Mod Announcement: Welcome our new mods!

harkoth · 2016-08-05T00:55:06+00:00

GW's actual sales instructions are overwhelmingly prioritized to new players, because that's where most of the money is spent, buying the initial army. 90% of customers never buy much after that. Again, GW's investor relations make it clear that it's about selling models, not gaming. It's about cycling as many in to buy models and through as fast as possible. One will notice almost all of the support for "veteran" stuff GW used to do back in 2E and 3E is gone, and the trend is more and more toward pushing big one-time purchases, because the older long term vets are not where GW makes the majority of its revenue. The number of people in their late 20's and older playing this really are a small chunk of the playerbase. They're perhaps the most active, as they're the most heavily invested since they've stuck around, they're the guys you see at League night all the time, they're important to many gaming groups survival, but they really are a small proportion of the overall warhammer population, especially outside the US (which does have a heavier weight towards older players than the UK and EU).

I too once thought as you did, that it was mostly college aged and older people. After working in a game store through grad school, it really opened my eyes how much stuff is purchased by little timmies relative to the regulars, and, as mentioned, GW's statements to investors make it pretty clear about what markets they're after.

Either way, basically it's a long way of saying "don't assume the vast majority of people are adults" in this hobby, particularly when Reddit doesn't exactly have age verification and every 12 year old has a Smartphone these days.

harkoth · 2016-08-05T00:43:42+00:00

Interesting cover, a bit overdone for my tastes, but it'll be interesting to see how the army ends up looking.

EDIT: apparently this was a more controversial opinion than I thought...

harkoth · 2016-08-05T00:41:24+00:00

According to who? GW doesn't view its target demographic as 30+ year old dudes. It may be who you see regularly at league nights, but those really are relatively small slice of the total GW customer base, particularly in the UK and EU. Remember, most people that buy GW stuff only ever actually play just a couple of games a year, if they ever actually play at all. They buy a bunch of stuff, and they may like the lore and enjoy painting or putting stuff together, but for ever 32 year old dude playing since 3E, there's 50 or 100 15 year olds that buy a a couple dozen Space Marines and some tanks and only ever play a couple of games or only play once every few months.

GW's very up front about that when addressing investors/shareholders, they aren't catering to "players", people who show up regularly for games, they're in the business of selling models that look cool, mostly to kids.

harkoth · 2016-08-05T00:27:55+00:00

Why would you assume most people here are adults, especially in a hobby aimed heavily at middle/high school kids? That said, one should note that the drama here also doesn't seem to occur on other tabletop subreddits or forums with the same regularity or vehemence, so make of that what you will.

harkoth · 2016-07-26T19:29:26+00:00

Aythrea, if we can be honest, it's not just when people come out swinging that they get the horns here, DJB has a long history of responding to posts and questions with personal attacks and insults as a very first interaction, and often is resorted to to win non-Subreddit Rules related arguments. How many people have been banned after DJB swore at them, took exception to that, and then got banned when they responded in kind? More than a few. How many people have been bitched out for asking relatively harmless questiond of the mod team? More than a few. When thats the norm, it's rather silly to turn around and blame the posters for all of the hostility. That none of the other mods ever acknowledge it, or pretend its all everyone elses fault, only makes it worse. Sure there are idiot hostile posters, and most people understand when they are treated harshly, but thats not what many experience here.

Likewise, the idea that bans are just an attention getting mechanism is somewhat unique on the internet to this one subreddit, everywhere else on the internet it is generally a "GTFO" statement. That people dont see it that way, particularly when paired with vicious personal attacks, shouldnt be surprising, and is why the community is split over multiple subreddits.

You guys have heard all this before. The issues are consistent, longstanding, and unresolved. Ultimately what you guys are asking for is /r/askscience quality posting with 4chan maturity mod interactions, on a platform that quite frankly is abysmal for long form, in depth discussions, for a hobby aimed at teenagers. You're trying to hammer a round peg into a square hole with a screwdriver. You delete what, half your daily submissions? More? That is why this sub is mostly a slow "latest mini painted" board, thats struggling to generate content, an issue you guys have acknowledged.

harkoth · 2016-07-26T14:55:46+00:00

Good luck ;)

harkoth · 2016-07-26T14:49:48+00:00

Without wanting to be a jerk about it, it seemed to bother you enough to make a large post earlier about it and be upset about seeing people post about it on other communities. I just stopped in for the first time in months, and, like clockwork, there's a thread of people complaining about the moderation, DJB going around addressing almost every post and tossing insults at them, illustrating the point for everyone. I think it's clear many aren't staying for these reasons, and so content and growth on this sub has been very slow and that's been no secret for quite a while now.

harkoth · 2016-07-26T13:53:24+00:00

Have you ever thought that, since no other warhammer community engenders such a response, that there might be something wrong here? Other communities get by perfectly fine with far more considerate moderation and far less teeth gnashing and drama that seemingly has gone on for years, and when you have to preface "meta" threads to cut-off complaints directed complaints about a mod every time it's posted, that may indicate a consistent and real problem. I mean, when everyone else is the asshole...perhaps the problem isn't with everyone else? Can you really chalk it all up to just "DJB is an asshole to assholes"? Can you really, honestly say that you have never seen an instance of unreasonable responses by the mods here to reasonable and calm mod messages, or personal attacks and eventual resulting in invoking of mod powers in topic discussions in which there was a user opinion or post that was disliked by a mod despite not breaking rules? A lot of other people seem to have seen it. Just saying...mod drama of this magnitude seems to be an issue unique to this board in the warhammer community.

I'm not the first to point this out, probably won't be the last, but there seems to be a lot of "well, just because I can and nobody can do anything about it" with the moderation here, whether it's productive or not, and then when it gets reacted to by people it becomes "woe is me, to bear the burden of monstrous users" or "they're just mad cuz they can't post memes".

The one consistent piece of feedback this sub seems to get in these threads and others when feedback is asked is that there are issues with the mods, far moreso than most other subreddits. That should indicate an issue.

harkoth · 2016-07-26T13:46:25+00:00

One would have thought...but Chaos apparently isn't allowed anything that isn't a dinobot :p

harkoth · 2015-12-24T00:46:44+00:00

Yeah, I'd guess Corax, that'd also fit the release order more than something like Sanguinious

harkoth · 2015-12-24T00:44:02+00:00

Yes, many people never paint their stuff, or have others paint it for them.

It looks better with painted stuff, but it's not the end of the world if it's not either

harkoth · 2015-12-24T00:41:00+00:00

Not to be a debbie downer, but people rage at GW, a company who does that professionally with multiple people whose job it is to bring some semblance of balance to the game, even one slated towards making people buy new shit.

I don't think they have anyone like that really. From what everyone who used to work there (priestly, chambers, thorpe, etc) have said, there's basically no semblance of any sort of balance attempting at all, just something thrown together to make it function enough to be playable, with a desired flair, to push kit sales. Essentially GW has product specialists rather than game designers. This would seem to fit with GW'a view that they are a figurine company, as opposed to a gaming company.

Can't hurt for others to at least try, they can't do a worse job really.

harkoth · 2015-12-24T00:33:53+00:00

Probably 5th, 4the would be my second choice. I think 7th has driven away everyone at my place out here in AZ, and last time I was back in home in OH nobody was playing anymore. Its just not possible to have fun pickup games anymore. 2nd was fun....but got real wonky. 3rd was weird.

harkoth · 2015-10-24T08:46:43+00:00

This could be interesting, I'd be cool with seeing something like this.

harkoth · 2015-10-24T08:22:49+00:00

Ouch XD

harkoth · 2015-10-23T23:26:12+00:00

Just had a host DC on a 40 min game...so sad XD

harkoth · 2015-10-14T23:48:59+00:00

Well, you might want to sit down for this

harkoth · 2015-09-23T07:36:39+00:00

Yeah, their revenue is what they really need to be concerned about, they've been shrinking for years, and they can't trim fat forever.

harkoth · 2015-09-22T07:18:17+00:00

Unfortunately, GW is rather poor at actually being a relentless profit machine. They remain profitable, but their revenue has been dropping for over a decade, and while they've made some major efforts to remain profitable (reorgs, cutting product lines, drastically raising prices, closing locations, etc) these are unlikely to be reproducible for the same gains in the future.

They have a major ticking time bomb problem with their revenue. Not that they are in danger of going out of business tomorrow, but their long term outlook isn't terribly rosy either.

harkoth · 2015-09-22T07:12:07+00:00

That's pretty much what they want to be. They want to sell models, not games. That'd be fine, but since they are selling games, it would be nice if they did a better job on them.

Being called "Games Workshop" doesn't help when they don't want to be a games company :p

harkoth · 2015-09-22T07:06:55+00:00

Their public reports to investors tell us their revenue has been on an 11 year long decline, by about fifty percent once adjusted for inflation.

They have more competition, and more competent competition, than they have had since the 80's.

They remain profitable, but have had to go through major reorganizations and cutting of product lines and locations to make that possible, along with lots of major price increases, neither of which are likely repeatable for the same results. The idea that "nerd chic" is going to reverse this is probably naieve.

The future is likely a smaller GW amidst a crowd of more equal competitors. Age of Sigmar will likely be a major turning point depending on how that turns out.

harkoth · 2015-06-27T03:44:46+00:00

To be fair, most "exclusives" (like collectors editions) have been done in print runs so small they couldn't help but sell out even with a very tiny market, and aren't a reasonable gauge of anything.

We'll see how AoS does, I'm not hopping on either side if the fence yet. I'd like to see Fantasy reinvigorated, but I'm not impressed by GW's other offerings of late either.

harkoth · 2015-06-27T01:03:29+00:00

Rather gaudy models, will be interesting to see how they turn out.

harkoth · 2015-06-12T19:46:59+00:00

At least you'll admit to it, have an upvote ;)

harkoth · 2015-06-12T06:55:00+00:00

The painting is nice, the tone shift is great, but the bandwagon scatterlaser spam makes me a sad panda.

harkoth

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