Would you please like to list the positives and negatives about how you’ve experienced GW throughout your hobby years? The idea is to try and get a rough overall idea of how customers have and are perceiving GW.
To get the ball rolling. I started during 6th edition WHFB, so my experience is mainly constricted by this starting point. I’m more of a painter and converter than a player, and mainly have experience with WHFB’s game.
Positives
(+) They have produced available miniatures and games of mainly high quality throughout the years.
(+) Quality of background and art of army books and (perhaps to a lesser degree) codices have increased. The Lotr supplements were thin but still contained some lovely stuff.
(+) GW maintained Specialist Games through many years, despite seemingly poor results from many of the branches. Specialist Games produced very good background in particular, and several good games.
(+) Their hobby magazine once truly was worth its money and had lots of content. It also contain “Dwarf” in the title.
(+) Despite retreating from the smaller games/miniatures ranges market, GW have not entirely abandoned it, as Space Hulk and Dreadfleet stands as evidence for.
(+) Despite retreating from producing characterful metal miniatures, GW did release several characterful Empire citizens, pirate models and even a set of Lotr casaulties. They also kept much old stuff, like the '80s Dwarf adventurers, drunken Dwarfs, elementals, Lotr and Regiments of Renown, available for years despite poor performance. Still do, in some cases.
(+) GW once had an excellent bitz service. It was a pleasure to have made extensive use of it once, especially for kitbashing metal characters and acquiring Mordheim Dwarf backpacks separately.
(+) The relative realism and quality of most metal miniatures from about 6th edition WHFB (most notably High Elves and Longbeards of that era).
(+) The overall improved looks of most armies through WHFB 6th-8th editions.
(+) The fun game of WHFB 8th ed. Best yet in my experience.
(+) Hordes in WHFB!
(+) Excellent background for the Imperium in particular in 40k.
(+) GW’s Lotr miniatures range, mainly sculpted by the Perry twins. Gorgeous models, almost the whole lot of them. GW’s own additions and interpretations have also been well-chosen.
(+) GW’s own Lotr Dwarf range deserves an honourable mention in particular. Check it out and discover why. It’s one of the best takes on Dwarves ever attempted.
(+) Many good plastic kits. Plastic was more kitbash-friendly in 6th edition WHFB, though it has better looks nowadays.
(+) The disappearance of hamfists from the plastic range in particular.
(+) Plastic terrain.
(+) Ogre Kingdoms. It’s good to see the creative spark alive and kicking with that new addition which added so much to WHFB. The 8th edition army book also brought the Warhammer world to the Ogres, in the shape of cat-thwarted Skaven tunneling, Dwarf mining expeditions and wars with Black Orcs.
(+) Forge World.
(+) FW’s and BL’s current attention to the Horus Heresy.
(+) FW’s revival of Chaos Dwarfs.
(+) BL’s ombibuses, though not always any longer available from Black Library itself. Eisenhorn and the background book Xenology can’t be found around there.
(+) The background and special miniatures produced for Eye of Terror and Storm of Chaos (though the campaign results are irrelevant to appreciate them).
(+) The Hellcannon. It deserves a mention.
(+) Tamurkhan: Throne of Chaos.
(+) Empire powder monkey in Handgunner box and shot Orc in Archer kit. More of those extras!
(+) GW’s new take on Wood Elves. The old have their charm, but the new are evidently superior.
(+) Battle for Skull Pass, the mainly abandoned attempt to turn elite units into cheap, good-looking plastics and similar takes on price lowering.
(+) The bringing-back of old favourites such as the Verminlord, Doomwheel and Jokaero, which were cut away during 6th edition WHFB/2nd-3rd edition 40k or before that. Storm of Magic is an especially good example of pleasing all hobbyists in this way by not excluding old favourites.
(+) The faithfulness to the better of old styles with plastic Greatswords, Stormvermin and others.
(+) Some minor attempts at making people focus on the common fun of the game instead of cheese spam and powerplay. It needn’t be balanced to be fun.
(+) Foundation paints and the new paint range. Making some darker foundation paints (Khorne red in particular, matching Scab Red of old) gives bonus points.
(+) A wealth of wacky old miniatures mainly from before my time. Still gives a laugh to see some of them resurface, like the toilet Dwarf.
Negatives
(-) Butchered quality of White Dwarf magazine.
(-) Rampant price increases, particularly during the last years. It even thwarted my plans to amass a the Hobbit Dwarf and Goblin collection to go along with my Lotr one. It have also channeled my hobby funds away to other companies. Recruitment around here has more or less died.
(-) Tedious rules. Many historical wargames and Mantic’s Kings of War have more streamlined rules systems for mass combat games, which do not involve picking away all your carefully converted and painted miniatures from the ranks at risk of chipping them every game.
(-) Butchered bits service.
(-) No sales or mystery box deals.
(-) No frantic, enthusiastic output of new metal miniatures which wouldn’t necessarily have a direct use in the two big tabletop games.
(-) The decline in smaller side-games which GW was so good at once upon a time. Apart from the WHFB-40k side games, Dark Future deserves a mention.
(-) Finecast hypocrisy. The material still has some advantages for conversions.
(-) Lack of that creative spark and enthusiasm outside of army books/codices. With WD pouring out captivating articles and smaller games systems/miniature ranges active once upon a time it was easy to get swept along with GW’s flood. No longer so. Once, it was easy to think that GW wanted you as a customer and tried to spoil you. No longer so.
(-) The great purge at the moment which eliminated the Deathroller amongst others. An indicator of the imaginary poverty of the ranges this results in can be seen in that there soon won’t be any Halfling miniatures left to buy from GW (except for the ones bagged in the Giant’s pouch). There always have been Halflings before.
(-) Very long release gaps for some armies.
(-) Codex creep and magic item crêpe, especially during 7th edition WHFB/5th edition 40k.
(-) The demise of Squats. You got to have Dwarfs!
(-) The lack of plastic Sisters of Battle. Should be there.
(-) The lack of plastic greatcoat Imperial Guard. Really should be there.
(-) The lack of a Brewmaster and Drunken Dwarfs unit in WHFB, alcohol promotion to underages be damned.
(-) Ugly 7th edition Empire State Troopers, also bland plastic Dwarfs.
(-) World of Warcraft symptoms with ridiculously large helmet wings, weapons and even shoulder pads for High Elves.
(-) Gigantism Empire Gryphon.
(-) Obese Stegadon and Ancylosaurus for Lizardmen, otherwise all is fine at that front.
(-) Making Lotr miniatures smaller than 28mm. A capital crime.
(-) The disappearance of do it yourself hobby articles, particularly for terrain.
(-) FW’s long-standing unwillingness to give Warhammer Fantasy its due. Bring on weapon options and more units for your own army, Chaos Dwarfs, at the very least.
(-) BL’s mass-produced standard for many of its books.
(-) The company’s seeming inability to understand its core issues.
Now share your own experience with Games Workshop throughout the years.
The most important aspect of GW for me its how sociable Warhammer & Warhammer 40k are. Before I stopped playing (around 9 years ago), the game allowed me to meet different people from all over the country. I have lots of memories of those years and unlike what most people think we weren’t “just a bunch of nerds”… Most of us don’t play anymore and we still are in contact.
Than I’m absolutely in love with GW’s backgrounds. What brought me into the hobby was the 5th edition Lizardmen models, and since the first time I’ve seen them I started devouring every book ever written by GW in order to know more…
The increase in prices doesn’t really bother me. And the reason is that , if I consider how much time I spend building, prepping, painting and (one day) playing with my models I realize that I just payed for what I got.
Lastly, I don’t care if now White Dwarf is not as interesting as it used to be, or if GW cares more about revenue than anything else (and what company doesn’t?)… Warhammer is about creating stories between two carefully built miniature armies fighting on a carefully built miniature battlefield.
I don’t have the time or energy to spend on deciding whether my hobby makes me happy or miserable. If it made me miserable, I’d just stop doing it. But I get that there are people who are involved in it for whom the bitching elements of it are, perversely, part of their enjoyment. They enjoy getting into it with others on Warseer or wherever it might be, even if the cause of their angst is theoretically something that annoys them. I’ve seen it in other online communities, and for every “x has lost its way!” there are just as many “man, do you even like x?” threads. It’s the nature of a) geekdom and b) communities.
Which is not to disparage the concept of this thread exactly, just an observation about how these things tend to work. For me, the hobby is what it is. I have no expectations about it now because I barely have the time to build and paint the models I have, and I haven’t had the chance to play an actual game in a very long time. So I don’t come into this hoping that they’ll “fix Tyranids” or whatever it might be - the hobby time I have is too precious to waste on caring about that stuff!
I will say this though: for all the complaints about what GW is doing wrong and how it isn’t as good as it used to be and how much better the decade you got into GW was (and it’s always that particular decade that was best, wasn’t it? Funny…), it’s worth taking a step back and actually looking, with as objective an eye as possible, at what they’re producing now. I bought the Tyranid Codex last week and it’s a finely produced piece of work. Full-colour, like all modern GW publications, with lots of fantastic art work, everything rendered with thematic design elements (page borders and backgrounds, box-out sections, even the header font is slightly different). And, more importantly, there are the models and the photographs of them set out.
When I started playing GW games, this was fairy typical of the scenes they set up to show off their figures. Now we have this. I often wonder what we’d think if, 20 (or even 10) years ago, someone came from today and showed us what was coming up for GW! I remember the plastic Carnifex coming out and it seeming impossibly huge, and now I look at the Tervigon and the Tyrannofex which are almost titan-sized and don’t seem unusual. Such massive, dynamic plastic kits were completely beyond our imagination, as was the level of presentation now taken for granted in GW publications. Even 3rd Edition 40K books seem sloppy and arbitrarily formatted by comparison with all sorts of things that, if the internet had been as mainstream then as now, would have been endlessly debated over (for example, it wasn’t until the 5th Edition Space Marine Codex that Sergeants were identified with a separate profile - until then they were, by the stringent standards of today’s online rules debates, technically non-existent).
So I think it’s worth approaching this stuff objectively once in a while. There are amazing models coming out all the time, and lots of cool stuff happening. And hey, if you don’t like it, no one forces you to put money in GW’s collective pocket. Go do something else. It is what it is.
Good input. However, note that the list format was intended to encourage an objective look at things simply by making those normally looking at GW’s perceived negative sides count off on their fingers, so to speak, the good stuff. As for myself, many of the negative points are obviously tounge in cheek, or trivial stuff placed in there as filler to weigh up the larger positive listing (i.e. I’m a largely content and mostly happy customer, especially since I don’t have to build an army from the ground up these days).
Some people evaluate their games afterwards to see if there was an unnecessary element, such as a combo build, which brought down the enjoyment, or improved it. This can be viewed as a pool for evaluations of the hobby as a whole connected to the fictive miniatures market’s dominant player, GW.
Feedback, in short. I’d have liked to have it if I ran a company, so it’s a bit mutual.
Without getting too far into it - my experience rose and has declined. Particularly since working for them (semi-coincidental, semi-causal).
I enjoy their game, I don’t enjoy their practices and it’s literally forced me to stop being a customer of theirs - but I WANT to be and I WANT to like them. Unfortunately, I can’t afford to be their customer and they have been unscrupulous in places (IMO), but have had redeeming features and I do enjoy their product on the whole.
So, I like what they’ve given to me and what I am still able to participate in, I don’t like that they are making it harder for me to participate.
I’ve scrimped and saved my way through this hobby entirely.
My first army was composed mostly of HeroQuest and BattleMasters figures converted onto GW bases. I bought things when they went on discount ($4 blisters for old Chaos Dwarfs, anyone?!) and bought lots of product during GW Auctions.
I still buy non-GW brushes, glue and other materials. I still buy mostly plastic kits and convert them into more expensive units. I buy their boxed games to get models for a lower price-to-model ratio.
That said, I love GW products. I think they are great. The quality of their plastic miniatures is really nice, and I love the army books. I don’t play all that much, but I appreciate the game and the lore. Since I don’t play a lot, I am not usually in a rush to complete armies, so I can usually spread the cost out over many years. It’s fun for me.
Sadly, I don’t think I’m the kind of customer that can sustain their business. I think much of what they sell is overpriced and I won’t ever buy it. While I love the new Witch Elves, I just can’t see myself spending $70 for 10 models (at least not for Warhammer; if I had some other use for them, I might, like making an Escher gang for Necromunda).
I don’t know how long GW can survive with customers like me, who do whatever they can to not buy non-essential GW product. I’d love to be a more loyal customer, but it’s just not the best use of my money. So I float by, buying only what I really, really, like. I just don’t know if that level of patronage will be enough.
GW has. Even hurtling towards their own demise for years… It has only been a case of reality final closing in on them.
Say it along with me GW. You’re product is not essential.
In fact I said as much when I first joined the forum back in 2007. The LoTR line provided a false sense of hope IMO, it delayed the day of reckoning and here we are.
I think the early traces of it can be found when they shut down the online bits store (certainly was for me). Going after the online retailers when they gave customers what you wouldn’t? White Dwarf sucking for years (everyone draws the line for themselves).
The list is endless.
Add to this from my own personal side pouring in a ton of effort on The Word of Hashut, giving up sleep to get it done, you name it… only to run afoul of them?
My experiences with GW didn’t start off especially interestingly. There was only one store nearby and it wasn’t really nearby. I got their starter paint set only to find that it didn’t contain half of the shades they suggested in their painting guide, but instead had a load of different shades. When I first bought, blisters were 4 quid, then rose to 4.50, then 5, over only a few years. A box of ten plastic guys was only 5 quid. The plastic Rhino model doubled in price in the same timeframe. GW employees were either fun people or dicks who made fun of you. White Dwarf had catalogue pages at the back of every issue for the models featured in that issue. You could see exactly what you were buying and the bits if you wanted just certain parts for conversions. 6th edition hit, I managed to have a decent sized army at last, then CDs vanished from the stores. White Dwarf would go a few issues without any fantasy coverage, then they started sealing every issue in a bag so that I couldn’t even see what was in it before buying. They had haphazard updates of some armies, using really old models and rules while others were updated more frequently. Plastic models were now 20 quid for 15. I’d reached the point where converting the models was far more fun than playing the game, and random opponents at the club were more stressful with constant cheats and lies. GW forced independent stores to close down, hassled fan websites, their employees becoming awful salesmen first and foremost. Now I am at the stage where I probably won’t buy anything from them again. I have enough stuff - several armies, army books and rulebooks. I’m sticking with 7th ed WFB. Plenty of other companies selling good-enough models at reasonable prices, to fill any gaps. GW prices are astronomical now. The GWs near me have disappeared or moved to places I don’t go. Looking for a random opponent fills me with dread, so I’ll stick with my family. I get more fun out of playing a game of scratch-built HeroQuest with my family, with models cobbled from various armies, than Warhammer. My kids will soon be old enough for Blood Bowl.
My experience has been OK, overall. The vast majority of my experiences have been with GW product, purchased through a local game store. When I lived in Vancouver, I would go to a bonafide ‘Games Workshop’ store, and my experiences started out positive, then changed to a ‘getting ambushed by the sales staff as soon as I got into the store who would hound me and not leave me alone’. The last time I went in, there was only a single employee working - who told me, after I had mentioned the cost increases - that he could no longer afford to buy the miniatures he’d like, either.
I got hooked on GW when I picked up a copy of ‘Adeptus Titanicus’ years and years ago when I was 17, and in University. That led to reading White Dwarf, which eventually caused my love for D&D to be replaced with Warhammer / WH40K. I’ve never really been a gamer - more of a ‘fluff reader’. I’d buy rules books of all kinds just to read and enjoy, and the occasional miniature to paint. However, when all the non-glossy picture content (ie. text) got removed from White Dwarf, I stopped buying it, and became interested in other things.
I gave away my 6th, 7th and 8th Edition stuff a couple of months ago, and mailed a bunch of my miniatures to a friend who I know was interested. The costs of participating have kind of pushed me away - choking down what the 8th Ed. Rulebook cost made me really reconsider where my entertainment dollars were going. The one game store in the town I live in has stopped stocking GW products.
Overall, I’ve just gotten interested in other things. I still like the GW ‘universe’… but it doesn’t interest me as much as it used to. I’ve been picking up a few of Reaper’s ‘Bones’ miniatures to mess around with - just so I can continue to use my paints and save some cash on buying the miniature I’m painting.
The fact staffers with their 50% discount and Forgeworld 20% discount (plus no shipping charge) can;t afford the hobby they love so much they took it as a job says it all. Both the way GW treats people and how inflated its prices are in reality.
fog99uk over at Space Dwarfs Online gave such a different perspective with his list that I repost it here:
Positives.
- Whatever club you go to, people will be playing their games.
- Some of the best quality wargaming models
- low price increases on the core range than the general modelling hobby (2-5% a year on most common items, rather than the 15-25%+ increases I have seen each year from the more mainstream model companies). In 3 years the price of new Tamiya 1/35 scale tanks has gone up from ~£25 to ~£60.
- Availability. GW almost always have everything in stock, and can get stock to their retailers (even independent) within a few days. Most model companies are sold out of a large selection of their range. HaT Industrie, the core producer of 1/72 historical minis, are currently sold out of half of their range, and many items for over a year.
- Price. Generally high, but I understand why.
- New models. GW are expected to regularly release newer versions of model that are already in the range. A lot of the models produced by mainstream model companies are several decades old. I have kits for sale now that were first released in the 50s.
Negatives
- Shares. While becoming a public company gave them the funds to become the market leader they are now, it also tied them to justify every expense to shareholders who are only interested in the dividends for their shares. This stifles creativity.
- Rip off merchants. While not a negative of GW it is a negative that effects them. Chapterhouse being the prime example, winning a court ruling that allows them rip off anything that GW have designed. Also setting a precedent for anyone to rip off anyone’s work. This means that GW cannot make public any designs or ideas without first making a physical representation first so that they can enforce copyright. In the EU we have design right laws, the rest of the world doesn’t, which means that anyone from outside the EU can take your design, make a physical representation before you, then sue you for breaching their copyright should you then want to make something yourself.
- Disenfranchised GW haters. the people who hate GW just because they are GW, or even worse, the modelling hipsters/snobs/communists/hippies who hate GW for being a successful company and market leader. It’s a business, not a bloody charity.
- Sacking all the hobby-focused managers and replacing them with used car salesmen.
- forcing every member of staff to recite from a list of conversation points with every customer, even if another member of staff had already run though the spiel already. (this is now a lot more relaxed, but it still pissed me off)
- not supporting the ‘specialist’ games, and now dropping them altogether. We can blame the shareholders for this.
My first experience was going into the rather dingy shop with my brother in the late 80’s to have my senses assaulted by heavy metal and pretty much everyone smoking! It’s a lot more family friendly now, which is a good thing, but I think it’s become over sterile. An example of this is during the nineties whenever we went to visit a town or city we would always find the GW. For me it was to get terrain ideas and look at the boards. Now they’re all generic Realm of Battle boards with generic scenery on them. The guys who work in the shops do a difficult job of juggling so many things, but with the move to 1 man stores the longer hobby projects suffer. I for one no longer find the GW’s in new towns, it’s just not worth the disappointment…
First of all let me say one thing: I love Warhammer! My GW experience started with WFRP 1st ed, I and most of my closest friend owe this game and company the best moments of our early teens. I started reading WFB books to be better versed in WFRP.
It was the early days of 4th ed… ehh fell in love with WD chaos dwarfs and lizardmen, made a list off I go to an independent stockist with my entire monthly allowance (did not grew up in the UK) and could only afford 12 skinks. Blam crushed cause I knew I could not expect my poor family to finance this.:mask
Got back (or in proper) to the hobby in 2007 and 40k cause noone would play ‘pansy’ WFB (they all played non-pansy WFRP though). My life and outlook changed when I bought the 3.5/4th ed CSM, why them… they were the only ones left in my indepndant stockist. Since then I have been on the outside of the mainstream, shunned by GW staff for frugality and sense of rules and my mates for being not so bad at my gaming.
Now let me explain. I was never very well off, nor did I have a lot of time for my hobby (studies work, now family and work). My background bread a specific version of power gaming… meaning that if you can afford only a few boxes a year you will not commit your resources to something that does not make sense on the tabletop. Collecting for display was pointless, space restrictions plus gaming means people, display means dustcatching;D
Now to pros and cons… Thanks for fantastic youth and those few great people in the hobby, thanks for inspiration, skill development and sheer fun.
Feedback: GW seems to be targeted at kids…and fuelled by their parents tears. Why?
1 Dismal Rulebooks! Obscure, poor worded (or translated) sparking arguments between different language speaking players (ooopsie:P). Why do I need to wade through three lines of derp to find a rule? Take it from the other guys fluff then rule/ fluff or rule. Mantic, easy to get rules, Infinity fluff then rule type.
2 No codex updates. I get it, some obscure army (wood elves? dwarfs?:sick) does not get a release because Smurfs make more cash. I get it, really. How about an WD update, extra 5 quid. I would buy it, people woukd continue buying models, game would keep being ballanced. Wouldn’t you?
3 NO PLAYTESTING?!? The hell? :s GW admitted once to make the games to sell models. Fair enough, keep it balanced. People wait for their books for years (CSM…WE…D…:D) do not disappoint! This is what you do, get a dozen or two of the evilest tournament guys, lock them in a room, produce beverage and order pizza = RESULT. Honestly I know people who would do it for free!!:idea Why? Because after those guys brake it and GW fixes it, you kill all the rage and bring ballance back to the force. No more whines like oh you win cause you play HE/GK/E/marysues.
4 Focus shift, these are hard times, yet focusing on kids only gets you so far. Why not do WH skirmish back, fun little projects that would make older dudes shell out 20-30 quid a month (box set) and continue doing so. Keeps everyone happy… remember 40k in 40min? Had 4 ‘armies’ then. The price of an army is now 350-500 quid. You can go abroad for that. Plus it takes time to assemble, why not walk your customers through it?
5 Target, Kids want - parents buy (non gaming parents - hello brush bundle), kids grow up or get disenchanted (poor outdated rules - douchy players - power creep) and they move on. I doubt that today players will still be hooked after a decade, or maybe they will find more fun in a different format (WM, Infi, Mali). What about catering some of your range to necbeards with kids? like us?
OK to sum up, I am not an accountant but I understand the premise of the business. I think we would do better with 100 people spending 20-30 quid a month than 40 - spending 50…once a blue moon. I think that obligatory rulebooks are remnants of bygone past. Provide free army rules and print limited rulebooks for fans (infi), getting a book will once more become a status thing - showing how much you love the army. Updates for older armies would be awailable (if only as beta) would make sales steady instead of release spikes. WD as hobby magazine with actual hobby articles… MORDHEIM!!! show kids how much fun an empire militia or dwarf warrior box can be! Balance the rules if not bookwise just the core… fluffers don’t mind, competitive gamers will be grateful and kills a ton of internet rage… also seasonal sales… because why not?
I sure hope someone from GW reads this… I don’t want them to fade…
PS. I own all Infinity books but Paradiso… will buy it… haven’t played it in 3 years… why will I buy it? Cause they are beautiful and I love the fluff… Just to show you GW could be the same… I DO NOT WANT GW TO GO.
:hat offPraise Hashut for forgeworld and damn them to Zhorn Uzkul for no new releases and no rule updates! (IA got theirs dammitx.x)
