Did the Summer of Sigmar kill interest in 40k?

[Erik Setzer]

But given how busy the AoS group is (over 2,000 members, lots of activity, and absolutely zero sad little muppets ) it's sadly looking like Forums may have had their day.

There's probably quite a few "sad little muppets," they're just "sad little muppets" who happen to like AoS rather than dislike it, so no need for them to comment negatively about it.

That said, forums are likely done for soon anyway, just like how forums killed newsgroups and mailing lists. People sign into Facebook all the time, and having your discussion forums right there is very convenient, much more so than having to pull up multiple websites and log into them individually.

[Mr Mystery]

You know perfectly well what I mean, and indeed who I mean with the 'sad little muppets'

It's fine to have tried and not enjoyed. That is the sum of human experience.

It's those who decided they didn't like it before we even had firm rumours. Them. They really need to get out more.

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

I agree with Kirsten, I foumd the earlier half of the year more exciting myself. Harlequins and Admech were a pretty big deal. I personally wasn't as excited with updates to the existing armies, even the ones I collect or have bought stuff from as I thought whole new factions made a bigger impact generally.

[Bigred]

What we've heard from every retailer out there was a strong robust year up until AoS hit on July 4th weekend - followed by the worst 12-week summer for GW sales they had ever seen. (One retailers said is was the worst summer of GW sales in 17 years!), followed by a leveling off and slow regrowth with the arrival of Tau. Still, not back up up to the pre AoS levels.

Several retailers told us they would never treat GW the same after that summer and are strongly diversifying product lines away from them.

I would assume that many people lost interest in GW over the summer and are slowly percolating back. Also note that Tau was never that much of a favorite army and Heresy while a wet dream for veterans is still kind of a niche within a niche for new players. If GW can kickoff 2016 with some strong popular armies getting good releases, I would expect to see interest and traffic pick up again. But Harlequins and Ad-Mech is a hard act to follow.

On a forum-only related topic, by the end of the Summer of Sigmar some folks were getting out of control on both the frontpage and Lounge and we had a change of policy. The moderators did a big purge and booted out a lot of malcontents who were only here to stir up trouble, and pick on other posters. They generated a lot of comments - but none of it was what we were looking for in our community. Most of the banned users have moved over to other forums at this point (I'll let you guess which ones).

I'm certain GW has felt the pain of AoS behind the scenes, regardless of the public face they are putting out. Not one retailer talked about it in positive terms with us.

[son_of_volmer]

It's easy to point the finger at AoS and say 'He did it', but it seems a little bit of an oversimplification. It could be caused by something much bigger than the game. Economy, world events, politics, climate even!

I feel, that around AoS, 40k psychosis hit everyone hard. There was something every week. First rumours, then images, discussion, then GW releases it and then we were looking for the next thing. It was a lot for everyone to handle. Websites (not this one of course) started having tons articles about nothing. Start reading the article realize it was just the same sentence repeated a few times in different ways. Even podcasts showed a change. Forge the Narrative had a definite shift and then fracture. Every week folded a new rule, formation, or trick into the game and it took effort to keep up. I have this unsettling feeling that the pace of 40k now, invalidates units so fast, the stuff I paint today, will be gathering dust next month.

[Cutter]

... at least from a website/forum's perspective?

I have to say that it might just be me, but it seems that the BoLS forums for 40k have slowed down considerably over the last couple months. I just went away for a week long vacation outside of any internet connectivity, came back and saw that there were barely more than a dozen new posts on the rumors forum which is usually the hotbed of activity.

Thinking back, I get the gut feeling that this slump started during the Summer of Sigmar. Indeed traffic stats seemed to indicate that the sigmar focus of GW killed hobby website traffic but has it recovered?

Is it due to something other than Sigmar? I know that on the IRC channel that I've been on for more than 20 years now on efnet called #Warhammer, its been 24/7 Infinity talk. In fact, the old timers of the channel have started an *Infinity* podcast and pretty much abandoned their 40k-centric blog.

Am I just imagining things?

I wouldn't say that it killed off interest in 40k as much as it killed off interest in Age of Sigmar. There wasn't much to talk about on the 40k front because talk tends to revolve around the new. No new, no talk.

As has been the norm of late most traffic seems to be generated in the oubliette.

[Cutter]

Sadly, BoLS hit a rocky patch in terms of toxic posters.

That's true, there are some terrible terrible see you next Tuesdays on the BoLS.

Few enough in number, but vocal as ever.

What's that old saying, it only takes one bad genestealer to spoil the hiveworld?

Take Age of Sigmar.

Please.

There's barely a thread on BoLS about that game that hasnt had the usual suspects, who apparently didn't even play 8th Ed Warhammer trolling along. Ignoring them is easy enough for me - but perhaps not so for others. Instead, I'm also part of a busy Facebook group about AoS. No Trolls. Nobody suggesting those who enjoy the game are mentally deficient. Just fans of the game chatting about the game they enjoy.

FBFTW.

Contrast and compare the two.

Now, I get my 40k fix here on BoLS, so I've not yet signed up to any 40k Facebook groups, so I don't have enough info to say if it's the same for both systems. But I am part of two Heresy groups (one global, one very local) and again, there's far more activity on those than there is here on BoLS.

But given how busy the AoS group is (over 2,000 members, lots of activity, and absolutely zero sad little muppets ) it's sadly looking like Forums may have had their day.

The writing's on the BoLS.

[benn grimm]

Interesting correlation and nice to hear some 'behind the scenes' info.

I think they certainly burned a lot of good will from the community with the summer of sigmar and I think a lot of people have experienced a general feeling of burn-out when it comes to warhammer, whichever flavour. I think the usual old complaints (cost, rules, communication) haven't really been addressed, if anything they've been kind of ramped up this year. Then there was that whole thing about what gw thinks of its customers (and shareholders). They've had a lot of negative PR recently, I hope they can resolve it going forward, but in the mean time it filters down and I would imagine is slightly off putting to new customers/investors.

[grimmas]

Just to second Msytery ( which he may or not thank me for). I'm a member of the same AoS Facebook group and the traffic there is very good. To be honest it became worthless posting AoS stuff on here it just became an excuse for the same people to tell you they didn't like it. Though to be honest WFB posts were pretty low before we went almost 2 months between posts on the Background section at one point and it would have been longer if I wasn't commenting on my own thread.

I am a member of a good 40K FB page and there's a lot of posts on that, to be honest FB just makes a better platform for casual hobby viewing, forums like this are better for more lengthy discussion but most of us just don't have the time.

Of course if we are to go by postings on here then I'd suggest that Malifaux and Mantic are the ones really in trouble.

Then again it may be that it's simply Christmas so eveyone has got stuff on, and I don't know may be some of you are a little distracted by something else at the moment. I can't imagine what that might be 😜.

All said unlike the hear say and propaganda we get on the other companies GW will be releasing their first half figures so we'll know how it's all gone.

[AnEnemy]

Pretty sure AoS killed my local GW. It was a strong store up until last summer. Now it's a ghost town and its set to shut its doors in April.

Kind of fishy that the former manager was fired just before the AoS push wrapped up.

None of that has anything to do with forums of course.