Where's the goodwill?

[the jeske]

I think it is a choice vs no choice thing very offten . You can buy a model kit made out at any price . Heck you could buy a chiness copy of the actual aircraft , if you have the money and your own countries import laws aren't against people owning war planes . But it is your choice . With GW games you don't have a choice. A sob player can't say ,that he will get them from a different source [well he technicly can , but then he has to explain how he got so many 'finecast" sobs]. I can't say no am not going to buy 10 dudes for 50$ for WFB [unless again I buy recasts] . The rest is mostly bad marketing decisions and rubbing their fandom the wrong way at wrong times[price goes up and finecast in at the same time? couldn't they have made one a month sooner or later].

I also dislike GW on a more personal level . They didn't like the fact that my very good friend friend cornered the market for selling their models here and they have driven him out of buissness with late deliveries .

I mean when you start calling a toy company that does no environmental damage,

not possible when you work with metal , plastic or resin .

exploits no communities nor does

they had a FW factory in China.

anything more reprehensible than sending out some stupid C&Ds sometimes 'evil' you really have to question your sense of perspective as far as I'm concerned.

I know more then a few store and Online store owners who went bankrupt or had to close their shops , because of them . In the 90s they had a normal procedure of finding a city with a big GW games supporting comunity , opening their stores there,then doing buy 3 get the cheapest one free ,which ended with the FLGS going out of buissness . It is a normal thing for them to get late with shipments to FLGS , if they have a new GW store in the area , specialy if there never were any GW shops there .
They can be late anywhere from 2 to 4 months with payment for translations of army books , rules books. Oddly enough BL pays on time .

[Valhalla Games]

This is a great thread, I hope 'They' are listening...but for the reasons we have presented here, im guessing they arent looking through such forums to find constructive criticism and areas for improvement!
What i found amazing is the majority of these posts, especially the first few, actually have an undercurrent of passion...even in writing letters why we hate or cannot support GW, there is this real feelingnthat we WANT the opposite! And that makes sense, because we havent paid for our hobby in cash, sweat and tears to get it onto the tabletop to want to drift away.
I do believe the rules are getting better if 40k is anything to go by ( By better read less ambiguous perhaps..), but I stand by my question ESPECIALLY regarding the dead horse that is WFB;

GW, if all your current model casts and machinery were destroyed by some freak occurence, would your rules sets be strong enough for your systems to survive while you rebuilt?

I suspect that for 40k the answer may well be yes, for the hobbit/LOTR the answer is who cares? (And thats the point with that system..shouldnt they have convinced us by now?!) And for WFB they answer is.....NO WAY.

I started in WFB. A game i loved is being destroyed because someone couldnt say no.
THE EMPEROR ISNT WEARING ANY CLOTHES!! Blatant commercial decisions are destroying the game: create a stupid horde rule to sell higher quantities of miniatures, every army must have 1 or more huge models regardless of army background and character...the games charm of mixing tactics with fantasy models was detroyed by stupid special weapons auto select rules, lackmof maneuover as charging first doesnt mean squat half the time as with charging flanks etc etc. Heavy cavalry back in the stables as they are useless.
Stop employing yes men in games development and get someone with the balls to say no to stupid mechanics.
For all our questioning over jervis and the likes poetic musings, they understand..i feel like if any of the new guys in development had understood jervis' murdering your darlings rant the WFB rulebook wouldnt contain half the dross it has in it, neither would we have to negotiate half the crap that we must from codicies/rulebooks ..yes im looking at you, mat ward.

Organised play being systematically wiped out does not help a system, community or a company trying to sell their wares....neither does employing extremely poor trade sales reps..i firmly believe after seeing most of the unpopular product and poor advice supplied to new independants that the standard of most of these reps is professionally unacceptable.THIS is killing independant stockists quicker than we can keep up.
Get a grip GW, we want you to succeed because we love our games, dont treat us like dogs you throw scraps too and we must eat or die...your models dont fit that profile, most ofthe low level people in your company, and the great artists etc we meet at events arent like that.
Stop raping us financially at the expense of your future customer base, because we WANT to still be here.
Rant out.

[Death Shroud]

Like almost everyone here I loved what GW did and, like anyone who sees something they love been mistreated or mishandled, I get angry about what direction things have headed in. Main problems?

1. Change for changes sake. 3rd edition 40k was fun but massively flawed in certain areas (combat). 4th edition fixed it and was an absolute joy. 5th edition came along and threw it all away. The removal of normal cover's ability to block line of sight made the game static and dull. You could see and shoot anything in range (even through a window in a building).

2. Price rises. Yeah people moan if prices rise. But when prices have risen by such massive amounts as they have in the last 10 years you cannot write it off as customers moaning. When I was GW the talk was of the business not being price sensitive, we were in a hobby we loved and would pay for it anyway. GW have convinced themselves of this and so when sales drop (partly due to the rises in prices and customer dropout) they rise the prices to mitigate the loss of profit (anyone see a vicious circle forming). When I started gaming £10 got you 30 marines now £20 gets you ten, models are 6 times as expensive as they were. Computer games are less than twice the price that they were at the same time despite a massive increase in production costs.

[Psychosplodge]

and a check of my E-peen shows I come here and post three-times-daily.

Is that what that number means?

[n-j-x]

(first post on BOLS)
I just delurked to put my 2 cents in, I Have been buying GW models for over 10 years and The reason that in the last few years I have stopped is only partly due to price.

1) I am a WFB player,and I currently do not enjoy playing WFB possibly because I enjoy Warmahordes more, I would never have strayed to PP if GW had kept me interested

2) I am more interested in models than gaming, to me playing/ collecting since I was 18 GW has always been crazy expensive but I always dropped the cash because I really wanted the models

(MAIN POINT) I don't like GW's new direction with models, I like the old hand sculpted models with soul and character that the new digital models do not have, the mass produced plastic is fine for mass troops but I miss my nice characterful metal Heroes.

3) £35 for 10 plastic troops in a game where unit size in 20 minimum, £80 for the slayer unit with new crappy plastic hero ( love the old slayer sculpts though), how about get .......

[BeardMonk]

Im NOT a 40K player so i cant comment on the broken rules side of things. Im 27 and I largely left Warhammer for 10-12 years. I kept “in touch” through Battlefleet Gothic, Mordhiem and Inquisitor however we often used GW models as miniatures for Pathfinder. Im now back into collecting and playing WHF. The reason why im a fan of the game again but not of the company does come down to the bottom line of price. Even on my very decent salary, it’s just unreasonable.

The price of a model should reflect a number of thing. 1) The amount of physical materials required to make the miniature, 2) the cost of packaging, 3) the cost of the sculptors/artists who created the works. That combined price should then have a small but reasonable mark up for profit which allows a company to invest in the next gen of the game, new models, paints etc. As a tomb kings player I remember that back in the day a regiment of 20 plastic with metal command pieces was about £10-12. That was a reasonable price for a young person to save their pocket money towards or an ideal price for a xmas/birthday/”well done” gift from a parent or family member. These days your paying £20-£25 odd for 10-15 models. Often double the price for half the content.

On this theme something that also angers me is that in addition to the price hike, GW seems to be pushing bigger and bigger models/monsters as a standard part of the game. Returning to 40K for a sec, the apocalypse release last year is a classic example of this. The Korn Lord Of Skulls is £95!!!!! And what is it? As small plastic kit, no bigger than a large matchbox when constructed and containing about as much plastic as a regiment box set yet they feel it’s acceptable to charge the best part of £100? Im also a guitarist. I could pick up a 4x12 cab (i.e. BIG speaker) for about that price. Im also do a lot of mountaineering, I can pick up a basic ice axe for less than that!! Is it small wonder that most of us buy our stuff from retailers how somehow manage to provide GW products at 20% discount? Or browse ebay looking pick up a kit at a price that can be justified

Additionally, im not sure how GW does not realise that their current pricing strategy is putting off the next generations of war gamers from taking up the hobby. I look at my local GW’s as i go past them. When I was a teenager, they were packed with people of all ages buying, painting, gaming and having a laugh. Now days they seem emptier, the customers older. Where is the next generation? The community has moved out of GW and to the independent shops and clubs, most of whom are also playing Warmachine/Hordes and other games. Because the price has driven people out of their shops, GW has become the author of its own isolation.

I will say however that, with a few exceptions, GW miniature are still the best out there. But the other companies are catching up. FAST. The new generation of Warmachine/Hordes models are pretty much on par. GW will soon have to share its crown of “the best wargaming models” with other companies. Unless they become competitive again, people will simply vote with their wallets and walk away for good..

The friends I game with have the same opinion. They love the WHF demo games I have run for them but they just can’t afford/justify having to spend £100-200 to get anything like a competitive army that’s worth playing anything more than a small skirmish with. Which is why they/we are playing Warmachine/Hordes at about 25pts-30pts. And I can’t blame them.

[Denzark]

Is that what that number means?

Yes, I have extrapolated yours out to be 9 times daily over your 4.5 years here. Thus your E-peen is 3 times the size of mine! Wowzer.

[ElectricPaladin]

Now I need to figure out the size of my e-peen...

My e-peen is 3.5. Is that good?

[Psychosplodge]

Yes, I have extrapolated yours out to be 9 times daily over your 4.5 years here. Thus your E-peen is 3 times the size of mine! Wowzer.

I better work on that then...

[Mr Mystery]

I dread to think the size of mine....