What influences GW's decision making?

[chord]

I think @Jamopower is correct.  Originally it was going to be just grand alliances and very diverse armies, which it started out as.  But then as more mono-army players came back to AOS GW got pressure to determine allegiances, single faction armies, etc.  

 

Good points made.

[Austin]

Almost as interesting to me is what doesn't influence GWs decision making. Total War Warhammer is a huge success, yet none of those armies have had an AoS update (maybe KO counts?). And with the upcoming release of Total War Warhammer II it appears as though once again no support for those models is coming. 

I consider new models/resculpts of old models to be support vs new rules. 

There has been no elf love at all so far in AoS, and both lizardmen and Skaven could use older models being redone. 

Seems like a real bonehead move to not use a very popular video game to increase tabletop players/sales also. 

[ChaosUnited]

@Caladancid I've not played it tbh, but isn't total war based in the old world. I thought all the races of the old world were basically wiped out during end times. 

The elves will come into AOS in the next phase, but I expect completely different than they were before, as part of a Slannesh storyline.

[DynamicCalories]

Total Warhammer is basically GW's way of letting people interact with the old world, as it was. Trapped in amber, forever living out its last days as Archaon marches south.

[Austin]

56 minutes ago, ChaosUnited said:

@Caladancid I've not played it tbh, but isn't total war based in the old world. I thought all the races of the old world were basically wiped out during end times. 

The elves will come into AOS in the next phase, but I expect completely different than they were before, as part of a Slannesh storyline.

Yeah for sure it's the Old World. But it would still seem like GW would want customers to be able to play the lizardmen and pick up some shiny new Seraphon models. 

[Jamopower]

I wold assume that they think that the range is already good enough for those old world races and if you look at it, Lizardmen/Seraphon or Skaven have a lot more products in the shelves than plenty of other factions. My guess is that the new AoS releases will very well be New for some time. Like Kharadron overlords new. But most likely they'll also release some battletomes for the older models, along the way of Beastclaw raiders or Bonesplitterz, every now and then when the codexalypse settles down a bit.

[Chikout]

The thing with new army releases is that GW is in it for the long haul. I, like many people, want my preferred faction as soon as possible but if GW release every popular faction now, there will be nothing to juice sales down the road. 

I would be surprised if GW did not have a rough Road map of at least 10 years with key releases along that time line. It seems clear that they plan to do one chaos God a year for example. 

In 40k they have marines as the big seller that they constantly return to with smaller riskier releases like harlequins inbtween.

It is clear that they are trying to do the same with the stormcast in AoS. 

[ChaosUnited]

@Chikout agreed, a lot of companies have a plan for a revenue stream for the following 5-10 years. 

[Killax]

On 29-8-2017 at 2:41 PM, Jamopower said:

For me it seemed that the initial Grand alliances for AoS, there was a lot of removing units that shared a same slot. I believe a big factor for this was to reduce the number of individual items as it seems to be a factor in the miniature gaming industry, for example Corvus Belli is constantly repackaging models together to reduce the numebr of different blisters. 

If you look at what was squatted during the grand alliances, there were stuff like high elf archers and spearmen, but they left glade guard and dark elf spearmen. Empire cannon was removed, but dwarf cannon spared. A lot of different knights were removed and some of the more special, like dragon princes, or cold ones were left. Looking at this, it makes sense that they drpped the whole Bretonnian range. There are already human infantry with newer models in the form of freeguild and few different kind of knights, that were also newer, and better incorporated in the Warhammer aesthetics. Same applies for Tomb kings, though it was quite surprising that they removed sphinxes and necropolis knights that were relatively new plastic kits.

I believe that the idea behind the grand alliances was bit different than what the armies are now as the allegiance abilities came to the game later and people liked them very much. This again led to some quite light allegiances as they were designed in the beginning to be just a part of the larger force and not a standalone army. At the same time, the split to smaller factions gave them an opportunity to build specialized forces like Sylvaneth, Beastclaw raiders, Ironjawz etc. I could easily see that kind of release for many of the smaller factions like lion rangers or even stuff like wardancers. In the end, Fyreslayers are basically a complete faction made out of single unit in the dwarf army and few related heroes.

I think that the removal of certain units that share the same slot is sometimes true and sometimes not. In general I believe that GW doesn't mind the tactical similairty as long as the visual design is different enough. For example, Bloodletters, Blood Warriors and Bloodreavers all share a very similar name and role however visually they are different and thus can appeal to different strokes of fans. Fans of the Demons, Evil Knights and Barbarians.

While certain pieces indeed where dropped per Grand Alliance I also do not believe that GW actively works from a game perspective when it's about models. Instead I believe they have visual que's and themes in mind that now are more different as ever. In that vein I do agree that Brettonia was indeed another human faction and Tomb Kings another undead faction however their visual design very much keept them seperate. What I believe is the prime reason why Empore has cannons removed is that GW has a different AoS plan for them, ties to historical correctness are again largely removed. The dwarfen cannons in comparison also always looked way more fantastical as historically correct.  The thing with this is that IP also comes around the corner here. There are many compagnies with a "regular human cannon" and "knight riding large beast". Neither the sphinx, pegasus or giant cobra can be considered Games Workshop's IP though. 

I think that GW currently works towards a high fantasy design for AoS and tries to incorporate all WFB models that match that visual que. The more fantastical the better, which is also why I believe they are leaving certain large WFB sets alone because they want to alter their look in a much more drastical way as say with their 'dwarf or undead ranges'. As a result I think we will have our Cultists and Priests humans while Mythical Warriors and Dark Assassins will make up a larger part of the upcomming elven ranges. There are simply some things that look historically accurate and to me it seems GW wants to ditch that all eventually for AoS. 

Where we completely agree though is that there are so many options and possible thought patrons from GW that all we are left with is guessing where we're heading. However for those who are willing to share their thoughts Im always interested in reading more opinions. Some of this is something I also discussed half a year ago in the Rumour topic but I do still stand by it.

Cheers,

[Ollie Grimwood]

Jes Goodwin did give little insight on Warhammer TV. First comes the concept artworks which will include things such as now to distinguish who is who as 28mm (big hats on Eldar leaders for example). Next the models get made and finally the background and rules are written.

I thing very basically they make what they think is cool sell it to us and if we like and buy it they make more.

Apparently the reason Squats got the heave ho was that they didn't sell very well and no one on the design team felt they could do anything cool with them (I think the original creator had left the company)


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[Shoe]

I think a big influence is how much plastic they are sitting on. 

So their update schedule is based on existing inventory. Elves for example, got an update in 2014, just a year before they sunset WHFB. My guess is that they are sitting on a ton of inventory for them, so updating their faction with new models would block these sales. Same with undead.