The Rumour Thread

[Soolong]

So no digital battletomes going forward then if the new aos app is aping the w40k one. GW need to understand that some people can't read the current battletomes because they are to big and heavy.

 

 

 

 

[The Red King]

Call me super negative but:

Eh everything except the shows (painting, battle reports, lore) I can probably get better from YouTube (incoming copyright strikes by GW legal on every non GW affiliate channel?). The shows themselves look like they're almost all 40k right now. The exclusive model requires a YEAR wait time. Like seriously? Can we not just pay for a year and get the darn thing? Lastly if I recall wasn't the overhaul of the 40k app an absolute disaster?

 

If it turns out great then I'll be very pleasantly surprised (but I have been before by GW so maybe it will be fine.) 

 

Of course I'm happy for anyone who enjoys it but my biggest worry is that most of this stuff is just things the community already provides but behind a paywall. And does anyone honestly think that the official battle reports will ever feature real tournament level play or a fair and objective view of the game? It will probably serve as the closest we can get to a look at how the designers think the game is played though so it will be nice to extrapolate their mindset on rules changes since they dont tell us themselves.

[Clif Blunderbrows]

I really couldn’t care less about the animations… I’ve been waiting for a subscription service that delivers digital versions of rules, battletomes, warscrolls, etc and if that’s what this is then the price is a steal. I'm afraid we will still be required to buy each individual battletome to access its content in the app though.

[Clan's Cynic]

3 minutes ago, The Red King said:

The exclusive model requires a YEAR wait time. Like seriously? Can we not just pay for a year and get the darn thing?

I'd be surprised if you couldn't to be honest, as it also incentivises people to put their money down now, which looks better on the financials and there's no risk of you choosing to cancel midway through your subscription. MMORPGs do something similar with veteran rewards, even if the logistics are less complicated by virtue of it being digital.

I doubt they just made one prototype model for preview purposes. Odds are they've got a good number stacked up ready to send out for people who put £50 down immediately.

Edited June 23, 2021 by Clan's Cynic

[Grimrock]

Yeah I'm pleasantly surprised by the service but I'm not sure if I'll be subscribing day 1. Really rolling in the app subscriptions is probably the most interesting component and does help quite a bit as their app costs have always been way too high. With warhammer+ if you discount the cost of the miniatures and split the remainder two ways that alone is like 1 buck a month for each app. If the rest of the content turns out to be high quality and entertaining then I'll probably pick it up. 

Edited June 23, 2021 by Grimrock

[mojojojo101]

Warhammer+ is a big meh from me. I'm sure there is value in it for some people for what is no doubt a pretty reasonable price but for me I don't think I will be getting it, at least until there is a reasonable amount of animations for me to binge through at the very least.

I guess my main complaint is the exact opposite to the worry beforehand, I kinda think it's too cheap. If they had put it at £12-15 a month, included new WD's and maybe battletomes/campaigns/more than 1 model a year/something else I would have been more interested.

New AoS app is one of those things but should be fine, but the current one works fine and the new 40k has been a bit of a mess by all accounts.

As for the model, I expected it to be like the WoW mount offers. If you buy a 6 month sub, you get the model. This way seems really, really inelegant.

Edited June 23, 2021 by mojojojo101

[sandlemad]

Yeah, this doesn't bode particularly well for Azyr or digital tomes. Maybe warscroll builder too, like they're all being dragged down to the 40k standard.

Also, for this 'Loremasters' thing... Fundamentally the presenters or whoever will be incapable of being critical of any AoS/WHFB/40k background. They won't be able to note where it was written well or not (they're not going to be saying "Kragnos worked well in theory but wound up a bit of a miss opportunity in fairness"), or contextualise it, or speculate on where miscommunications led to inconsistencies, or where X author parted way with the company on bad terms, or where X author introduced a good idea which was then poorly emulated by others, or identify the points where GW lifted stuff from other IPs took inspiration from other sources, or point out where commercial concerns were particularly important in dictating what happened.

It sounds like it'll be a mix of Thermian stuff and If anything this is actually going to be slightly less informative than your average youtube "reading wiki articles in a nasal monotone" youtube video, and certainly toeing the party line more than independent video creators like Snipe & Wib. This will be like Disney telling you about Disney.

I'll admit there were a few candid moments in e.g. Wade's previous interviews with the likes of Jes Goodwin and John Blanche for the various interviews but they were far and few between, scattered in a morass of party line marketing stuff. I do not have high hopes for this.

Edited June 23, 2021 by sandlemad

[Ogregut]

I'm sold. £4.99 a month is what a pint of beer or a coffee. For that get access to what looks like good quality shows, a ever growing back catalogue of lore, painting classes, battle reports and access to both 40k and AoS apps. And get a model at the end of the year. 

It's clear the people who are involved in this are passionate about it. 

I think they are onto a winner, nice one GW. 

[Overread]

Disney telling me about Disney at least can put some things in that aren't on the Disney Wiki and which aren't just pet theories that go nowhere. 

I'd also say that things like painting patreons charge as much if not more per month for content and whilst that might sound bad for GW; remember that many patreons might have hundreds to a few thousand subscribers at best. GW is likely to get many many thousands under this scheme for various parts of it. Plus some parts (like back access content and digital app stuff) is stuff they have/were making already - ergo really low cost for them to include. 

[sandlemad]

Just now, Overread said:

Disney telling me about Disney at least can put some things in that aren't on the Disney Wiki and which aren't just pet theories that go nowhere.

Or, based on the description, just digging over oddments from battletomes and old codices for video content. Which is fine but when compared to fan content is likely to be contextless and presented uncritically.

[Charleston]

I wonder why they just put the lore from old campaign books in there but not the rules. Like, are they so afraid that people would not buy new stuff then? 

[Scurvydog]

Interesting with a new AoS app, I thought the current one was actually quite good, except wanting to be able to unlock battletomes with codes like in the 40k app, I am obviously not going to buy the book and also buy it again just to unlock the rules in the app.

Perhaps they completely skip that for AoS and go by the warhammer+ model to unlock everything.

Honestly 50 pound a year for full app access, animations, shows, publications and a sweet model, that seems rather alright to be fair.

[Sleboda]

29 minutes ago, Soolong said:

So no digital battletomes going forward then if the new aos app is aping the w40k one. GW need to understand that some people can't read the current battletomes because they are to big and heavy.

 

 

 

 

I mean no offense to anyone in that situation with this take:

While inclusion is always appreciated, and looking out for others is a laudable societal trait, it makes very little business sense to choose a path that tries to accommodate what is assuredly a miniscule segment of your potential customer base at the expense of a course that would generate what that business believes to be significant income from the vast majority of the customer base.

We see this all the time in society, both in terms of business and just regular social interaction. Even in medicine.

Not to make this too much of a downer, but my grandfather, a decorated part of the Greatest Generation, a conservation officer, business owner, and all around loving, intelligent, and kind man died from an extremely rare brain disease. There is almost no research done into combatting this disease because it is so rare and resources are limited - resources that go into curing ailments that aflict many, many more people. It tore me up that he died from this ... but the medical community was and is right to not work on the disease that killed him.

To put it in more geek-centric terms, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one."

GW is right, and indeed has a legal responsibility to its shareholders, to focus on the majority with their plans rather than hamper those plans to accommodate just a few.

 

Edited June 23, 2021 by Sleboda

[Kodos der Henker]

2 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

To put it in more geek-centric terms, "The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the few, or the one."

so the many need to wait for physical books if some unexpected reason prevents them being shipped from China to Europe in time to get them send out on the planned release date because GW felt only few want to buy a digital product only

not even talking about that because of climate change some people avoid books at all, specially if they are printed far away
removing the possibility of digital content only, is a very short sighted point of view

but GW will have great success with this anyway

[Nos]

So I actually dont think it's a bad deal really, for what it is

BUT

A) Its a starting price. It will go up. Twice the price in 3 years wouldnt surprise me at all

B) Involvement in the hobbying aspect to keeping up with the franchise will be increasingly locked behind it

C) And this is the big one; the current proliferation of independent streamers is not going to last. It's the new internet frontier at present but we've been here before. The attraction of autonomy and independent creators brings in the audience, then that gets sold or annexed by some massive monolithic corporation. But even before that, for every young kid getting into the hobby now, WH+ is £5 now going directly to GW that would otherwise have been going to a Twitch sub.

WH+ is going to mark *right now* as the apex of independent GW streamers. Writing is on the wall now sadly. Will take time, but not as long as were thinking it will. 

Edited June 23, 2021 by Nos

[Clan's Cynic]

20 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

I mean no offense to anyone in that situation with this take:

While inclusion is always appreciated, and looking out for others is a laudable societal trait, it makes very little business sense to choose a path that tries to accommodate what is assuredly a miniscule segment of your potential customer base at the expense of a course that would generate what that business believes to be significant income from the vast majority of the customer base.

We see this all the time in society, both in terms of business and just regular social interaction. Even in medicine.

Not to make this too much of a downer, but my grandfather, a decorated part of the Greatest Generation, a conservation officer, business owner, and all around loving, intelligent, and kind man died from an extremely rare brain disease. There is almost no research done into combatting this disease because it is so rare and resources are limited - resources that go into curing ailments that aflict many, many more people. It tore me up that he died from this ... but the medical community was and is right to not work on the disease that killed him.

To put it in more geek-centric terms, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one."

GW is right, and indeed has a legal responsibility to its shareholders, to focus on the majority with their plans rather than hamper those plans to accommodate just a few.

 

Except the digital/ebook market has exploded in recent years, that's no secret. There's a reason things like Kindles and other readers are so popular, with new versions put out every year. Just about every other wargame includes digital editions, just as you'd be very, very, very hard pressed to find a publisher who doesn't have an ebook version of what they print, whether that's novels, non-fiction, textbooks, whatever.

I don't think it's anything to do with financials so much as Games Workshop being dinosaurs when it comes to digital content. Many other, far smaller wargames have apps for their games for years, whilst GW only launched a (shoddy) one for their flagship title last year. 

Digital also means you don't need to spend money printing, shipping and then hoping you sell hardcopies. Instead it's just - digital. Format it, slap it on the website, done. 

A better analogy than terminal illness would be if a company stopped producing DVDs around 1999 and instead only made VHS.

Edited June 23, 2021 by Clan's Cynic

[Ogregut]

21 minutes ago, Nos said:

So I actually dont think it's a bad deal really, for what it is

BUT

A) Its a starting price. It will go up. Twice the price in 3 years wouldnt surprise me at all

B) Involvement in the hobbying aspect to keeping up with the franchise will be increasingly locked behind it

C) And this is the big one; the current proliferation of independent streamers is not going to last. It's the new internet frontier at present but we've been here before. The attraction of autonomy and independent creators brings in the audience, then that gets sold or annexed by some massive monolithic corporation. But even before that, for every young kid getting into the hobby now, WH+ is £5 now going directly to GW that would otherwise have been going to a Twitch sub.

WH+ is going to mark *right now* as the apex of independent GW streamers. Writing is on the wall now sadly. Will take time, but not as long as were thinking it will. 

I can't see it taking away from independent streamers, if anything it gives them more to talk about with break downs of that weeks animation episode. 

I also don't agree with saying that giving £5 to warhammer+ will take away from a independent streamer. If you like that streamer and want to support them, you will. 

Edited June 23, 2021 by Ogregut

[CDM]

Do you get the new battletomes on the 40k/AoS apps? Or do you have to pay do we think?

[Kodos der Henker]

5 minutes ago, CDM said:

Do you get the new battletomes on the 40k/AoS apps? Or do you have to pay do we think?

with the current 40k App, you have to buy the physical book to get the digital content in the App, so this will be the case for AoS as well

very unlikley that is going to change that

[JustAsPlanned]

Ok, the initial outrage has developed into a sort of... well, melancholy. It’s just really unimpressive. Everything except the animations you could get on YouTube for free, and arguably at a higher quality (ie, the lore show). And the insinuation that there’s no more ebooks is just a massive pain in the backside as well. I do stand by what I said about “what a market share does to a mfer” though. GW are slowly but surely getting too big for their boots. 

Anyway, back to rumours ig. About the Kruleboyz flyer, are y’all #TeamBatScorpionThing or #TeamGiantFethingEagle as that new leak from 4chan seemed to claim?

[Austin]

Very bad news I think for anyone who likes the current app. The 40k one is not good, and has been out for a while.

Who is telling them that moving AWAY from digital battletomes is a good idea?

[PJetski]

Warhammer+ feels like a personal attack against Duncan Rhodes, but in typical GW fashion it took them two years to do anything and the result is underwhelming and overpriced

[Sunshine]

Warhammer + is very meh. To be honest I was expecting quite a bit more like having access to battle tomes. YouTubers do a better job across the board with community videos. I am not interested in any of the animations. The current digital vault will only have back issues of White Dwarf from 2020 at the moment. It feels very bare bones and they are going in with a similar price to what Disney+ started with. That said whilst I feel it is poor value for what it is currently looking to offer,  the models do look nice (particularly the 40k one).

There a few things that would make me change my mind (I don't mean they need to offer all of this for it to be fairer value; even 1 or 2 would do):

- if they started to digitise all White Dwarf magazines starting at the beginning.

- full access to all out of date battle tomes and previous edition rulebooks including from Warhammer Fantasy.

- if it included a digital White Dwarf subscription.

- there was full access to all current codexes and battle tomes.

- if they made battle reports from previous editions of Age of Sigmar and Warhammer Fantasy.

[Gothmaug]

Ill go team bat scorpion. Bat wings, long tail with stinger, sounds more wyvern-like.

 

As for Warhammer +. RPG/wargaming companies have a fairly poor record of creating thier own digital platforms. Usually these work out better when licensed to actual game or software developers. Games Workshop, Hasbro, Paizo publishing, all tried to expand into hosting thier own digital subscription servers, and failed for the most part. 5th edition D&D seems to be getting there, but that's after their 3rd edition and 4th edition inhouse digital platforms and online play software attempts failed (3rd times the charm?). GW business practices for model creation and rules dissemination seems to be stuck 15 years behind the times, so I'm not very optimistic they'll get this right. 

 

[HollowHills]

This just seems to me like they are putting stuff behind a paywall that they used to do for free.

The 40k app is terrible. You can only see the core rules for free and literally everything else is behind a paywall. It's also a buggy mess.

If the new aos app goes this way it will be terrible.

I see zero reason for them to maintain regular free painting videos of a high quality, or the paint app they launched, if they are now making paint videos for a paid for service. 

All the digital content they are talking about giving you access to is old. You don't get new white dwarf, you don't seem to get new battletomes or codexes.

Maybe some people are keen on the animations, but it remains to be seen how much actual content their will be and on what release schedule. Plus 90% of it seems to be about space marines.

I agree it isn't a lot of money, especially compared to the cost of warhammer in general. But the cost of this hobby keeps going up, and for a lot of people their income isn't. 

It feels like GW knew the service wasn't a good proposition so they've thrown as much as they can behind it to try and make it mandatory.