Dr.Bedlam Posted January 19, 2014 Share Posted January 19, 2014 (edited) 1. For a while there, GW really did make some excellent miniatures. Their prices were a tad stiff, but considering some of the sculpts and the quality of the figures, I couldn't complain. Hell, they sculpted the figures a foot high, for a while there, and then used pantographs to reduce their masters to 28mm. Now THAT allows for detail!2. GW offers community. If you know of a FLGS that carries GW product and hosts tourneys on weekends, you can instantly become part of a Group. True, it requires an investment, but if you have the money and like the game, why the heck not?Number 2 is still true, although rules changes and general cheese require the continuous purchase of more GW product... which is one of the things that drove me off; when they made the jump to a new edition, they invalidated some of my favorite Orc units (What? I have to buy new Goblin Doom Diver models, at $35 each?) and invalidated my Undead army (What? I can't use these units with these other units any more, because you're splitting into two armies?)No. I will not be manipulated like that. I unloaded my stuff online, except for some favorite minis and models, and forgot about it, with the exception of my once-a-decade purchase of a box of plastic skeletons in order to have bones for basing and modeling purposes....at least until Reaper Bones army packs made it cheaper (and frankly more satisfying) to buy American. I can still name stores that have thriving Warhammer tourneys and communities, but I've noticed they seem to have quite a bit of turnover these days.I am not sure I would say they're out of touch with their consumers. I think they've actually brought the art of MANIPULATING their consumers to a fine point... up to the point where a given customer simply says, "Hell with you," and takes a hike. And as long as they can keep bringing in new blood, it makes sense. Someone was telling me yesterday about how their entire business model is aimed at fourteen year old boys. And I think she might well have been right; what other demographic group buys minis, plays games, has disposable income, and is fairly manipulable? Edited January 19, 2014 by Dr.Bedlam 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buglips*the*goblin Posted January 19, 2014 Share Posted January 19, 2014 My jokes about GW being the seed of all evil aside, my only real gripe with them has been the way they treat their customer base as a liquid asset. I have to wonder how their success might look if instead of thinking they can afford attrition they instead worked to create a solid, and enthusiastic, stable core community. Because if you take what they managed while being okay with their turnover/loss rate and instead converted that loss rate into more enthusiastic prosyletizers it seems to me they'd be unstoppable. The GW machine with Reaper's rep? Super Empire. I mean, they manage to hang on in spite of themselves and the extreme badmouthing they get. Now I ain't no money goblin, but it seems to me that mobilizing an army of happy fans would be the preferred path to success here. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pingo Posted January 19, 2014 Share Posted January 19, 2014 Because they like the miniatures and/or the game, plus the company has only been crazy for like 5 or so years (out of 30). Saying you dislike the company is fine but going after their customers isn't going to win you any friends here.It's been more than 5 years. Wasn't their first IP lawsuit in 1991? (about a series of books called "Dark Future," I believe, showing that they were willing to stretch reality quite a bit even a generation ago) I don't know how long they have been increasing their prices. There have been market pressures, to be sure, such as the increased price of metals, but they seem to have outstripped them. Speaking of not respecting their customers, back in 2006 Chairman and CEO Tom Kirby said: I have written in the past about the basics of the Games Workshop business model and mentioned in passing that it is predicated upon the desire to own (lots of) miniatures. I shouldn’t just mention it in passing because feeding this desire is the fundamental thing that we do. What causes these characteristics in people I don’t know, but I do know that out there in the world is the gene that makes certain people (usually male) want to own hundreds of miniatures. We simply fill that need – it’s not new (we didn’t create it). What we do is make wonderful miniatures in a timeless and culturally independent way and sell them at a profit. Everything else we make and do is geared around that end. The games and stories provide the context for the miniatures, our stores are recruitment centres that simply give an opportunity to innate miniatures lovers to know themselves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MonkeySloth Posted January 19, 2014 Share Posted January 19, 2014 (edited) As for the ip lawsuits those happen all te time with companies and without knowing the detail I'm not going to pass judgment. as for the prices, everyone has been raising them the past few years and, according to my friends that play their games, its only in the past few years that they've been priced out of playing--which is important as people will always complain about price. Since I don't play, I don't think many in this thread does, I've been talking to people that I know that do as well as looking at prices myself. Yes there are things that are ridiculously over priced (like the books and a few other things) to stuff that's maybe 10%-20% more expensive then a competing game for the same price to stuff that's cheaper then Reaper metals. The real problem is the amount you need to play. Paying $30 for 5-8 figures is very reasonable (if not cheap) but where it gets out of hand is you need 5+ boxes of that unit for legal play. Also according to my friends the prices didn't start getting ludicrous until after the LoTR bubble burst which was around 2006-2007. I was at a local game store checking LoTR prices (as they had a bunch of old stock) and they're quite in line with Warmachine. The crazy started then as a snowball effect where it was slow at first then in the past few years has gone out of control--at least according to the people I know that play. Edited January 19, 2014 by MonkeySloth 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator Chaoswolf Posted January 19, 2014 Moderator Share Posted January 19, 2014 I used to be a GW addict until: 1) They priced me out, and 2) I was on the receiving end of the 'You can't use those figures any more. We wrote 'em out of the rules' shenanigans 1 time too many. I don't want to see GW die off, necessarily. But receive a good swift kick in the marbles, and get knocked off the pedestal that they've installed themselves on; on yeah, I wouldn't mind seeing that at all. Especially if it actually restored a little sanity to their corporate policies. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LizardMage Posted January 19, 2014 Share Posted January 19, 2014 (edited) It seems like GW can accomplish both its goals by simply reducing prices. I don't mind paying for quality, but $20 for a single small sized lizard mage is outlandish. It is possible that GW still offers some decent deals, their current Witch Elves seemed well designed and at a box of 10 puts them at $6 a pop for the $60 asking price. Still though when I can buy a $6 dark elf assassin in metal it is questionable on the deal in plastic. They do need to adjust there attitude towards customers and pricing no matter peoples preference of minis and attitude to the company. Also, supporting there total army lines on a more regular basis would go a long way. The dark elves and high elves have revived two separate codex updates along with new minis while the wood elves and dwarves are left to the wayside. Hard to keep your players happy if you never give them the same boost everyone has gotten. Edited January 19, 2014 by LizardMage Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CashWiley Posted January 19, 2014 Share Posted January 19, 2014 As someone who likes some of their models but doesn't play war games; I just want to see the bullying nonsense stop. If they would compete fairly and openly and let the market dictate, I'd have less of a chip on my shoulder about GW. Since they are a big factor in why my painting hobby was truncated back in the mid-90s when they drove out competition (especially paint, I abhorred their paint). When I stopped being able to find my paint locally, I stopped painting. And then every time I thought of painting again and went looking I was greeted by GW shops and it brought it all back. I was lucky to find a dusty rack of old Vallejo paint which I used until I was able to buy some Reaper paints. But the sticker shock of the GW kits they had was, well, shocking. Hearing the stuff about invalidating old armies to sell new product reminds me of why I got out of M:tG and even AD&D. I enjoy(ed) playing games, but I don't want to be a resource to be tapped for revenue by companies manipulating the game to do so. Insert some hippy comment about the purity of art and corruption of capitalism, but for me it's a thing. They were talking about White Dwarf in the KD:M KS comments, I bought a few back in the day when McVey was writing as it was amazing to me that someone was writing about mini painting and it was some of the only painted examples I could find (though I hated the 'eavy metal style). So I resubbed when I got back into painting in 2012, and it's almost completely useless as a painter. Their painting guides are awful, and almost comical when you look at the final models (though I do allow they're aiming for army and not display). Someone else said WD was crap for gamers, too. It's now an expensive catalog, more or less. And now even that is gone. I had a couple months left in my sub, I wonder what I'll see in the post. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MonkeySloth Posted January 19, 2014 Share Posted January 19, 2014 (edited) You should be seeing the new super catalog Warhammer Visions or whatever its called. It is a shame about WD. I pick up the Warmahine one time to time for the RPG content (they don't have a monster manual like book and instead put the monsters in their magazine which is quite annoying) and even the best content from that mag isn't as good as the old school WD. If privateer was good about being consistent on their hobby articles (meaning every issue having a painting guide and a terrain making guide and so on) it would be worth looking at. Edited January 19, 2014 by MonkeySloth 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damenace Posted January 19, 2014 Share Posted January 19, 2014 I usually get the old white dwarfs (older than 6-12 months) for free or a very reduced price from my flgs, I enjoy looking at the pictures when Im tired, other than that, not much content in them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sumbloke Posted January 20, 2014 Share Posted January 20, 2014 They poisoned the pond and they've been scrambling for a while trying to figure out how to bring the fish back to life. One rough knock and the whole house of cards will come crashing down. You win for best mixed metaphor in this thread. Well most of it is coming from being a public company that is incredibly distanced from its customers. Not to mention they don't give two hoots about foreign customers. I really hate public companies and investors. It tends to always boil down to maximum profit for the elusive, invisible shareholders. Almost always, the customers and the employees get shafted. The customers end up having to pay more for inferior products and the employees tend to get paid less and get less 'perks'. With GW they've also shafted a lot of people here in Aus with a golden rule they implemented a while back (I haven't bought anything of theirs since). The golden rule is that we're not allowed to order from the overseas GW website and if a third party website ships product to us, then GW will stop supplying that website with product. Don't get me wrong, I didn't want the brick and mortar stores here to fail, because they have employees who enjoy their jobs, but when you do a price comparison, it's just a big wtf? Hrm I can't even find any overseas shops at the moment stocking their stuff (not that I looked too long). But just on the games workshop site itself - Be'lakor, Daemon Prince on the Aus site is $61.20 on the UK site he's £22.50 (which at the current exchange rate is $41.20). So we're paying an extra $20. Just because. before they banned websites from shipping to us, it was still way cheaper to pay overseas shipping than to buy it locally. The last thing I bought was the Blood bowl game - cost me $75 + $20 shipping from Maelstrom games. In the GW website here they wanted $130 for it. eh sorry, got a bit ranty there. ;p I was told that back before they cracked down (illegally) on stores shipping overseas, it was cheaper to buy a single GW miniature from a European retailer and have it shipped to Australia than to buy the same miniature in a GW store. I'm only going by hearsay on that though, because I've only bought a few GW items and none from their stores. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MonkeySloth Posted January 20, 2014 Share Posted January 20, 2014 (edited) Everything I've heard is the same as what you've heard. I think the hobbit stuff is over 50% more expensive in Australia then anywhere else. Edited January 20, 2014 by MonkeySloth 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Inner Geek Posted January 20, 2014 Share Posted January 20, 2014 I don't know that I could run that company any better, but I doubt I could run it much worse. Nor could the average chimp for that matter. It's like they have a secret mission to alienate the old and recruit the new... unfortunately, once you've bought a few armies you're old. Goodbye. I don't think they are beyond redemption, but I'm also pretty sure they'll go down whistling the same tune they have been for years. ... I think I'd subscribe to White Dwarf if they went back to making it a gaming magazine with content about gaming in general, not just GW games/figures/propaganda. It's not like we'll never find out about other companies just because they're not in White Dwarf, this is the information age.... or something. Hell, the ad revenue might be enough to allow the price of the magazine to be lowered to a buy-able amount. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heisler Posted January 20, 2014 Share Posted January 20, 2014 When you compare Battlefront with GW the one thing that Battlefront did right was purchase and existing magazine, Wargames Illustrated and leave the existing editing staff pretty much in place, They require a certain amount of FOW stuff to be in the magazine but it has not become a glorified monthly catalog and its still a good magazine if you play other periods. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wildbill Posted January 20, 2014 Share Posted January 20, 2014 Since GW still made well over $7 million in profit (for the quarter, right?), they are still a profitable company. Investors are a weird bunch of people. They panic when a CEO farts. I wouldn't read too much into this. I can't believe this would be the first time EVER in the history of GW that they had a smaller margin than originally predicted in their 30+ year history. No way. And they are still here, alive and well. Personally, I would love to see them do a KS for a 40k version of Blood Bowl. If they did it right, then they would only offer the game via KS. They would only make enough models to fullfil the orders from the pledgees, and then sell them no more. They would make millions and millions. Hell, I would jump on it as well. It is only a matter of time before the big game players (Battlefront, PP, GW) jump on the KS bandwagon. When they do, they will surpass Reaper's two KS totals combined. Mark Wild Bill's words. He is all wise. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pingo Posted January 20, 2014 Share Posted January 20, 2014 Since GW still made well over $7 million in profit (for the quarter, right?), they are still a profitable company. Investors are a weird bunch of people. They panic when a CEO farts. I wouldn't read too much into this. I can't believe this would be the first time EVER in the history of GW that they had a smaller margin than originally predicted in their 30+ year history. No way. And they are still here, alive and well. If you go back and read the CEO statements, back in 2005 things looked even worse for them. And there was something about stock tanking or divestments or some such about then too. They have been in bad shape before and bounced back from it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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