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Post by gregr on Sept 26, 2019 14:46:04 GMT
So I watched the first half of the video. I didn't want to watch the second. Here's my initial thoughts:
* I found Matt's discussion style to be incredibly patronising, both towards those still interested in WFB and Steve. His constant cutting across of Steve's points made it hard to follow a coherent argument
* I found so many contradictions which made me feel the video was made to provoke and not form what could've been a genuine discussion point. One glaring example was following on from a discussion about the unwieldy horde rules (which I do agree with to an extent), they moved on to discuss movement trays and round bases. They then proceeded to say that a 25 man unit in fantasy occupies a small square but in other systems such as 40k, they occupy a much bigger table space and so look / play cooler.....
* Lore - I didn't both with finishing this point of the video. However, I completely disagree with Matt that lore killed the game because it was generic. All fantasy-based games have some form of generic lore, often attributed to Tolkien who in turn borrowed Western European folklore. Whilst shredding WFB lore and extolling 40k, Matt failed to notice that it's the exact same lore base in 40k.... again I suspect this was to provoke and not debate.
Overall, not really impressed with the video. There could've been a genuine discussion around the end of WFB but I don't think that the video was intended to do that.
Side note - how do AoS sales compare to how WFB did?
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Post by michael on Sept 26, 2019 19:53:58 GMT
I do not understand why people say you needed more miniatures in Eighth edition. They had the horde rules but the points per miniature stayed the same. So if you take bigger units you will have less units.
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Post by gregr on Sept 26, 2019 20:33:57 GMT
I do not understand why people say you needed more miniatures in Eighth edition. They had the horde rules but the points per miniature stayed the same. So if you take bigger units you will have less units. I think the argument isn't well articulated but I do understand the sentiment on that one. Generally you don't have as many units but you do have bigger ones. Whereas you would once have a core unit of 20ish models. With people moving to horde formations you need more models. Most people only had 20-30 core troop unit size but suddenly found they needed another box. Once core units are bigger but less numerous, the same argument happens with special units which is where GW made the big margins and pushed prices up.
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Post by mottdon on Sept 26, 2019 22:06:45 GMT
Yeah, I think that Steve had really good intentions with his Mountain Miniature Gaming channel, but I think that they were requiring him to make his videos after he was "off the clock" even though they were allowing him to use their set-up. It's probably simply too much for him to keep up all the time. That's really a TON of videos for him to produce all day long and still have enough content to actually make any profit from his own channel. I hate that for him, because as y'all say, he's by far their best host and I'm sure that he could take most of their viewing traffic with him if he were to go solo and develop his own channel separate from MiniWarGaming.
And given Matt's, rather pompous attitude in the video and the way he's culled 8th edition videos from their schedule, I'd really like to see him give his own business a serious go.
Lol, I did get a kick out of Steve's response when Matt brought up the "Lore" issue. But then he realized he was arguing with his boss, so....
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Post by knoffles on Sept 26, 2019 22:07:28 GMT
gregr, GW have never split the sales in their published accounts so I don’t think anyone outside of the company can say exactly how sales compare between the systems. On that front the ‘internet’ always said that fantasy was making a loss/not selling was the reason the plug was pulled. I would love to see the figures to back that up or the ABC work to see the profitability for each line. The only real indicator is that they pulled the plug on fantasy but they could have done that because the margins weren’t good enough.
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Post by mottdon on Sept 26, 2019 22:36:07 GMT
gregr , GW have never split the sales in their published accounts so I don’t think anyone outside of the company can say exactly how sales compare between the systems. On that front the ‘internet’ always said that fantasy was making a loss/not selling was the reason the plug was pulled. I would love to see the figures to back that up or the ABC work to see the profitability for each line. The only real indicator is that they pulled the plug on fantasy but they could have done that because the margins weren’t good enough. Personally, I think that Fantasy was killed more because of the IP issue rather than a profitability issue. Besides, any direct comparison between the two systems, would be a false positive simply due to the fact that GW never put as many marketing resources or product development into Fantasy as they have with AoS. The leadership simply didn't see as much of a cash cow in Fantasy as they did with 40K, so they wanted to copy that style of game. It really came down to IP and numbers for their decisions, when history shows us that they should have revolved around community development, research, and proper marketing. All of these things were never touched upon by Matt and Steve. That's why I wanted to bring this video to the attention of everyone. There really needs to be some light shed onto the fallacies of their arguments.
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Post by saniles on Sept 27, 2019 3:01:48 GMT
I would suggest, on the finance side, that the main portion of their business that altered was AoS and their method of model production because of that. I’m just saying there is a pretty strong correlation. Unless someone can point out another notable business change that they made.
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Post by mrbaldrick on Sept 27, 2019 22:40:19 GMT
Personally, I think that Fantasy was killed more because of the IP issue rather than a profitability issue. I agree that protecting the IP was a major issue for GW. 40K was always the more popular game, but I haven't seen any evidence to support the internet conjecture that fantasy was losing money. Just about everything in 40K was some original name that GW could easily trademark. There they only made subtle changes such as Astral Militia instead of Imperial Guard. To slap a trademark on fantasy they had to do a lot more work. Terms like elves, dwarfs, and orcs existed long before GW came along. I think the other side of that coin was to match competition. At the time GW ended fantasy they were dealing with more competition then they had ever dealt with before, War Machine, X-Wing, Infinity, Frostgrave, D&D Attack Wing (though that quickly died). The competition was offering equal quality that required smaller model counts and thus lower buy ins. I think to compete with that and protect the IP GW took the easy way out and cleaned the slate to complete with the competition. And to a smaller extent I also think it was a cost cutting measure as well. By moving to round bases only GW could cut some production costs and only produce one ra ge of bases instead of two. The smaller 1 man stores they moved towards would also need less table space for a smaller scale game. AoS takes up a lot less table space than Fantasy. In my personal view these are the major reasons GW ended fantasy, not because fantasy wasn't profitable but because they saw a way to increase profits and cut costs at the same time.
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Post by strutsagget on Sept 28, 2019 11:01:42 GMT
The patent war has not even close been a win for GW, they have paid huge amount to lawyers though. So a win for the lawyers. I can’t tell a single big number lawsuit win they have ever made.
And then huge amount to change all races that wasn’t needed. All races already had patent names like Azur for high elves, Dawi for dwarfs.
But I have notice that the American way (British too?) is to pay a lot to lawyers. Also to score big with a law suit seems like that way to live life, almost like buying a lottery ticket. I can just acknowledge that we are different in this matter and it’s a culture thing.
That leaves me into believing that the patent thing had nothing to do with the reboot into a new game. I am glad that it did bring GW into a better company with customer care and semi game support now. From playing kill team I can tell though the p,Ayers still struggle with very few FAQs and errata updates but at least they come once a year with something.
I don’t think we will see Warhammer fantasy again in at least a very long time.
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