The End of Free Warscrolls

[Tervindar]

36 minutes ago, zilberfrid said:

May I suggest Oathmark as a place to get rules?

It's rather quick to understand and has a very interesting army creation/campaign mechanic where you build your kingdom.

Oathmark looks extremely interesting and on the list to try. Doesn't seem overly "killy". There are plenty of companies that have rules that can use GW models for it, Kings of War, OnePageRules, etc. Otherwise, Parabellum Conquest from my opinion does it the correct way for a modern game system, rules, army books, etc are all free to use along with an army builder. 

[Fairbanks]

That's annoying and disappointing.

The free warscrolls was a major factor in hooking new players during teaching games. Not only were the warscrolls free on the AoS App, but the Allegiance Abilities, Relics, etc were out of the way, which makes trying to teach those along with everything else simply divorced. I could teach without the Sword of Damocles that there was even more stuff to learn beyond the first game, that could come after they were comfortable with the Core Phases.

[Sleboda]

16 hours ago, The Red King said:

This isn't a gotcha but a genuine question.

What do you feel is the difference between what they did with LRL and Slaneesh and this move that you consider to be their "right to determine their business strategy".

I completely understand your question, and even figured it would come up as I typed that.

The best I can say is just that for me, personally, the book thing feels like it crosses a line (which was essentially asked of me and generated that response).

In one case, they were offering free warscrolls on their site. A nice thing to do, giving away rules for free.

In the other case, it feels like a premeditated way to "take" from their elf and demon customers. A knowing, purposeful manipulation of the trust relationship. Absolutely legal and within their rights, but just a whole different level of shady and greedy.

You need the Battletome to play, and always have (assuming we put aside breaking the law). Even if you got free warscrolls before, you still needed the book. So, they "required" you to buy the book once the whole time, then chose to make you pay double for it. That's different, in my view, from removing a free optional nice-to-have thing that never actually saved the customer money.

To use a wonky comparison, think about dentists. When I was a kid, I would look forward to going to my required (by my mom) semi-annual visit because there was a treasure chest of free toys there and I got to pick out one to keep after each visit if I was good. One day, the treasure chest went away. I still had to go. They took away a nice thing, but ultimately I was going twice each year no matter what. Now, if the dentist started telling me that he would drill holes in my teeth during one visit, and then fill them a week later on a second paid visit, I'd have an issue with that, even if he could legally do it.

Again, I understand your question, but all I can offer is my feeling on why it's different.

Edited September 12, 2021 by Sleboda
Typos

[Greyshadow]

Indeed, 'war scrolls' (or equivalent) weren't free in nine of the eleven editions of Warhammer (I'm including the original Warhammer Fantasy Battle here).

But, it was so convenient and accessible making them free. You needed to buy the Battletome to access the allegiance abilities if you wanted to play an army seriously anyway. I have opponents that I doubt would be playing today if they hadn't been free.

I am somewhat bemused about being nudged into a subscription to access stuff that I have paid good money to have physically elsewhere. Sadly, I can't see this decision being turned around. I do think the way the scrolls were/are hosted on the web store is a bit clunky though.

Edited September 12, 2021 by Greyshadow

[yukishiro1]

It was clunky, but it was designed that way on purpose to nudge people towards browsing the store every time they look up a scroll. Ironically this decision may actually cost them money as it gives people less reason to go to the web store, even aside from how many potentially new players it prevents from getting started.

It's just a bad change all around. If people can't look up the warscrolls of factions they don't play (and therefore don't have the books for), they're just going to get them elsewhere. This is actually going to cause people who wouldn't otherwise have pirated to do so, which again is going to cost GW money in the long run as once those people start, they may not stop. 

[NinthMusketeer]

9 hours ago, Charleston said:

But I could imagine squeezing customers with more draconic design works well, too.

Oh absolutely. But it's sprinting during an endurance race; the short term gains work out to a net loss in the long term. And there are always people who are blinded by the short term. It goes back to the behavior; if it was a net gain (or even zero loss) to always act this way people would never do anything else.

[Battlefury]

Definetly saw that coming. Talked to some AoS friends 2 weeks ago, and the prediction of this move was already there.

My personal summary of the developed situation:

1. GW and their WH+ BS, a wholesome story of profit via desire compression
2. Price increases, also with old kits, just got new package, almost 10%
3. Stores with no playing tables at all
4. The splitting of the community actively further into critics & defenders, while both sides tear up each other, via business practice
5. FOMO in almost all new publications, when it comes to models and new rules
6. new rules, causing a massive power creep
7. FAQ the FAQ to the FAQ, there seems no real interest in game design and reliable product design anymore
8. WH community, just being advertisement only
9. White dwarf, a catalogue, that need to be bought ( relict from the 80s I guess )

When AoS 3.0 came out, I already saw a slight, but noticable stagnation in the local player base. With those moves keepiing on, it will not get better anymore.
Personally, I waited for the Battle Tome of BoK to come out, before I drop my army. Now I doubt my decision.

I'd suggest to leave the sinking ship, before it tears people down with it ( financially in this case ).

Cheers///

PS: Oathmark, OnePageRules (!!! very nice rules !!!) provide better alternatives, than GW will ever be willing to make in the future.

[Ar-Pharazôn]

I see FOMO invokes often, but I don't quite understand it. Why do you feel so compelled to buy? Maybe I'm not getting it as someone with far less expendable cash than others, but it just seems confusing to me.

[yukishiro1]

If FOMO didn't work as a marketing technique, companies wouldn't do it. It's like TV advertising. Nobody likes watching ads and everyone thinks it doesn't work on them or even has a negative impact because it annoys them...but it obviously does work in the aggregate, or companies wouldn't spend billions on it every year. 

Not really sure what FOMO has to do with this discussion, though. 

[Skipsalajan]

I am bummed out by this. Just ordered oathmark. Let's give it a try,loved frostgrave.

[NinthMusketeer]

8 hours ago, Battlefury said:

Definetly saw that coming.

I don't believe you! This move came out of nowhere, unable to be observed due to the extreme subtlety employed up to the moment of attack. Like a Mega-Gargant.

[The Red King]

Today's article pretty much confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt that they're paywalling what azyr already let you do for free. It really annoys me that it says "you can now.." just gaslighting and pretending they're giving us something rather than taking something away.

You can now keep track of rules and warscrolls for every unit in the game and build army rosters using Storm Forge on most mobile devices. You can try it out for free once the beta version goes live, so keep an eye out for more details later next week.   

Edited September 12, 2021 by The Red King

[yukishiro1]

I'm afraid that means that Warscroll Builder is going to be next on the chopping block. 

[zilberfrid]

1 hour ago, yukishiro1 said:

I'm afraid that means that Warscroll Builder is going to be next on the chopping block. 

Probability of that is high (unless discontinueing something FW counts, that can happen at any time)

[Fairbanks]

4 hours ago, The Red King said:

Today's article pretty much confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt that they're paywalling what azyr already let you do for free. It really annoys me that it says "you can now.." just gaslighting and pretending they're giving us something rather than taking something away.

You can now keep track of rules and warscrolls for every unit in the game and build army rosters using Storm Forge on most mobile devices. You can try it out for free once the beta version goes live, so keep an eye out for more details later next week.   

Gonna be honest, most of the aspects I would have gotten Azyr for could have been done with a pencil and piece of paper.

The convenience isn't lost on,me, but that would be $20-30 I could have put toward paint.

[Doko]

No free warscrolls and tomes so much more expensive ............for sure gonna help to end with the piracy of free download of tomes.

And moreover with the huge crisis that we have,good move gw...

[zilberfrid]

On 9/12/2021 at 6:15 AM, Sleboda said:

I completely understand your question, and even figured it would come up as I typed that.

The best I can say is just that for me, personally, the book thing feels like it crosses a line (which was essentially asked of me and generated that response).

In one case, they were offering free warscrolls on their site. A nice thing to do, giving away rules for free.

In the other case, it feels like a premeditated way to "take" from their elf and demon customers. A knowing, purposeful manipulation of the trust relationship. Absolutely legal and within their rights, but just a whole different level of shady and greedy.

You need the Battletome to play, and always have (assuming we put aside breaking the law). Even if you got free warscrolls before, you still needed the book. So, they "required" you to buy the book once the whole time, then chose to make you pay double for it. That's different, in my view, from removing a free optional nice-to-have thing that never actually saved the customer money.

To use a wonky comparison, think about dentists. When I was a kid, I would look forward to going to my required (by my mom) semi-annual visit because there was a treasure chest of free toys there and I got to pick out one to keep after each visit if I was good. One day, the treasure chest went away. I still had to go. They took away a nice thing, but ultimately I was going twice each year no matter what. Now, if the dentist started telling me that he would drill holes in my teeth during one visit, and then fill them a week later on a second paid visit, I'd have an issue with that, even if he could legally do it.

Again, I understand your question, but all I can offer is my feeling on why it's different.

For me knowing the opponent's troops was key to even starting AoS. I wouldn't even have tried to do so anyway. It was part of the reason I never got into fantasy.

With having more "gotcha" things in battletomes, I started losing interest because to really play, I'd have to buy GW's massively overpriced battletomes or pirate. I don't want to do either.

It's not as bad as Necromunda, which needs 3* the price of models you want to field in paper (let alone what a chore navigating 3 books must be to play a skirmish game).

Now I know the warnings are there, never touch any paper that is remotely associated with 40k, because it's predatory and bad, but I was young and naive and Stargrave hadn't come out yet.

Until now, I could go to a warscroll and give my reading of it in threads here. I could also know the abilities of a unit my opponent has without prematurely telegraphing what I wanted to do with that. That's gone, making the difference between 40k and AoS moot, because I'm not going near either rulesets (along with some other very questionable design decisions). Still like some boxes of either line though.

Free (or included in my book(s)) access to all of my opponent's rules as well as mine is now a hard requirement of mine for any wargame.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

When I got back into Warhammer after a break of about 10 years, I was pretty firmly in the camp of "GW models are good, but everything else they do is a scam". Or maybe not a scam, but they are using their position to take advantage of their customers.

However, at the time I got back in about two years ago, I looked at the state of GW and saw some pretty reasonable policies: Free warscrolls, free list builder, somewhat transparent communication and regular FAQ support. It looked to me like GW had put their previous policies that had led to the death of Warhammer Fantasy behind them to a degree and were focussing on just making a game that is as good as it could be (to a degree, they are still a profit driven company after all).

But in the last year or so, GW have definitely shown that they are fine with having an antagonistic relationship with their customers if it means higher profit. The Lumineth release was one example of that, where they released the two halves of the army separately, using their internal knowledge to maximize profits against their player's best interest. The removal of free war scrolls are another example of this: Take something that was previously free and convenient, and make the whole game worse and less conventient to play by putting it behind a paywall.

The removal of free warscrolls signals a return to Kirby era practices to me. It seems GW wants to go back to the good old times, where they were basically the only game in town. In the 2000s, people put up with having to buy battletomes and rule books, because there was basically no other distribution method around. But that's really not the case anymore in an age where basically every game has a wiki detailing all of it's mechanics. Making you buy individual books in a dedicated app is just so far below the current standard of what's possible. There is really no reason I should have to buy books in a dedicated app just to look at unit stats. It's an awful user experience. And the fact that GW tries to get me to do it after several years of record profits, just to squeeze slightly higher profit margins out of the game, really shows me that I should endeavour to not give GW any extra money whenever I can avoid it in order not to reward this type of business strategy.

 

[sandlemad]

Something that just occurred to me is that the absence of these warscrolls is also particularly rubbish for anyone who uses allies or coalition units. If I wanted to slot some liberators into a CoS force or chaos warriors into a Nurgle force, it's going to be harder to do so without purchasing an entirely new tome for the sake of a unit.

[RuneBrush]

I think I'm in a similar boat to most people.  I'd like to see downloadable warscrolls staying in some format that isn't within an app (the apps historically haven't got a good record for being kept up to date).  There's a whole level of convenience when having them easily available on the website, from allies to new armies, new players etc.  More than once I've been looking at the warscroll for a unit that a friend is wanting an opinion on.  I'm not advocating that entire battletomes should be free - GW employs a substantial team of game devs, artists, authors and photographers to produce very high production quality battletomes.

What I will say is that every person on here needs to feed their views onto to the aosfaq@gwplc.com email address - don't be nasty or rude, remember that the person reading the email won't have been the person who made this decision.  Hopefully if enough people provide feedback with some decent reasons on why it's beneficial to stay, that feedback will make its way back to the people who do make the decisions.

One last comment that probably requires a mod hat marker.  Please bear in mind that we have a zero tolerance policy on piracy on TGA.  This isn't open for discussion, because piracy at it's most basic is illegal.  Please double check your post to make sure you're not advocating piracy before you hit that "Submit Reply" button as the mods don't want to be knocking at your door 😉

[Kadeton]

42 minutes ago, RuneBrush said:

Please bear in mind that we have a zero tolerance policy on piracy on TGA. This isn't open for discussion, because piracy at it's most basic is illegal.

While not advocating piracy, I think it's worth noting that copyright and copyright infringement are a lot more complicated than "It's illegal." It's extremely jurisdictional: in many countries, it's not illegal at all; in others, it can even be criminal. Both the potential penalties and the actual rate of enforcement vary wildly depending on where you are.

Everyone could benefit from being more informed about what copyright law actually states, at least in their own jurisdiction.

[Noserenda]

I definitely definitely dont advocate for piracy, but it really feels like GW is right now, just removing a previously valuable service and not offering a replacement just means people will find their own. The lack of electronic books is the main downside to me but the warscroll cards on the store was also hugely useful and i think a much more valuable marketing tool than they realise.

The app (assuming its in the mould of the 40k version which it seems to be) isnt particularly useful as a replacement for either of those, missing huge amounts of army book content and lacking a PC version you can easily flick around when shopping. Its essentially useless to me outside of something to read on the loo.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

2 minutes ago, Kadeton said:

While not advocating piracy, I think it's worth noting that copyright and copyright infringement are a lot more complicated than "It's illegal." It's extremely jurisdictional: in many countries, it's not illegal at all; in others, it can even be criminal. Both the potential penalties and the actual rate of enforcement vary wildly depending on where you are.

Everyone could benefit from being more informed about what copyright law actually states, at least in their own jurisdiction.

One of the more surprising discoveries I made when researching copyright in the context of tabletop games was that game mechanics are not protected. Only the exact wording and art in a game book falls under copyright protection, but the mechanical information that is expressed apparently does not.

So publishing or accessing summaries of a unit's abilites on a 3rd party web site does not appear to be illegal in any way (as far as I can tell, I am not a lawyer). And since several such web sites already exist, I would guess that is where most people are soon going to go for warscroll summaries and points. Essentially, instead of driving people the web store to read a warscroll, GW is probably going to push them to one of those summary sites they probably wish they could shut down, but are legally likely unable to.

I really struggle to see this as anything better than a gamble from a business perspective. They are betting that removing the free scrolls will make people want to get Warhammer+. But to me, it seems more likely that people will just be driven those other free, more convenient alternatives.

[The Red King]

I'm not advocating piracy but it feels like GW is.

Pushing people to small acts of piracy ("I just need this one warscroll for an ally") just makes it easier for them to decide "well I might as well just grab the whole book since its here, just in case I want to ally another unit..."

 

As a Cities and Khorne player, both of which have robust coalition rules spread across multiple books, I can say I'm not happy about it one bit.

[Gaz Taylor]

+++ Mod Hat On +++
As already mentioned by Runebrush, we don’t want people saying it’s okay to Pirate stuff because GW have changed how they do things. Just plain up no. Not going to discuss copyrights in different countries as I would like to think you would agree that pirating things is wrong. 
 

Any further talk in this topic l, along the lines of “I’ve not got free warscrolls, so you have to pirate/steal it” will result in moderator actions.

I would suggest you follow Runebrush’s example and email aosfaq@gwplc.com. Remember to keep your comments polite and constructive.