It was completely unnecessary to put an end to fantasy battles to launch Age of Sigmar as is directly evidenced by the simple fact that only a few short years later they began doing what they should have done in the first place and sold both parallel to each other. This eliminates the idea that they needed to kill one in order to make room for the other. The only sensible reason to do this is to try to force the existing playerbase of Warhammer: Fantasy Battles to then have to pivot to either 40K, which several players of Fantasy already collected, or the new IP line of Age of Sigmar. This is representative of a continued trend in GW business practices where they are deliberately predatory, and ruthless towards their customers. Age of Sigmar could have been completely uncontroversial, but instead was so much of a controversy entirely due to GW's incompetent business practices that to this day several people, myself included, refuse to touch it. It bears mentioning that the aesthetic change is also staggering: One is high fantasy that too closely resembles 40K both in visuals and in the tapestry of the fiction, and the other is a stagnant echo of fantasy from a prior era that continues to have its most interesting aspects neglected. Game Workshop has a long and storied history of making stupid, and all too often malicious, business decisions. Simply speak to anyone about the predatory upselling practices that were startlingly common in Games Workshop storefronts for years. While not indicative of the entirety it is a trend that continues into the modern day. Instead of adapting their business model to facilitate more kitbashing, unorthodox army lists, and lower cost sales for entry, they continue to gouge their competitive players--the people who by far prop them up in all of their IP's--for every penny they can. Major changes appear to be implemented mainly to stimulate sales of product, but are conducted in a way that suggests a prioritization of forcing players to change their army lists by fiddling with the meta instead of providing new products. This means that no matter how many thousands of dollars you spend on their products you are never protected from when the meta changes, and you have very little reason to buy more of the same units. Some of your most expensive purchases can be rendered dead weight by one single line of text, and your coolest units are excruciatingly limited on the table. Games Workshop needs to stop trying to reinvent the wheel after breaking the one they just sold you, and instead needs to bring back their specialist games lines and models. Revive White Dwarf, bring back Mordheim, and start giving those models rules that can be implemented into larger mainline army lists. It would also help if instead of charging you $60 for ten f**king models that you have to build and paint yourself that feature so many fine details that your average starting player will inevitably lose under their paint they would charge you maybe $20 for five models that are very basic and oriented around allowing you to buy additional decal pieces thereby fueling the kitbashing side of the market. Made to order is just fine. I don't understand their apparent hostility to that business model. Maybe they should close some shops, stop wasting money on stupid politically driven agendas, and focus on marketing more models *for cheap.*
The thing that frustrates me is that EVERYTHING that was done for AoS could have been done for Warhammer Fantasy to save it. They could easily have introduced a smaller scale skirmish rule set for Warhamer Fantasy + they could even have introduced 'sigmarines' as part of moving the lore forward (but without nuking the old world and spitting on what came before).
Here's a thought GW. Why don't your fantasy armies develop new weapons, change warfare, adapt and grow like normal war. Sure the 1995 army is still playable, but it is as out of date against a 2024 army as a 12th century army is against a 16th century army.
I'm a hard core Fantasy fan. But have to admit for the first time this is a good explanation - every other explanation I've seen just seems like an excuse for it pricing itself out of existence. Even with all these good arguments though I still think there would have continued to be a place for Fantasy if it was affordable.
One may say that also “old” 40K is already dead and the “new” 40K took its place, but at a slow pace that we don’t notice it, with Primaris slowingly took over
Old 40k even still has its own game though - it's just called "Horus Heresy" :D Complete with old-school rules. I do wonder if you can still use the 7th ed codexes for Xenos armies in HH though... :D
The only bit you missed is that the best thing to happen to WHFB was them licensing it to Total War. Total War Warhammer is probably the largest reason why The Old World exists... Well that and as a specialist studio game GW doesn't expect it to hold its own and continually create revenue as much as they expect AoS to do so.
I think majority of players would drop old miniatures for resculpted (visibly higher quality) ones if they felt it made sense. Game was becoming harder as it required more and more miniatures that were getting more expensive faster than inflation rate. I think the best description on how ridiculous the push toward greater armies would be goblin or vampire players that had to move to buckets to carry their zombies or goblins that still failed to fit on the board (if they wanted to focus their armies on them). The level of entry became absurd (I had little cash for hobby when WFB was around and my plans on building a playable army was so distant it stopped being realistic). Some armies had no updates for many editions so there was strong disincentive for them to even start as it meant constant loosing. Imagine learning a new game and finding out a cool faction that you would be interested on just to learn that you have to pay for it many months or even years of all of your hobby money and playing them would mean constant loosing streak. In such case you are not encouraged to pick a different faction. In such case you worry if the less interesting army that you could consider picking up would get the same treatment. Also some armies being that old they looked like potatoes in comparison to the newer ones would not help. Lastly before the end times GW started releasing units that made little sense in the lore, were inconsistent with game aesthetic and magic saturation level (like unit of male casters in the dark elf army, that not only did not fit the army lore (as Malekith ordered killing of male casters) but also army aesthetic and came out with ridiculous carnivore looking horses add to it pointlessly floating chariot (mentioned transition from relatively low fantasy to a high one) and ridiculous sisters of slaughter - both no base in the lore, inconsistent design and ridiculous weapon and armour choices). Lastly add to it poor reputation of the publisher (not only due to predatory marketing practices - covered in entry level part but also how it looked like they were fraudulent when running narrative campaigns that were supposedly affect the future lore (people's report from official events mismatched with statistics declared by GW)). WFB could have been saved but it required hard reboot in mechanics. Miniature rotation could have been solved by switching focus between editions between provinces of existing factions (Silver helms from Cothique could have some variations to those from Lothern, great swords from Nuln had different clothes to those from Nordland and so on).
"Nobody enjoyed seeing how Darth Vader came to be." WRONG! I loved the Prequel Trilogy and many of us do. I had a feeling you would totally undermine your video near the end with something like that...
"Well, I would say this - I've been working here for 18 years. In 1975, no one died. In 1976, no one died. In 1977, no one died. In 1978, no one died. In 1979, no one died. In 1980, someone died. In 1981, no one died. In 1982, there was the incident with a pigeon. In 1983, no one died. In 1984, no one died. In 1985, no one died. In 1986... I mean, I could go on." - Steve Coogan, The Day Today, 1994.
I really needed your video today to unwind apparently. Great break down of the legacy of oldhammer to someone who wasn't there for it. I can remember passing by GW stores in my mall as a kid and being vaguely into tyranids at the time (bought a few kits) but never knew much about warhammer fantasy. Got back into the hobby with orks in 40k and warhammer underworlds during the pandemic. I'd be curious to see your thoughts on the rumors I've heard of underworlds dying, if it's trajectory is comparable to warhammer fantasy.
I think a big part of the color mush problem with Imperialis’s color scheme is the fact that GW chose the Death Guard as the Imperialis poster boys. I understand that most people are tired of Ultramarines but the dull sickly color of the Pre-Nurgle Death Guard just blend in with the urban setting most of the promotional material take place on. I think that Blood Angles or Emperor’s Children would’ve made the art pop a lot more.
That should only take around 10 years. Disregarding the fact that events that chronologically takes place earlier in the settings were actually written much later, and as such are full of foreshadowing and references to things that takes part 10k years in the future, that the casual viewer would have no understanding of.
