The End of Free Warscrolls

[Orsino]

9 hours ago, nuttyknatty said:

Surely you can just buy the battletome?

 

I’ve always viewed the free content that GW provide as a bonus to their product rather than an essential part of the games they create. I guess it’s a question of perspective.

As I said, I like to look at warscrolls when deciding what army I'm going to buy next, as do a lot of people it seems, not to mention people wanting to know what they might face from opponents. Bit unreasonable to expect people to purchase a battletome for every army they're considering buying, or every army they might face.

It's such a wrong-headed approach to try and get people to subscribe to the app by taking the warscrolls, which have been free for years and help people decide what to buy, and putting them behind a paywall. It seems like an admission that they haven't been able to produce any new content that would make people actually want the app, and are forced to arbitrarily take away things people already liked and put them behind that paywall. If nothing else I suspect this is gonna cause a drop in traffic to their site which will hopefully hurt sales. And the cherry on the faecal sundae is that a number of models had building-instructions under the downloads tab because the ones in the box were misprinted, and those are gone now. So I guess if you have one of those models you now need to subscribe to Warhammer+ to put it together?

[pnkdth]

9 hours ago, nuttyknatty said:

Surely you can just buy the battletome?

 

I’ve always viewed the free content that GW provide as a bonus to their product rather than an essential part of the games they create. I guess it’s a question of perspective.

Because it is a predatory business model designed to get you to spend more and more money. There's a reason why it works and it isn't because it is clever, it is because it exploits what's called 'sunk cost' which formula is built around making you feel obligated to spend more to justify what you spent before (both in terms of time and money). It is the reason gaming companies like EA and Activision are so hated because they lock you into their services and use manipulate tactics to drip-feed you DLC and other content. Just get that battletome, just get that W+, and you also need this expansion, and the general's handbook, and so on. Then you find out you hate your army but now they got you.

That said, having played other systems now where I do get the rules for free I feel much happier about buying both the rules and supplements. It is refreshing to be treated nicely as opposed to with amped up jealousy and paranoia that if I see the rules up front their rules will crumble and fade away. That's the thing with trying to control everything is that you end up losing control.

I look forward to the day when GW turns their ship around, if they do, but till then they've lost a customer. To me that is the most constructive way of reacting, to simply not put up with it and go back to 'the why' you love the hobby. Because "the hobby" is not GW, it is you and your mates having fun playing tabletop games.

Happy hobbying!

 

[yukishiro1]

Nobody in their right mind would buy every single battletome in the game just to find out what units do. It isn't realistic, and GW knows it. Presumably the calculation is that enough people will be prompted by this to buy a tome or two they wouldn't have that it will make up for all the ill will they breed with the community and the large number of people who will be prompted to find other free sources for their rules (to be clear, I'm not saying piracy - GW has no copyright in their rules, just in the expression of those rules, so rules summaries are completely 100% legal). But even if that calculation is correct, it's an extremely cynical move on GW's part. This is an unambiguously customer-unfriendly decision that provides another sign that GW is moving back towards the old policies that got it into a big hole last time around. 

Edited September 20, 2021 by yukishiro1

[acr0ssth3p0nd]

1 hour ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Definitely looks like a good time to diversify your wargaming portfolio and take a look at some model-agnostic games. I have been meaning to give Vince Venturella's game Reign in Hell a try.

Absolutely. I'm planning to run OnePageRules with my current GW models and am getting my SAGA Shieldmaidens painted up for an Age of Vikings warband.

And hey, I'm always up for more of the Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game, GW's most-accessible, best-designed, and best-maintained game. I'll happily buy that new Witch-King model - heck, that's reminded me that I need to pick up Gondor at War for the Ithilien Rangers Legendary Legion. Ooo, and the Scouring of the Shire supplement has some lovely, smaller narrative scenarios!

Edited September 20, 2021 by acr0ssth3p0nd

[PJetski]

15 minutes ago, acr0ssth3p0nd said:

I'm always up for more of the Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game, GW's most-accessible, best-designed, and best-maintained game.

I'm sure you meant to write Warhammer Underworlds

[CommissarRotke]

Was this survey posted here yet? Make sure to mention you want free warscrolls in the app and webstore to stay https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/3DSRJ8N?utm_source=WarhammerCommunity&utm_medium=Post&utm_campaign=TryOutWarhammerAgeofSigmarTheAppandtheStormForgeArmyList-buildingToolRightNowforFree15092021&utm_content=TryOutWarhammerAgeofSigmarTheAppandtheStormForgeArmyList-buildingToolRightNowforFree15092021

I specified that this free access was the main reason I got back into AOS, and it is. Without it I don't think I would be here on this forum with ~500 USD in Stormcast

[sandlemad]

27 minutes ago, PJetski said:

I'm sure you meant to write Warhammer Underworlds

Honestly it's neck and neck between MSBG and WHU imo but with that "best-maintained" caveat, WHU is dragged under by being at the vanguard of GW eagerly adopting the shoddy business practices deployed by other games companies (rotations, pay2win, poor availability, pricey expansions, sharp feature bloat), all of which is even worse than MSBG's time in the wilderness. Love 'em both though.

1 hour ago, yukishiro1 said:

Nobody in their right mind would buy every single battletome in the game just to find out what units do. It isn't realistic, and GW knows it. Presumably the calculation is that enough people will be prompted by this to buy a tome or two they wouldn't have that it will make up for all the ill will they breed with the community and the large number of people who will be prompted to find other free sources for their rules

I think it can be understood as an extension of GW's age-old practice (sometimes cynically conscious, sometimes just how they do things) of ensuring products have some ability to lure at least some customers into bigger purchases, regardless of how it affects the larger player base. Almost no one will get e.g. cities of sigmar battletome so they can use auxiliaries in their stormcast force but there will still be the odd customer who'll think "I know a guy who will sell me his second hand phoenix guard and a helblaster, and the background is cool, maybe a small allied force wouldn't be such a bad idea, I can afford the thirty quid this month...". That snowballing is exactly what GW builds their strategies around, whether it's AoS/40k army to army, or Kill Team to 40k, or Warcry to AoS.

Anyway dropping the free warscrolls, especially in their entirety today, is just rubbish behaviour and I wish they hadn't done it. It's also unfortunately the thing that negative press or even politely worded communications through the survey will sadly do absolutely nothing about. GW knows what they're doing and this is clearly driven by the app and WH+, which is a larger commercial concern and cannot be allowed to fail. This is a much bigger deal than however much ill will they generate, they're not turning around on this one.

[micahaphone]

Just this friday I was thinking that the tree spirits army looked kinda cool, and I saw Alarielle's warscroll was gone from the warcom free army list builder, but was still available on the store page. Now today it's gone from there too. well, guess I'll go elsewhere for the info or just stop window shopping other armies.

[Enoby]

I do wonder if a loss of free warscrolls will end up being a profit loss for them in the long run. I know I only really become interested in other armies after having a look at the full package, rather than going out on a whim and buying the full tome and just hoping I'd like it. It does seem like a lot of other people feel this way too. 

It works for 40k, but they've had a lot longer time to build up a loyal fanbase for each army, whereas AoS still feels like it's finding its feet. 

In all honesty, I can only see this decreasing the number of people playing AoS, which I think comparatively to 40k is pretty small going by their financial reports (but obviously much larger than many other games).  

[yukishiro1]

It is a shockingly short-sighted decision, and I have no doubt it will cost them money in the long term. It's exactly the sort decision GW made in the late 00s and early 10s that got them into trouble and killed WHFB - cannibalizing long-term sales in favor of trying to squeeze more money out of the existing player base. And I'm not sure it's even effective at that - I know personally my chances of buying any GW rules publications going forward have gone down, not up. In fact, I'm going to return an unopened battletome I have now in protest. And my chances of buying models has effectively gone down too, because not being able to see the rules there when I'm browsing the webstore is going to in practice reduce my chances of hitting that purchase button (not that I buy direct from their store very often anyway, but lots of people do, and it will be even more true for those people). 

Edited September 20, 2021 by yukishiro1

[nuttyknatty]

Apologies to all, but I just can’t understand how something like this gets people so heated.

I can understand why it’s disappointing but really, the level of hyperbole is eyebrow raising.  I think the word here is perspective. 
We have to spend some money to access some work that someone has produced. The fact that for the last six years we’ve not had to pay for it shouldn’t be a source of negativity. On the contrary, we should be appreciative that we had it for free for so long.

Fair enough if you’ve got a political argument against capitalism, but I’d wager that the majority of GW’s customers aren’t either communists or anarchists, so trying to argue that stuff should be free glaringly looks like entitlement.

But I may well be wrong.🤷🏼‍♂️

[micahaphone]

15 minutes ago, nuttyknatty said:

Fair enough if you’ve got a political argument against capitalism, but I’d wager that the majority of GW’s customers aren’t either communists or anarchists, so trying to argue that stuff should be free glaringly looks like entitlement.

But I may well be wrong.🤷🏼‍♂️

.... uh yeah. Yup. No anarchists here! Whew, that sure would be scary. I have no qualms with the state and don't have long rants about "hierarchy" or other nonsensical topics. Just a boring ol' mini wargaming fan here.

[yukishiro1]

Nobody's saying everything GW makes should be free - their premium-priced miniatures that account for the vast majority of their profits will stay premium-priced no matter what happens with the rules. 

If you think it's "entitled" and "eyebrow raising" and lacking "perspective" for people to want GW to retain the rules structure the game has had since its inception - free warscrolls, paid army books on top of that - I'm not going to tell you how to think, even if you're telling me how I should think.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Grimrock]

1 hour ago, nuttyknatty said:

Apologies to all, but I just can’t understand how something like this gets people so heated.

I can understand why it’s disappointing but really, the level of hyperbole is eyebrow raising.  I think the word here is perspective. 
We have to spend some money to access some work that someone has produced. The fact that for the last six years we’ve not had to pay for it shouldn’t be a source of negativity. On the contrary, we should be appreciative that we had it for free for so long.

Fair enough if you’ve got a political argument against capitalism, but I’d wager that the majority of GW’s customers aren’t either communists or anarchists, so trying to argue that stuff should be free glaringly looks like entitlement.

But I may well be wrong.🤷🏼‍♂️

I think others have put it well on the app thread, but to summarize their thoughts it seems to fall into a question of value. Part of the value of the game has always been access to the free resources like warscrolls and the app. With those components being removed, the value of the game itself drops (and the amount it drops is unique to everyone). For most people it won't be enough to give up on the game, it's just another inconvenience that can be worked around. For some that were already unsure about the value of the game it's just the tipping point that makes them decide to move on. It's not overly surprising, there have been a lot of issues recently with GW policy (rapid battletome releases, multiple supplements, extremely erratic balance levels, and the inevitable turmoil that occurs with every edition change) that are bound to make most people question their stance on the game. I don't think it's going to be the thing that makes me quit, but I can certainly see why it's just too much for some. I'm certainly thinking I'll be taking a bit of a break for a while though, just no desire to pick up any new models right now.

 

Edited September 20, 2021 by Grimrock

[CommissarRotke]

18 minutes ago, nuttyknatty said:

Apologies to all, but I just can’t understand how something like this gets people so heated.

 

Because most of us have either returned to the hobby or expanded into new armies (or both!!) via the free rules and warscrolls. I think you might be downplaying how huge the accessibility of looking at an entire model range + rules on one single, first-party site is.

Using ageofsigmar.com plus the free warscrolls to check out Stormcast is how I chose them for my army. Reading up on fan wikis and watching a couple lore vids certainly helped, but by and large? Being able to see how the units ACTUALLY functioned and how they would play together from information directly, freely given by GW absolutely 100% got me to come back to Warhammer. If that access wasn't there, I don't think I would have committed to AOS let alone Stormcast.

[Noserenda]

Couple of quotes from my feedback to gw: 

"I honestly think driving people to research new armies on Wahapedia rather than your own website is going to obviously cost you money."

"People want you to succeed, a mediocre product would be enough, just not an awful one" 

[micahaphone]

3 minutes ago, Noserenda said:

"I honestly think driving people to research new armies on Wahapedia rather than your own website is going to obviously cost you money."

Don't name drop like that! Sure, GW probably knows about wahapedia, but no reason to remind them and point them directly at their source of lost sales (in their eyes)

[Baba-Yaga]

This is an eyewatering bad decision, and I loathe it. I love the hobby, but the amount of moneygrapping moves GW make of late has me secondguessing on my commitment. 

[yukishiro1]

Yeah, and especially don't mention Man Who Reads Book. Even if it is tempting to point out the utter incoherence of a marketing strategy which gives someone a free review copy of a premium-priced book to read on youtube at the same time it removes free warscrolls from the webstore. 

Edited September 20, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Kodos der Henker]

A simple reason why things are heated with some minor changes from GW regarding the interaction with the community:

Some of us have already seen those things in the past and it looks like that GW did not learned from the mistakes, or just never understood what those mistakes were.

But the changes from AoS 2 to AoS 3 with the new business model taking away good stuff that was there and forcing people into things that they don't want without even getting a proper replacement (for AoS, taking away e-books and replacing them with rules only support if you buy the physical book) feels very much like what happend from WHFB 6th to WHFB 7th/8th

It looks like that GW thought the AoS Community has reached is maximum and won't grow any larger (as new players just replace those that drop out) so they want the highest possible short term profit.
And from the current point, I would not be surprised if AoS is killed off after its 4th Edition and replaced with something new just because this has worked so well before

For me they have done everything that I am not going to buy any books, and depending on how the pandemic is going on I guess I won't have a single game in 3rd anyway

[yukishiro1]

Ending free warscrolls is a break-up of the system the game has had since Day 1. It's a big, fundamentally less-customer-friendly reorientation of the rules architecture, so it's really not odd that it would provoke strong reactions. 

Now is also the time to make a stink about it, because they haven't yet gone on record to say the scrolls really aren't free any more, so it wouldn't result in a loss of face if they came out tomorrow with a war-com article saying "of course the scrolls in the app will be free going forward! why did you ever doubt us?" and GW then gets to bask in the adulation of the community and everybody wins. 

[Televiper11]

My interest in AoS (as a game) is hanging by a thread. The abrupt decision to drop a new edition in the middle of a pandemic, when many recently released 2.0 battletomes had barely gotten any play, the Cursed City & split Lumineth release debacles, etc. really killed my interest in 3.0– add on the push to WH+, a product I have zero interest in yet which they want to basically force us to use. Yeah, it won’t be long until everything but the models & paint will be digitally locked up behind a paywall. No thank you!  I have yet to play a game of 3.0 and I will certainly try it out eventually but OathMark & Frostgrave & One Page Rules are all looking mighty appealing for being model agnostic.

[Neverchosen]

5 hours ago, yukishiro1 said:

Not putting up new free scrolls for new releases was bad enough, but even I am somewhat surprised to see them take down the old free scrolls too. Talk about a kick in the teeth. 

I would note that in addition to sending feedback to the email address provided earlier, you can also submit a complaint to GW if you want, at: https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Complaint-Portal

 

Done and done!

[EntMan]

Why the fuss? Well because some people have spent hundreds of pounds on miniatures on the understanding that they could use these miniatures in a game that can be played for free at a basic level. But GW are not just starting to charge for new warscrolls, by whisking away the old ones it means if people hadn't downloaded the scrolls there miniatures are now basically useless game play wise unless they now shell out more money.

GW have broken the admittedly informal deal they sold the miniatures under.

It sort of sucks to have to pay to play the new game but business is business but to now be prevented from playing the old game feels like betrayal.

(Except I realise it's not technically betrayal, it's my stupid neivety in being fooled by the GW "community' nonsense, maybe I'm just cross with myself... but it FEELS like betrayal. Life has been tough and now I feel screwed over by my means of escapism!)

 

Edited September 20, 2021 by EntMan

[Noserenda]

2 hours ago, micahaphone said:

Don't name drop like that! Sure, GW probably knows about wahapedia, but no reason to remind them and point them directly at their source of lost sales (in their eyes)

Im pretty confident anything with a .ru domain is completely immune to GW's wrath unless they start hiring hackers