be perfect. but to even allow it to seem that they show active scorn for veteran players is the worst business idea ever -- loyal customers are easier to rely on than courting new ones, and giving sustained options to loyal customers is far more guaranteed than getting a first-timer to invest more.
not everything needs weight. i mentioned that Dumas’ “The Count of Monte Cristo” lacks gravitas for me -- it’s a great story of revenge and plotting, and it has its own significance and place in the western canon, but in the end it’s a fun fluff piece by a superior writer, who just so happens to write fun adventure stories instead of weighty atmospheric masterpieces. I cheered when i first read it, and i remember the mental picture i had from outside the Morcerf estate of Fernand’s pistol-report, the intrigue of the voices at the coliseum before you learn of Edmond’s full reinvention of himself, the full ghastly realization of the Marquise’s horrible nature... but it taught me no lesson i didn’t already know. that one in particular suffers from some structural issues -- having been written on-call and released chapter-by-chapter in a periodical instead of treated as one complete draft. earlier, i asserted that AoS had not been given the time to grow in weight and mass, but that it hadn’t was a critical flaw of their upper management, and a sign that they were releasing an incomplete product. now, we have a product months later without any added weight, but over-the-top attempts at storytelling that hasn’t managed to add significance or interest to the game at all. heavy-handed usage of old character ideas without actual development does not develop the new generation of heroes for this new era of time.
we see three months in passing, and we see no better fluff, no rational cosmic definition, no overarcing plan, and it still smacks of hollowness. and people are getting bored. i know that some people were instantly against the idea of AoS, and that others loved to see WHF be something (even something new) so flocked to the game even in new form. reports of play trailing off have become the norm, even if a few groups have been revitalized -- but GW is stoically silent. almost as if they have no idea what to do now that their panicked plan b has stalled out, and without an actual unified idea of how to move the product forward while putting as little of their resources as can be managed. just as the Stormcast seem neat at first -- Knight-Einherjar, Sentient Steel Golem veterans of a past age, militant angels in chivalric finery, how could someone make that boring? but they have no downside, no flaw… they have no personality past being nameless soldiers in empty suits of armor. instead of being parallels of storied SM dreadnoughts awakened from slumber, they are blank rank-and-file necrons for all their personality is dictated by atmosphere instead of detail.
don’t get me wrong… as much as i feel that the animosity that GW fostered was (a) completely predictable (b) completely avoidable and (c) utterly their own fault, i know that sometimes ideas just don’t work as planned, regardless of how thorough the work before the release. but if a good product and a cohesive plan can still fail, what about such an obviously halfhearted one?
it could have been ok.
i would have eaten my words -- and been glad to do so -- had they turned it around. whether they responded by adopting Azyrcomp (which, IMO, is the best-written part of any rules applied to AoS... and it's not even written by GW) as an official metric, by releasing fluff-based components with quality writing that fleshed out the vast blank spots with at very least a general concept. we've never been treated to a Cathay book, but we know it exists... and we know of Hrud and Interex and Ghoul Stars and the insides of lower levels of a hive city without actually reading about them in detail. one "this is the new planes atlas" announcement and i'd have been optimistic that AoS and its new world were not going to just get boring.
It had no weight at release. it is fun, i'll admit -- i mildly enjoyed the few games i've played. but it has no staying power without real support. and "support" does not mean just reinforcing the two sides of the board game starter.
let's give it another three months and see what happens. will it have added enough significance and gravity to withstand the post-winter lull? to weather the shift as spring reminds us that there is an outside, and some of us get distracted by other hobbies or other people? will it be able to sustain a summer campaign... or a lack of one, should GW choose not to give the support a new game needs to establish itself?
just in case the rumor of today -- the "specialist games department" announcement -- has any truth to it... maybe AoS could be beefed up in nature by support from other types and styles of play? maybe AoS could become a specialist game, and some alternate rules that support troop blocks could be promotes? maybe the reverse -- a sort of "AoS apoc" game could come out that uses rank-and file?
at this point, nobody knows what GW is going to do. from the looks of it, even them.
Those who judge without reason are no better then the things they judge.
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