|
Rapey Joe Stalin posted:No more disturbing than the people with a pathological need to put the boot into GW at every opportunity, real or imagined. I agree, it's about time someone stood up for those poor defenseless multi-million-dollar corporations. 
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2014 01:20
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 19:10 |
|
|
Tequila Ranger posted:Horray more pricechat and "when is GW gonna die" speculation in place of annoying game talk, battle reps, and pictures of models... I can't be the only one chuckling at the juxtaposition of "complaining about 'pricechat'" with "I scored a bunch of GW models off of eBay for cheap!  "
|
|
#
¿
Jul 29, 2014 01:30
|
|
|
Tequila Ranger posted:Hmmm yes usually after I make a purchase I'm overcome with a strange urge to go off topic and complain about business practices in a game thread, strange that it didnt happen this time! My point was more that it is humorously ironic to see someone decry "pricechat" while in the same breath basically proving the "pricechat" people's point (in that if GW's prices were reasonable, you wouldn't have had to go on eBay to get them cheaper in the first place).
|
|
#
¿
Jul 29, 2014 02:34
|
|
|
JerryLee posted:Keep in mind that the 4 million figure, with no "over 10 years" or anything to make it sound better, was an official communication to the shareholders. This was the investor-relations, put-a-good-face-on-it version. Seriously, I just peeked in the "GW Death Pool" thread and  is definitely the correct reaction to have. poo poo is not looking good.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 29, 2014 11:25
|
|
|
But always remember,quote:What will not change is the eternal desire for some always to want yet more of the small, jewel-like objects of magic and wonder that we call Citadel miniatures. 
|
|
#
¿
Jul 29, 2014 11:59
|
|
|
E: ^^^ That makes sense, yeah.Deptfordx posted:So this one man store business. What happens if the guy running it is sick? I'm guessing there's a lot of unspoken pressure to come in as long as you can still actually walk upright, which must be great for morale, but what happens if you actually can't get to the store. Does it close till you're better? Do they send a temp down from somewhere? I have read things around the Internet where people have said they went by the local GW and it was shut for lunch/illness/dude didn't give a gently caress/whatever, so I imagine it just goes like that until GW management gets tired of it and fire the old store manager and hire a new one. I have no evidence for this, of course, but given some of the other things that GW has proudly proclaimed they do or don't do (such as "market research in a niche is pointless"), I would not be in the least bit surprised if that was actually the case.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 29, 2014 13:19
|
|
|
serious gaylord posted:They posted £4 million under exceptional expenditures. Which everyone took to be the website because they didn't read more than the first page. And since the stock still hasn't plummeted, and instead gone up, I imagine their investors also read past the first page. Their investors at this point pretty much consisting of Kirby, his family, a bunch of his fellow GW execs, and some of those companies that invest on behalf of others that you never quite know just who they're investing for.  E: also even if they spent 0.9 million quid on that website it is roughly about £700,000 more than they should've spent, considering what they got for it (see also: previous poster's quote about the site being unable to do basic things like "Detect Country" )
Sydney Bottocks fucked around with this message at 08:49 on Jul 31, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2014 08:47
|
|
|
Bavius posted:And GW won't let anyone else sell their product online with a cart system. I have to wonder why they bother with the stores and the webstore at all - wouldn't they run a lot leaner without all the fluff and just stand on sales of models? Let people who can actually manage stores and websites push your product, they're better at it. GW is slowly shrinking to the point where they're going to pretty much be a UK-only company within a few years. They've pretty much abandoned Australia/NZ, USA/Canada is next, and Europe will probably start getting pretty iffy for them as well before too long. The sad part is, shrinking and re-entrenching themselves as a UK-only company isn't actually the worst thing they could do, since they could save a fair bit of money by closing down their retail operations in other countries. The problem is if the shareholders would be OK with that, or if they would revolt (because going from being the global market leader in plastic mans wargaming to the equivalent of running the corner hobby shop is definitely not anyone's idea of growing and expanding your market).
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2014 08:54
|
|
|
Mango Polo posted:Let Hasbro buy the drat company and fire every single member of current GW management. Get rid of Mat Ward too. Everyone else can stay. Fixed that for ya.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2014 09:12
|
|
|
JerryLee posted:Seriouspost, from what I can see Mat Ward isn't at all a salient problem with GW anymore (if he ever was). His sins are writing Mary Sues and making some codices that seem too strong relative to others, but the latter is more of a problem of GW's piecemeal approach to design and could easily be reformulated as a problem of other authors being too lovely to write codices that can keep up with the Wardian ones. In any case, any wrongdoings committed by Mat Ward seem like kiddie league at this point. Feel free to weigh in if you disagree, but from where I'm sitting it seems like ages since Ward was the figurehead for GW pissing on its customers. Yeah, in all honesty his sins in terms of fluff are relatively minor (because, after all, you can just ignore it if you really want). As you say, the problems are with GW's attitude overall and that's not something you can solely blame a guy like Ward for.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2014 09:23
|
|
|
serious gaylord posted:Kirby owns 16% The rest is owned by large pension investment firms. The kind of investment people that are very risk averse so that they are sticking with GW should say a lot. What it says to me is that apparently a lot of people with more money than sense read Kirby's Col. Kurtz-esque ramblings and decided "This man clearly knows what he's doing." 
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2014 10:27
|
|
|
serious gaylord posted:Sky isnt falling as fast as everyone wants I can only speak for myself but I would be absolutely thrilled if GW managed to pull out of their death spiral (because they are in one, regardless of how slow it may be), turn things around, and once again become a company that sells stuff I'm more than happy to buy. Unfortunately I don't see that happening ever, at least not without a complete jettisoning of upper management and a drastic re-thinking of their entire approach in terms of both how they view their customer base and how they price their products to move. Which, barring a buyout by Hasbro or whoever, is unlikely in the extreme.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2014 11:36
|
|
|
serious gaylord posted:Kirby is gone in january. You're going to see changes then. My understanding is that he is stepping down from the CEO spot, but will very likely be in a chairman position, so I'm somewhat skeptical that any really serious changes are going to occur. But, I guess we'll see.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2014 12:20
|
|
|
 I take it all back, this is a fine example of a premium product produced by Games Workshop, Limited and Citadel Miniatures Limited. 
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2014 23:17
|
|
|
Fix posted:I honestly don't know enough about Space Wolf bits to know if there's new ones in here: Not this has anything to do with anything, but I've always disliked that particular color scheme for Space Wolves. I dunno why but I've never much cared for that particular shade of blue. I always think they look better when they tilt towards the "gray" side of the scale, like these dudes I found after a cursory Google Image search. 
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2014 23:38
|
|
|
JerryLee posted:
I'll have to take a look!  I think I first saw that particular color scheme on a Wolf Lord waaaay back in the 3rd ed. days, and I thought it looked a thousand times better than the light blue scheme GW tends to favor.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2014 23:48
|
|
I don't always paint Space Wolves, but when I do, I paint them this way. You can see some of mine not too far back in this thread, if you haven't already.
|
Just wanted to share a quick&dirty edit I saw on FB
|
|
#
¿
Aug 5, 2014 23:08
|
|
|
dichloroisocyanuric posted:Wait, so, like, are the Dan Abnett books actually good? Not like "better than the other ones" good? I've never read anything by him (and had no idea he even wrote so much god drat poo poo - just checked out his wiki page), but everyone raves about them. It can be really hard to tell what "good" means in the context of spin-off fiction because some people will just lovingly read anything that has their favorite mary sue in it. If you haven't yet, read Abnett's "Eisenhorn" trilogy (Xenos, Malleus and Hereticus I believe; there's also an omnibus with some short stories in it as well). He basically took one of the characters from the short-lived "Inquisitor" game and used him to flesh the hell out of the Imperial Inquisition. They're really good, entertaining reads.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 13, 2014 04:48
|
|
|
On the one hand I do agree that it's silly to hire managers that don't have at least a halfway decent familiarity with the products they're going to be selling, but on the other hand I also agree that a manager who prevents a sale by telling someone a unit is weak or whatever is in fact a manager who does not deserve their position. They're there to make sure the store makes money, not to lord their grognardiness over their customers as King Warham. (granted I do know there are many stores that are run by owners who treat it like their personal gaming clubhouse and not an actual business, however these always tend to be independent FLGS, not a chain store like a GW store. But I haven't been in GW store in ages so I dunno, really v  v)
|
|
#
¿
Aug 15, 2014 19:21
|
|
|
The dude from BTP is basically a small-l libertarian who once did a video where he said something to the effect of "if you're currently unemployed it's probably because you deserve it". That alone is reason enough for anyone not to give him their business right there. Hell, I would imagine if someone wanted their army painted to "tabletop standards" there are probably plenty of goons who could use the coin. Granted, it wouldn't be cranked out at a sweatshop's pace, but still.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 26, 2014 02:50
|
|
|
JerryLee posted:I could swear I've read an expose by someone who auditioned as a painter for BTP, or was briefly employed by them, or something. He basically said they tried to screw him at every turn and had really skeevy working conditions. Oh yeah, there are more than a few stories like that around on the Internet. Not to mention their failed Kickstarter, which was basically "Give us money so we can buy models, paint them, and sell them".
|
|
#
¿
Aug 26, 2014 03:33
|
|
|
Slimnoid posted:hahaha they really did this? They really did this. I forget the exact details but they were hyping it up as some kind of "pre-planning" scheme where they would have minis already in stock and on hand in case someone wanted to order a particular army from them, be it Infinity or WH40K or Warmahordes or whatever. I don't remember how quickly it folded but I think it definitely failed to make anything even remotely near what they were hoping to get before they shut it down.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 26, 2014 03:51
|
|
|
Sharzak posted:I really like Shawn the blue table guy and am not sure what you guys are talking about. I had no idea they were a company big enough to be hated on the Internet. I had them paint a squad of Harlequins a couple years ago and was delighted with the results. He is a cool dude and a little weird but totally harmless. I'm pretty sure he's just one of those guys who were born gay but also Mormon. There are lots of them around here. I have no issues with either his sexuality (presumed, stated outright, or otherwise), nor with his religion (though I think Mormonism is probably only a step or two above Scientology). I just think that he comes across as one of those "business owners good, employees bad" kind of people who are always looking for a shortcut to pay people jack poo poo and who would quite happily pay people in company store scrip if he could legally get away with it. (E: though to be fair that could well describe like 99.9% of all companies out there today, both big and small. Including GW. )
|
|
#
¿
Aug 26, 2014 04:18
|
|
|
panascope posted:What happened to this one? What chemical spill made this guy look like a GI Joe that's sat for too long under a magnifying glass? Is the painter okay? It just raises so many questions. It looks like they tried to sculpt a head out of Juicy Fruit gum
|
|
#
¿
Aug 26, 2014 23:55
|
|
|
serious gaylord posted:Its kind of telling that no-one really cares about space hulk being re-released. I remember this thread when it hit the first time and it was insane. It's just an example of GW going to the well one too many times. Between price hikes, 7th edition being rushed out the door, and the ramped-up release schedule, they've burned out most of their customer base and people probably just don't care now. Plus there are way too many competitively-priced skirmish games out these days for Space Hulk to be a huge deal like it was in 2009. Also there's the whole "Space Hulk 2009 is a limited edition thing, never to be made again...except when we need a cash cow to milk" feeling to this whole deal, as well.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 10, 2014 19:39
|
|
|
That reminds me that when I bought the current BA codex (back around 2011 or so), the FLGS I went to had it priced at the old 3rd edition BA codex's price of $9.99, instead of $24.99 (or whatever price GW had originally given it).
|
|
#
¿
Sep 16, 2014 18:02
|
|
|
starkebn posted:They should roll all the "extra" Space Marine codexes into one book. I actually had this sort of idea a while back, where they could just roll all the Imperial stuff into a "Forces of the Imperium" tome that included SM, IG/AM, and Inquisition/GK/SoB. Then do a "Forces of Chaos" book that includes CSM, Daemons, and Cultists (with both "Forces of ___" tomes including rules for running their respective variant armies, such as BA/DA/SW, Deathwatch, various flavors of IG, Chaos Legions, Chaos Renegades, and so on). After that just give the various Xenos races their own books (which would also include their own variant armies; so Saim-Hann would be included with the Eldar, Goffs would be in the Orks book, and so forth). But that kind of goes against GW's current business model of "print up a different book/digital thingy for each possible army variant", so it'll probably never happen.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 18, 2014 07:34
|
|
|
Cataphract posted:to me that read as "you can't just fire everyone and move production to China"  How in the world did you get that from this?quote:We have a strong culture of personal development at Games Workshop and there are many resources and opportunities for both personal and professional development. If the way you behave at work and the attitudes you display fit with ours, it is highly likely you will be successful, well rewarded and happy. However, it is only fair to say that people who don’t fit with our culture, or who play at fitting, will be unhappy and consequently unsuccessful. That comes across as "Kirby's views and attitudes are well-entrenched and we aren't about to start changing them now" so much that it's not even funny. Also the shareholders couldn't give a tin poo poo if a CEO fired everyone and moved production to China, so long as that money kept rolling in. In fact, given GW's recent financial developments, the stock price would probably go through the roof if someone did that (not that I want that to happen, I hasten to add. The "moving production to China" part, that is; GW's management could use a clean sweep, I feel).
|
|
#
¿
Sep 21, 2014 17:29
|
|
|
Cataphract posted:Cause for years they've prided themselves on having a business that doesn't outsource the miniature production and that everyone who works for the company is, at some level, a hobbyist. The reason they don't outsource to other countries/companies is because the people that run GW want to exercise an almost Vince McMahon-esque level of control over every aspect of their product. The "everyone who works for the company is local/a hobbyist" is purely PR spin to make them more attractive to new hires (with the right "attitude", of course) and to make them seem not quite as much of a faceless corporate monolith. Though granted, with GW's current business plan apparently being "pull as much of our overseas business back to the UK as we can", it might actually be true in the sense that they are going all "League of Gentlemen"-style and asking new hires "Are you Local?" Again, this is not to say that I expect or want a new GW CEO to move production overseas or whatnot. In fact I doubt that's remotely likely to happen, purely because Kirby's attitudes and ways of doing business are pretty firmly entrenched in GW corporate culture by now. GW would likely go under or be sold to another company before they'd hire a new CEO to come in and make drastic changes.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 21, 2014 18:40
|
|
|
Ignite Memories posted:I don't need a lot to change to be happy. I'm sure the prices aren't going down, but if they just started making less hostile-to-our-customer-base decisions like never selling the rules of the game for less than $100 that would be a good start. GW doesn't care about making things more accessible and hasn't for some time now. Their entire model of operation these days is "sell less poo poo for more money", which is not conducive to bringing in large numbers of new players.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 21, 2014 18:56
|
|
|
Lord Twisted posted:I just can't believe that this company fail to realise dropping their prices would lead to an enormous surge in sales. I'm quite sure they realize this, but it likely doesn't happen for a couple of reasons. One is the business mindset of "any cut in prices means people will think our product is inferior", which is often coupled with "if you lower prices once, people will just wait until you lower them again". Both are mindsets that a lot of businesses operate under when trying to push a "premium" product, even when it has been shown in comparable industries that lowering prices and having sales are often highly beneficial, spur impulse buys, create return customers, etc. The other problem is one I kind of addressed earlier, but I really don't think GW is set up for (or even really wants to have) huge numbers of sales at this point. The thinking seems to be that if they can make the same amount of money (or more) by charging more for less product, then that's the way to go. Less stuff to manufacture, less product to QC, less resources used, less room needed to warehouse it, and so on (and less wages needing to be paid for people to do all that stuff). Having huge numbers of sales/orders would probably throw that out of whack (even though "having to deal with high customer demand" is a problem most businesses would love to have, but I don't think it really fits with whatever it is GW's trying to do at this time).
|
|
#
¿
Sep 22, 2014 06:55
|
|
|
Acebuckeye13 posted:The crazy thing is, this wouldn't be as much of a problem if GW wasn't simultaneously trying to encourage people to play bigger and bigger games at higher point values. One of my friends who used to have a huge amount of Necrons and Grey Knights got into Mercs and X-Wing in a big way last year, and those are both games where you have to pay a fair amount per model, even by GW standards. The difference being, of course, is that you're never going to need more than five models in either of those games-whereas in 40K, the only army you're going to ever get away with using 5 models with is Imperial Knights, and that's gonna cost you easily an order of magnitude in cash more than other games. 40K, Mercs, and X-Wing are all very different games with different appeals, obviously, but Mercs and X-Wing can get away with high model price because of the low model count. 40K really can't, and GW's inability to understand this is really the core of their degradation over the last few years, I believe. Yeah, GW is currently in this weird contrarian mode at the moment, where they claim to want a lot of people to buy just tons of minis for these absolutely massive games...but their pricing and general business/sales practices indicate the complete opposite, in that they view their stuff as "premium" products that are only marketed to the wealthiest and most discerning of warhams. Also, there's another reason GW is heading for serious financial problems as a result of this: because they've cut their operations to the bone (one-man stores, eliminating unneeded staff, etc.), they have nowhere else to make cuts now that the core customer base has largely started to abandon their games (either due to prices finally getting too high, 7th edition 40k being rushed out the door, general dissatisfaction with the rules, or just dissatisfaction with GW overall). This is why I think GW is eventually just going to give up on their retail operations outside the UK, because at this point that's really the only place they could make financial cuts (at least, ones that would actually make sense, since their brick-and-mortar model is a complete failure when applied to anywhere except the UK).
|
|
#
¿
Sep 22, 2014 17:15
|
|
|
Cataphract posted:so some of the GW stores in the UK have rebranded to being "Warhammer" shops To paraphrase an MST3K riff, want to go to WARHAMMER and play GAME?
|
|
#
¿
Oct 11, 2014 07:30
|
|
|
raverrn posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_06d7wMO4Cw Even if BTP were capable of cranking out Golden Daemon-quality miniatures like they were candy, they're still run by a guy who once put up a video where he basically said "if you're unemployed it's probably all your own fault anyways" and nobody should ever give them any money for that reason alone.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 18, 2014 14:22
|
|
|
Reynold posted:I only played way back when with the old Cityfight rulebook, and at the time I preferred it to standard 3rd Edition. Oh, same here. I still have fond memories of a Cityfight game my brother and I played that turned the ground floor of a ruined building into a charnel house on the last couple of turns. He had an Iron Warriors tac squad holed up in there, and I sent my Blood Angels' Death Company and chaplain in there after them. Then his Terminators showed up. Then one of my tac squads showed up, followed closely behind by my Assault marines. I think I ended up winning solely because I had one or two models left on the table after all that. Good times.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 8, 2014 20:30
|
|
|
Am I correct in recalling that the re-released SH didn't do as well as GW expected? I vaguely seem to remember reading that it didn't sell out like its' predecessor had.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 19, 2014 09:48
|
|
|
HiveCommander posted:What do you mean? It almost literally was it's predecessor, just with some DLC. No, I know that. I just seemed to recall that this most recent version basically flopped, when GW was clearly expecting it to sell out just like it did in 2008 or 2009 or whenever it was.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 19, 2014 10:09
|
|
|
FWIW I do think the larger bases suit Space Marines a lot better, and I'm only surprised that it took GW this long to realize that having dudes' feet hanging over the edges of the original bases looked kinda dumb.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 30, 2014 21:10
|
|
|
Leo Showers posted:I also hereby bind the vaunted forums poster Noctis Horrendae to this thread. Leo Showers, in fealty to the Goon-Emperor, our undying lord, and by the grace of the Comedy Goldmine, in the name of the Trad Games subforum and the Goon Hive Mind, I call thee diabolis, and in the testimony of thy crimes, I submit this carta. May Internet justice account in all balance. Lowtax protects. 
|
|
#
¿
Dec 17, 2014 09:30
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 19:10 |
|
|
I spend most of my time in the GW Death Thread these days, so I am frankly  at the fact that there are people who seem to actually believe that GW doesn't do something based solely on the principle of "get as much cash out of these rubes as possible, for the least amount of effort".
|
|
#
¿
Dec 17, 2014 21:02
|
|