Interesting Snippet From Rick Priestley

As in the death of it led to..

Gw and customers set apart when the LotR bubble exploded, if you remember before 2006 there were the official forum, the site with all the cool contents with tutorials and free rules, GW listened and adjusted Dark Elves book just to name few things, then they killed the Mail Order, they gave us the 7th edition which was very bland and power creeped, they didn't publish any supplement for it only armybooks...
Now I really wonder what was Priestly plan to reshape the Warhammer World about.

In my opinion two of the biggest factors that contributed to the death of Fantasy were the large unit sizes prevalent in 8th Edition, and the percentage system of army building. The large unit sizes is a 2500 point game are absolutely killer if you are trying to start the hobby. Units of 40-50 Clanrats or Skeletons being common, and then the large hordes of White Lions, Executioners, Temple Guard, and things like that made the financial cost of the game extremely high. I remember someone once calculated the average price of a 2500 point army based on various army lists posted on forums and found the cheapest to be WoC at about $400 and the most expensive to be O&G at over $700. That's before army books and rule books. As an entry into the game that's honestly absurd.

None of that is necessarily a problem, though, if you start out with 1000 point games and things like that, though. A 1000 point army is pretty cheap and doesn't have high model counts. That's where the problem of army structure comes into play, though. I know with my High Elves I'm annoyed if I see a tournament is going to be 2000 points because then I cannot bring my Star Dragon, my Lizardmen get annoyed at anything below 2000 because I want to bring Carnosaurs. Other people find it anathema to consider not running a Level 4 which is very tough to afford in 1000 points. The problem I think was that once people got enough stuff to have 2000+ point armies, they frequently wanted to use those big units and monsters and fancy combinations, and unfortunately that made it difficult for entry level players to find those low point games that would get them into the game.

I personally started in 8th Edition and was very fortunate because I started at the same time as another person and the other people at my FLGS hadn't played Warhammer since 6th Edition or so, so their rejoining the game meant they were fine with small games as well. I know if I had been expected to buy 2000 points of Elves to begin with I would not have continued Fantasy. I didn't play anything larger than 1500 for probably the first year because I'm a very slow painter and was working on other games as well.

I agree those were the mechanics of why Fantasy died, but there was a LOT of big business that added to it. IP issues, the aforementioned lack of customer concern, pricing structure, decisions on product implementation made by businessmen who have never played a game, etc.

Either way, I think we can say it was run into the ground by bad management.

Yeah, I STILL think that they're dropping the ball on that one. The success of the Total War games should show them that people still care about "The World that Was" and love to see huge games played out.

But with GW dropping a new skirmish game every other month, it's pretty clear where their heads at as far as a business model goes. Grab the attention (and cash) of young players who flit from game to game as soon as they play a few games, then get bored. I seriously doubt that they really care about building a veteran, loyal fan base. I'm sure they make more money off of the youngins'. If they lose a few along the way, it doesn't matter because they'll be easily replaced when their next box game comes out in a month or two.

Can't say I blame 'em. Makes good business sense. Just sucks for Scar Vets like us.

Some very good points.

I agree it was much easier to start in hero hammer days. I think the list building has a lot to do with it. It should have perhaps been scaled to game size since I do like large units but they are definitely not be player friendly

Being unable to field characters you've bought and painted in certain games is also stupid

Well, GW has never made light of the fact that they were more about models than anything else. I think they are now putting more effort into developing their rules than ever before (which means listening to the ones playing the game more than anyone - the fan base), but it's just a little too late for WFB.

They literally took the "Let's just wipe the slate clean and start over" approach. I don't think that was necessary. They could have EASILY moved the story line forward, into a new era (Age of Sigmar) by reintroducing Sigmar to the world, and brought about the new style of play, WHICH could then be scaled into 8th-style play as you added more and more models over time. AoS SHOULD'VE been merely a gateway style of play, allowing newcomers to immediately get immersed in to the game and giving them a juicy incentive to keep adding to and building their army(s). Really get all these newbies addicted to plastic crack.

That's always been my stance on the subject. It didn't HAVE to happen. They had to consciously make an effort to kill off fantasy. I think IP rights is what drove that decision, but even then, they could've written the new names into the new story without much effort, keeping all old-timers (like ourselves) in the game. This is why I feel as though my specific demographic was targeted and discriminated against, and why I refuse to support AoS.

I also get that businesses, YouTubers and tournament operators NEED new content and have to attract new clientele. That's fine. It just sucks for us and if they had just moved the storyline forward, instead of killing it, we'd still have that content available to us as well.