Or it could be whats needed to pick up a dying franchise.
Warhammer was almost canned about 3 years ago apparently, but they improved things in terms of upgrading miniatures and are now moving the story on, in temrs of the end times and now 9th.
However to kill of Dwarfs, some of the elves and lizardmen (3 of the most recent update releases in the game) would be a massive financial bath for GW, the costs of designing and manufacturing all of that then canning it within 3 years is madness, and to suddenly say, "Oh that £350 army you just bought, nae luck, its now useless" would be very bad for continued play, and I would imagine create a lot of antagonised people, probably shouting in store, which the company wont want.
At the moment, all of the rumours are just that, Yes some of them are from relatively reliable sources, but so was the rumour of the 'black box' being released at warhammer fest that was DEFINATELY going to be a new 28mm skirmish game based on inquisitors....this was a 'certainty'. Warhammer fest came....no box appeared. People are desperate for 'their rumours' to be the right one, at the moment, I am going to wait and see, I am gluing my 3k of drak elves together and hoping for the best, as long as I can play with them bar a little tweaking, I don't mond.
However at this point I have heard everything from a new 'Fantasy space marine type faction, everything dead bar one box of infantry, HQ, monster for each faction that's staying with upgrade options in each box, the death of brets, dwarfs, all elves as they currently stand, tomb kings and vampires. So that's leaving, humans, orcs, skaven and chaos.....that will be popular then! No, I am going to wait and see, we have heard the doom of all things before, especially with 7th edition 40k.
Change may come but I cant see GW basically shiving their loyal customers out of hundreds of pounds of stuff, because they wont come back, and they wont be too keen to tell the next generation about what a fun game it is. As this does currently happen, our store gets some 60 odd kids in of a sunday learning the 3 main systems, but to kill it all off I cant see it, big change yes, but still at its heart warhammer.
Anyway....mahoosively off Lee's topic! Sorry.