Dear GW

[dumbpunk7777]

I have been playing your games and collecting your products for years. I will often take a break for a year or two and I am super surprised to see the crazy price hikes when I return.

Just wanted to say WTF. I get that over years prices rise, but come on I think things have gotten out of hand.

Cheers

 

[PegaZus]

*snicker*

10chars

 

[Aoroi]

Yea, I hear you. It really makes you want to learn how to make or convert your own items or look for alternatives. Some of the products only rose like 4 bucks in the 10 years I played, but the books got out of hand. I used to buy the army books for the new art work and ideas, now I have to scour the internet for the pictures.

 

[me_in_japan]

blimey charlie...


ok, ok. I was going to just leave it at that, but here goes: some sensible comments:

1) GW dont care. They're a business whose target audience is teenage boys. They get em into the hobby, buy an army, get bored and chuck their army into their closet. Where the models end up is no concern of GWs, simply that they are sold. You're their customer, not their mate. How you feel is irrelevant to them, right up until you stop buying their stuff.

2) If GW annoy you enough, sod em. you don't have to stop playing warhammer, but you can stop buying their minis. Buy alternatives minis for use in warhammer, or just play some other games by other companies. To be honest, these games tend to be better designed because the companies don't hold a dominant market position and thus have to strive to improve in order to get the sales. This GW-embargo is known locally as "taking a Spevna stance" (for complicated, in-joke reasons) but the basic principal is:

GW's constant price hikes and disregard for customers offends me. It's not just too expensive. It actually, morally offends me. So, although I will continue to play the games I enjoy, I shall no longer fund this company.

I've been keeping up my Spevna since GW told european retailers they couldnt ship overseas. That means I have to buy from local GW, which is at least double what people pay in europe. It is actually cheaper for me to order a Death Korp of Krieg army from FW than to buy a Cadian one locally. Of course, I choose to do neither, and just play Warmachine

So, that's my two cents.

ps - if your opening post was meant as a cynical dig at GW, sorry. If that was the case, just ignore the above and subsititute "fhnaharhar" instead

 

[freakinacage]

hasslfree ftw!! better sculpts, service and prices

 

[Dragonsreach]

hasslfree ftw!! better sculpts, service and prices

hasslfree ftw!! better sculpts, service and prices

hasslfree ftw!! better sculpts, service and prices

hasslfree ftw!! better sculpts, service and prices

hasslfree ftw!! better sculpts, service and prices

Quoted for Emphasis

 

[Tercha]

Dont buy armies....Buy shares

 

[supervike]

Too many other manufacturers to even worry about what GW does.

The last purchase I've made from them was Space Hulk (and I was pleased with that). Maybe Dreadfleet, but maybe not.

I've nothing against them, but they just aren't creating stuff I feel the urge to have.

Start seriously looking at other makers, you may never go back.

 

[Legacy Account]

GW are shit.

 

[leopardpixie]

GW are shit.

May be true, But people still want their deamons and swords

 

[ischa]

ah, this thread is really uneccesary. gw is great. if it wasnt for gw, almost none of us would be in the hobby. the prices arnt that crazy. when i started 13 years ago, a regiment of 20 costed 250kr(around 22£, 30$) and now it costs 310kr, the price increase over 13 years is ridiculously small. it´s common business, get over it. and as people allready mentioned, gw is a company, with good proucts and good stores, in which the kids can sit and paint, or play with their models, for free! what other company does this kind of thing? other than that, gw host great events for reasonable prizes every year, and remain a positive tendency economicaly. they even give us videogames to play with and help us find new friends!

 

[me_in_japan]

When I started, an eldar aspect warrior cost 60p, iirc. Now in the UK they cost 380p. Granted, a lot of other things in the world have gone up in price, too, but a 600% increase in price for the same goods is enough to put me off. A big bugbear of mine is regional pricing differences, too. Here, where I am, it costs 613p for an aspect warrior. That is an over 1000% price increase over what I first paid for one single striking scorpion twenty-odd years ago.

if it wasnt for gw, almost none of us would be in the hobby.

That, otoh, is very true, speaking for myself, at any rate. I owe them thanks. I don't, however, owe them my business.

*gnngh* must resist getting drawn into another "why GW sucks" conversation...:quiet:

 

[ischa]

that sounds like a wierd price change indeed mij:S what it ever tells us tho is that gw went from being a garage activity selling home made products to being a international company with more than 150 stores and hundreds of thousands of fans!

 

[me_in_japan]

true, very true. tbh, I don't have anything like as much of a problem with GWs prices as I used to. About 5, 6 years ago I only played GW stuff, and every time their prices went up, ooh, there was a wailing and a gnashing of teeth. Eventually, though, folks around me convinced me to start looking at other companies' games. Warmachine was my first port of call, as I had always secretly rather liked the warjacks, and at the time there was a lot more warmachine going on here than warhammer (rulebooks are clearer, which makes reading them much easier on non-native speakers of english). After actually playing it a mere 1 time, I realised that this, this was what a wargame should be like. Rules questions? Answers inna book. Codex creep? Whats that then? By the time I actually bought my first warjack (Deathjack, as it happens. I jumped in both feet first ) I was already sold on the game. I haven't looked back. The only major purchase I've made from GW in years was when the Dark Eldar came out. I loved the minis and went and bought a whole 3000pts or so. Then they made it clear to us folks in Japan that they didnt want our custom, and since then I've been sticking to my Spevna stance resolutely. I need 1 more venom to finish my dark eldar, but it can wait until next time I'm back in the UK, probly. So yeah, GW price rises no longer bother me because basically I've realised that I don't need to buy GW minis to enjoy painting and wargaming. If they make a super duper lovely model that I cant live without, I might consider buying it, but that's it*. No more army-buys again from me.

*unless it's in finecast. Temperatures round here can hit 37, 38 in the summer, and in a non-air conditioned room like my games room they can get even higher. I dont want to come home to a 15quid puddle of muck on the floor.

*edit* I guess my post there could be read in a slightly ranty manner. It's not intended as such. When you read it, give it a nice, calm, bearded, pipe-smoking uncle kinda of internal speaking voice, and you'll hopefully get the tone I was aiming for

 

[Kalidane]

Dont buy armies....Buy shares

Yours. Serial price hiking does not drive corporate out-performance. They are a lousy company to own.

if it wasnt for gw, almost none of us would be in the hobby. the prices arnt that crazy. when i started 13 years ago, a regiment of 20 costed 250kr(around 22£, 30$) and now it costs 310kr, the price increase over 13 years is ridiculously small.!

No that would be Grenadier.

It seems you live in a very lucky country.
GW were 20 (Skeletons, Catachans) or 16 (Dwarves, Chaos Warriors) plastics in a box for NZD40 or maybe it was 45.
Now respectively 10 for $48, 10 for $56, 16 for $64 (go Dwarves!), and 12 for $64.
Per mini the price appreciation is random and ranges from high to very high.
Pre-emptively, increased costs of plastic inputs has a trivial impact on their total cost of getting it to a store for you to buy.

Mantic make plastic models. Their orcs and undead are much much cheaper and the sculpts are great. Skeletons are $1.25 each vs $4.80 for GW. Avatars of War Dwarf Beserkers. Almost forgot the Perry brothers. Great stuff. Oh yeah Zveda et al too. So actually one company stands alone with sky high plastic mini prices.

that sounds like a wierd price change indeed mij:S what it ever tells us tho is that gw went from being a garage activity selling home made products to being a international company with more than 150 stores and hundreds of thousands of fans!

Is that what it tells us? So to offset achieving significant economies of scale (low unit cost of production) they need to constantly ramp prices? It's more a case of needing to achieve greater margins to offset lower volumes.


There are none so blind so I'll restrain myself in future and have a muffin instead

 

[ischa]

how the hell can the prize changes be so crazy? that´s just bizarre and makes me a bit angry. especially since northern european countries are usually the most epensive ones to live in in the world. fact remains that gw as a company keeps growing. and sure, we can be bothered by prizes, but why would they care? this is how a succesive company works.buying products fromother companies is the best thing to do if you dont like gw, but the games arnt the same, and the minis often keep a lower quality. what´s most important to me is how the minis look, and fact remains that most gw products do look pretty good. pisses me off that they cant make a new bloodthirster, but cast the old one in shitcast tho.

 

[KelRiever]

I, sadly, find GW price hikes a handy excuse for other companies to match.

 

[me_in_japan]

buying products from other companies is the best thing to do if you dont like gw, but the games arnt the same, and the minis often keep a lower quality.

first clause: true
second clause: true, but not necessarily a problem
last clause: not true at all.

http://www.avatars-of-war.com/
http://wyrd-games.net/shop/MALIFAUX/
http://www.studiomcvey.com/
http://www.heresyminiatures.com/sho...id=260&zenid=e72cf84d638703918ad16ff32b960e71
http://privateerpress.com/warmachine/gallery

and, well, various:
http://www.coolminiornot.com/shop/

 

[Aoroi]

Another side to the price hikes:

GW is a good company to work for, the benefits both in store discounts and medical are more than half the company's offer. Even for sales associates (first rung new hires) after a while they get medical. I used to work at a food store for just over six years, two years after I left, the union kind of rolled over and let the parent company slash benefits, reduce retirements, and even cut medical for new hires. You had to work for two years now before you were eligible for medical (assuming you are close to the open enrollment time) and that all is if you got a promotion to cashier or a higher department. With the rising cost of medical premiums in the USA, they have to make some of that money up. "What about that health care bill" yea, that will help us alot, except about a third of the companies currently offering medical say they will drop coverage. This is based on the costs rising and they just cannot afford to cover a share of the premiums anymore.

Also developing new technologies or purchasing the machines to make the new models can be expensive as well. Shipping costs go up, gasoline goes up, forgeworld comes overseas in a ship. All these things add up. Opening new stores cost money. It just is not about how much the materials cost that causes the prices go up.

Most of the models also have improved in design and looks over the years, personally I hate the new skeletons, cost more, and look like they still will be all snapped on the sprues (the legs were so thin, removing from the sprue broke them), so you have to get creative, mixing units together to create even better and more models to begin with.

Personally, I collect a lot of GW products. I do not get to play as much as I would like, almost never in fact. Yet I still buy the books and a few of the games (I wish they made them better, to short, crappy, or glitchy, another subject for another time). If the Blood Angels books and fluff were available from a different company, yea I may have bought them, but odds are I would never know about them.

 

[Dragonsreach]

buying products fromother companies is the best thing to do if you dont like gw, but the games arnt the same, and the minis often keep a lower quality.

first clause: true Seconding that statement. After more than 20 years of buying GW the last price hike and the constant attitude of treating customers as nothing but open wallet cash cows has sickened me.
second clause: true, but not necessarily a problem. Nope not a problem for me either because most other games are BETTER and not dependant on huge armies or UBER Tough game dominating and ruining characters.
last clause: not true at all. ABSOLUTELY NOT TRUE AT ALL. Plus most are far better value for money; Character from GW £9-10 pounds, Character from Reaper £3-4 pounds with less chance of flawed casting or damaged parts.

http://www.avatars-of-war.com/
http://wyrd-games.net/shop/MALIFAUX/
http://www.studiomcvey.com/
http://www.heresyminiatures.com/sho...id=260&zenid=e72cf84d638703918ad16ff32b960e71
http://privateerpress.com/warmachine/gallery

and, well, various:
http://www.coolminiornot.com/shop/

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