Article: Games Workshop woes

[Trevor]

Yeah, on that quality thing, I like wood elfs, I generally like the new GW wood elfs, but compared to THIS they totally suck.

They are simply being outclassed.

As for current woes, well if you look at their stock, they have been up and down quite a lot in the last 2 decades.

One thing I think they still do better than anyone is the plastics, really top stuff, and I think they will always have a solid core market in the plastic regiments for the massed battle wargamers.

Finally I think we here are maybe a little biased, we tend to be painters rather than gamers and its pretty clear that we are not GWs core customers.

 

[Kelly Kim]

more fuel for the fire

I hate to get involved in debates like this, but here are my two cents:

-For quality, I have to say that as a long-time gamer / painter, I have noticed that GW quality has been improving... I think what people mean is that GW quality USED to be unquestionably the best in the biz. Now there are a number of companies making excellent models, employing awesome sculptors. GW\'s quality HAS NOT gone down... it\'s just that there\'s much much better competition than there was back in the old days.

-There has been some mention of Specialist games, but nothing of Forgeworld. Jeez, their sculptors are impressing the crap out of me. However, having built and painted countless FW models over the last 6 years, I have to say that whoever\'s in charge of quality control over there should be replaced. I\'ve had a number of badly MOULDED models delivered to my doors that should have been inspected by hand and disgarded long before leaving the factory. I\'m guessing that working with resin is much more difficult to get right, but these kits are pricey, and nothing is more disheartening than opening up a box of a much anticipated Super Heavy Tank or bomber, only to have to write the company for replacement parts, and then wait for delivery.

-the US design studio of GW has been making attempts to make a skirmish version of Fantasy and 40K for some time now, and really tried pushing it through the North American version of White Dwarf. Kudos to them. Part of the reason Confrontation is doing well is that people can start by playing small games of Confrontation, and graduate eventually to large-scale games of Ragnarok when they have enough models. My suggestion? GW should spend some quality time designing an EXPERT level version of Fantasy and 40K, with advanced rules at the skirmish level, in order to entice the older veteran gamers that have since left GW for more \"mature\" games, such as FoW and Confrontation.

-Lastly, no one\'s brought up any mention of the games and miniature lines that GW outlasted. Remember Target Games? Remember Heartbreaker? Remember VOR? VOID? Celtos? Cronopia? Clan Wars? Can anyone tell me what those companies did wrong, and how GW, Rackham, PP, etc. can avoid making the same mistakes?

Anyway, having said all that, some might say that I\'m a bit biased towards GW since I used to work at a GW store a long time ago, and still play at GTs and Rogue Trader tournaments to this day, but not to the exclusion of all else. I have a pretty nice Khador army for Warmachine as well, not to mention a growing Tir Na Bor force for Confrontation. More competition is good for the hobby in general, I say.

Kelly Kim
Sorcerer Studios

 

[AinuLainour]

I agree that GW should have dropped LOTR after The Return of the King was released now every time I pick up white dwarf I read through the fantasy and 40k sections, then skip through the boring, but \'original\' LOTR section. Personally, I have no desire to read about some seafaring people never mentioned in the movies, and how Steve Cumisky converted them.

ainulainour


P.S. Kelly I am a fan of ur bret. standard and thunderhawk gunship from Conflict:Vancouver. Also, if you were wondering my beef with the GW staff was at Park Royal, but they seem to be slightly better without an unnamed employee who I will not mention here..

 

[MarkusTay]

Originally posted by Trevor
Yeah, on that quality thing, I like wood elfs, I generally like the new GW wood elfs, but compared to THIS they totally suck.

They are simply being outclassed.

Oh... I don\'t know about that. The new Wood Elves are awesome, and I would put that model up against this or this anyday. I really love those spellsingers, but the whole army is really well sculpted. Except maybe the Dryads, I think nymphs should be sexy, but thats just a matter of taste and they are well done for what they are. The same could be said for most of the Ogre line (minus those atrocious Yeti).

The sculpt quality seems to be coming back. I think the problem is personality, as many have mentioned. Citadel was known for their many whimsical pieces, which added a lot to the character of the game. I don\'t think the prices are THE problem, because as mentioned many smaller companies have higher prices. Charging the same money for 3 cents worth of plastic as they do for metal minis is a little off-putting though. They also seem to be having a hard time putting their finger on the pulse-beat of their customers. That one thing can make or break a company.

 

[Sand Rat]

Originally posted by Dedwrekka

3. Continuously drive prices through the roof. A 35-45% increase in your product in less than 5 years should be a clue that you\'re digging your own grave.

Games workshop is still cheaper than the majority of other miniature suppliers. It is also cheaper than fishing, model train building, and car restoration (other hobbies).

DW - I said it earlier and I\'ll say it again - I spent 43 dollars at Crocodile Games (Including shipping to freaking IRAQ), and got 8 Sebeki (Crocodile based Lizardmen) - 3 Kroxigor are $45 - without shipping - and in my opinion the sculpt is shyte.

 

[paintingploddy]

Gw have a business model that has kept them going for years. Target over reached itself and the people behind that company have successfully killed off everything they put their hand to bar the current incarnation. GW were just lucky to be the first, same as TSR with D&D. We all know what happened to TSR, maybe this is where we find out how strong GW really are.

I don\'t buy much GW these days for several reasons. The most important of which is my tastes and preferences have changed. I still get the occasional urge to build an army, but it is easier to fight these days. The craving generally lasts a couple of days then passes. Funnily enough the only thing I do buy is the LOTR product.

In price terms GW are rapidly being over taken. A three pack of Warlord troop figures is now more expensive than a GW blister (at least down here). Most of the other manufacturers are similar. They have caught up in quality, imagination and price and take you well beyond the narrow confines of the GW worlds (which were never very convincing to me anyway).

 

[Patrick]

Originally posted by Modderrhu
This is the big one for me. I wanted a Wood Elf army, and the redo was due - overdue. Everyone got excited at the prospect of the Wood Elves being next, and what did GW do? To the utter dismay, horror and anger, of many players? A new army - the Ogre Kingdoms.

Which is the exact reason why I will never spend another dollar on any more GW product. I started playing Wood Elves in WHFB at version 1.0. So, my angst goes wayyyy back to the Rogue Trader days when I was a game shop manager and had to order \"sleeves\" of figures containing 80% crappy models no one wanted to the 20% of the new stuff. The Wood Elves were the last straw, never again....

I found something much cooler anyway!

 

[Valander]

Originally posted by Patrick
I found something much cooler anyway!

Yes, indeed, that is much cooler, both in terms of the models and the actual game.

Lots of points in this thread. I think that there are two main ideas going around in here that I agree 100% with.

1. GW is finally facing competent competition. The likes of Rackham and (my fave) Privateer Press have brought the fought to GW like no other companies had been able to. Not only do both of these companies produce beautiful miniatures, but they also have a very successful game to back them up. Reaper may have some great sculpts, but historically haven\'t been very successful with supporting rules (we\'ll see how Warlord does, but I doubt it will be very successful).

2. People are getting tired of the \"Year of the [Blah]\", where GW seems to focus on one particular army to the point of neglecting the rest of them. They\'ve done this for as long as I can remember. This limits their continuing purchase base, and instead relies on the \"big shot all at once\" model. Privateer Press (and apparently Rackham--not as sure since I don\'t follow them as highly) is a lot better at keeping new things coming out for all of their armies at a fairly constant pace. This lets every player have something new every \"wave\", and keeps the continuing purchases fairly even.

But, enough of that, I\'m having a DRINK!

 

[QuietiManes]

Personally I prefer the \"year of the [blah]\" method of GW over PP\'s \"a new [blah] for every [blah] every month\". I mean I\'d just rather buy my army and play my army in the way I want with the units I want when I want. I dont want to have to buy the rules, see what\'s available and have to wait 1-35 months for the models I want to be released because then I\'m forced to buy a bunch of what I consider crud to fill out my force while I wait for the cool stuff. Plus you read the rules and think \"COOL BEANS\" then you wait for the models to come out and you get something like the Menoth Deliverers or Zealots which just sucked enough to make me not want them after waiting forever for them.

But this is personal preference. Redoing the same armies over and over is just how they do it, with a bit of planning you can start an army not too long after it\'s released and not have to worry about it for a few years.

I wish they\'d see that in the long run, not pissing everyone off by pushing the wood elves back again and again would have been more profitable. GW\'s biggest problem is their short sightedness. They just keep pounding sand for all it\'s worth hoping to pick up another nickle. They dont take the time to view the bigger picture where a steady supply of pennies streams down the river a few feet away. The few models they sold with the ogre kingdoms release will never make up for the loss of the wood elf players that boycotted GW because they got fed up with their system. What they really need to do is make a list and follow it, every year, every eddition, whatever. Do the armies in alphabetical order for F sakes and drop the POS LOTR crap already, put the workers back onto the games that will make money without the need of a new movie.

They spend all their energy trying to get little kids to spend their allowance and birthday money on their products but dont do enough to keep the new recruits happy and loyal. Shortsited!

Having said that, I like their customer service and support, support outside of develpoment I mean. Things like that and the free painting lessons and that new program they have going, the class for new gamers, you pay $50 and go to something like 6 or so classes, do some painting, assembling, terrain then they give you a $55 figure case at the end of 6 weeks. Well those are all good but any 8 year old can do a google search for how to do it all so that sort of thing isnt keeping their customers happy. They need to work hard to remove the scale/size/power creep and list the armies 1-15 and release them in that order, then maybe skip ahead 3 or 4 armies the next eddition so that the same army doesnt get shafted by coming out just before the new eddition every time.

Oh, and since I am the king of run-on sentences today and this is a rant after all. GW needs to stop dumbing down everything, it\'s not hard to learn, 40k is especially annoying with it\'s made for 12 year olds mentality. Goes back to short sitedness I think. A new 12 yr old customer that plays for a couple years is not a bigger spender than the happy adult veterans who have an army completed but play for their whole life. Cause they always buy more, a kid gets xmas presents, an adult is in the store all year long. We are never finished all our armies, that\'s a foreign concept.

It\'s a case of the chiefs making decisions they know nothing about. They think they\'re all great and powerful so they stop listening to the people that made them and got them to where they are. So the people eventually stop supporting the chief and he falls down and gets trampled by some pirate raider like Privateer Press.

Geez, they\'ve got such a great huge customer base and they\'re pissing it away, I cant believe how stupid they must be. Someone should call the head honcho\'s at GW and remind them to breathe before they forget.

I guess that\'s the way it is with big business, they get so busy lining their pockets with money they dont have time to run a company, too busy packing for their trip.

 

[Patrick]

Oh and incidentally - this same thing is going on in the company I work for too. They are getting their ass kicked by Netflix and OnDemand programming. Any guess as to which evil video rental empire I am a slave to.....

So it really goes on everywhere. Too bad GW\'s business practices have affected a really large portion of the hobby community. But in a way it\'s good for us because it has opened up the doors for these other companies to step in and take a foothold with new and quality products.

There\'s nothing like a little stiff competition to make you reevaluate your mission statement!

 

[Dedwrekka]

Originally posted by airhead
Ok, I\'m not a GW player. Let me see if I understand this:

If I buy an army, then there is nothing new for it or nothing I can add until GW redoes the Codex for that army every 6 years or so?

As opposed to MtG where every quarter (3 months), you have to buy a new box set and revamp your decks to remain competitive?

Seems like a company could find the happy medium and make a killing here?
Or would the gamers still whine that the updates were too frequent / not often enough?

???

Diference is that when GW redoes an army it doesn\'t make everything else before it unusable. When MtG comes out with a new line it generally sends one of the older ones out of production and out of regular tournament play. GW still puts out new things for it\'s armies when developing intrest in a new one, it just doesn\'t do it as fast as it is the new one.

 

[Dedwrekka]

Originally posted by Patrick
Oh and incidentally - this same thing is going on in the company I work for too. They are getting their ass kicked by Netflix and OnDemand programming. Any guess as to which evil video rental empire I am a slave to.....

So it really goes on everywhere. Too bad GW\'s business practices have affected a really large portion of the hobby community. But in a way it\'s good for us because it has opened up the doors for these other companies to step in and take a foothold with new and quality products.

There\'s nothing like a little stiff competition to make you reevaluate your mission statement!

They could raise prices by 50% still now and be a little cheaper than the majority of other miniature companies, dispite this ranting. GW is still a fairly cheap ~hobby~, and still sells faily cheap miniatures that have been increasing in quality in my eyes. The reason they have been moving out of metal minis recently is because the average gamer and converter calls for plastic ones, while the average painter calls for metal ones, and guess who\'s bigger?

 

[Ritual]

@Dedwrekka
What\'s this majority of miniature companies you\'re talking about? Of the mini companies I buy from (and they\'re plenty... ) I can think of Freebooter and Ilyad that are more expensive and if GW raised their prices by 50 % that would no longer be the case....

 

[Evil Dave]

Originally posted by Dedwrekka

Diference is that when GW redoes an army it doesn\'t make everything else before it unusable.

Zoats?
Squats?
Slann?
Fimir? (really old first edition WFB)

 

[AinuLainour]

Whoa! It\'s a little off topic, but what were zoats and fimir?

 

[Evil Dave]

Zoats - \"Zoats are the most common of Tyranid\'s many specially engineered slave races. Other slave races are little more than animals, mere blobs of protoplasm dedicated to cleaning and maintaining the Hive Fleets they are apart. Even hulking spacecraft which compose the Hive Fleet are in a sense races as they are grown and nurtured from a common, albeit much modified, biological stock. Spacecraft are mindless monstrosities and the vast majority of other slaves are so dedicated t a single purpose it would be inappropriate to think of them as creatures. Zoats, on the other hand, are completely independent living creatures much like their masters.

The Xenobiologers of the Administratum believe Zoats were created purely for combat. Tyranids, being creatures of space, suffer discomfort if they spend too long on a planet. Zoats, however, are stocky animals that feel quite at home in a variety of atmospheric and gravitational condition. Like Tyranids, Zoats are centauroid. Their two rear sets of limbs and are heavily built providing the creatures with its means of locomotion. The front limbs are manipulative organs of great strength and are used to wield a variety of weapons. Unlike Tyranids, Zoats will eat anything though they are largely subsist on a daily diet of three reconstituted protein based woven biscuits called Zoatibix. Zoats are common Hive Fleet inhabitants, often equaling the number of Tyranids themselves.

Although Zoats are a slave race, Zoats occupy important positions throughout the Hive Fleets and individual Zoats can gain great power. Rebellion from Tyranid control is not unknown, but is extremely rare. This is because Tyranids secrete a special slave-hormone which suppresses the Zoats\' natural sense of independence. However, renegade Zoats do exist throughout the universe, where they have broken away from the Hive Fleets or have become lost during scouting or exploration missions. Without the inhibiting influence of Tyranids slave-hormone, Zoats are able to develop strong psychic powers. The path of independents Zoat civilization is incredibly diverse, with small groups isolated from each other on widely scattered planets (202 Rogue Trader).\"

Also had a WFB version of them.

Fimir

One eyed, fog emitting creatures for WFB.

 

[green stuff]

To add up on what Dave said on the Zoats :

 

[Evil Dave]

Not that the Zoats and Fimir were any good, but a lot of people like the Squats, and GW simply phased them out, it didn\'t matter what the gamers said.
This was also around the time that the attack bikes, dreads, jetbikes and landspeeders started being made in plastic and cost just as much, if not more, than the same metal versions of them.

 

[MarkusTay]

Originally posted by Patrick

I found something much cooler anyway!

I love Warmachine, but the new Hordes stuff just fills me with -

Anyhow, because I am new to WH, I didn\'t \'wait\' for the Wood Elves, and therefore wasn\'t already irate when they came out. I will most likey NEVER play them, I just wanted to paint some up.

As far as a Zoat goas... I thought it was a cross between a Zebra and a Goat. My bad....

Originally posted by steelcult
DW - I said it earlier and I\'ll say it again - I spent 43 dollars at Crocodile Games (Including shipping to freaking IRAQ), and got 8 Sebeki (Crocodile based Lizardmen) - 3 Kroxigor are $45 - without shipping - and in my opinion the sculpt is shyte.

They\'re Age of Aegyptus stuff is the bomb, I especially love those cat people. Too bad they\'re are not doing very well, they\'ll probably never release their Age of Olympus line. It looked very promising.

 

[dauber22]

Originally posted by MarkusTay

They\'re Age of Aegyptus stuff is the bomb, I especially love those cat people. Too bad they\'re are not doing very well...

Obviously because they aren\'t charging enough lollollollol:bouncy:lollollol