It is a GW statement and They have been very clear so far .
All the quotes from Warcom articles :
23rd of May 2024
"Certain factions people remember from Warhammer Fantasy Battles are not part of the narrative weβre telling with The Old World, but will be provided with rules at the launch of the game.
Dark Elves
Skaven
Vampire Counts
Daemons of Chaos
Ogre Kingdoms
Lizardmen
Chaos Dwarfs
These legacy faction army lists will be made available for free as pdfs as a service to fans who have these classic armies on their shelf, so they can still bring them to battle for old times sake."
22th January 2024
"But while these are complete lists, there are no plans to release miniatures to use them with β the rules are intended for people who already have armies in their collection."
5th january 2024 -
βWhat about the legacy factions?:
Rob (Aldeman): A few of the factions from the previous Warhammer Fantasy Battle game will not feature in Warhammer: The Old World β this is in terms of game rules, model ranges, and the ongoing background narrative. These βLegacyβ factions will however get free, downloadable army lists so people can try out the new system using their older model collections. More about this in the coming weeks, though please note that they wonβt be considered legal for tournaments, and wonβt receive ongoing support.
If you want to come on this long-term journey with us, the factions in the Forces of Fantasy and Ravening Hordes books are the ones to collect and play β and we want to be pretty clear about that!β
In addition :
It will take roughly 2 years to re-release the 9 focused factions ( 1 every 3 months with 3 waves each) and then from Hastings's rumors they will start to release campaign books with FW/GW miniatures moving timeline towards Siege of praag/great war against chaos. Something very similar to Middlearth relaunch in 2018 = same Project Manager Rob Alderman
Hastings was the one who reported first that Bretonnia and Tomb kings kits were back in production in june 2022 for the ToW launch.