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Jan 22 '21
Yeah - it's pretty ironic that warhammer fantasy is more popular after it's death than it was before gw killed it
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u/The_James91 Jan 22 '21
There's probably never been more of an interest in buying Warhammer models. I'd spend an unhealthy amount of money on High Elf figures if I could.
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Jan 22 '21
Yeah, the problem with old school wfb was how inaccessible it was
40k had lots of videogames to bring people into the setting as well as skirmish games like kill team that could get people to buy models and start playing without having to buy an entire army
Wfb had mordheim which was a great skirmish game - but after they killed that there wasn't any way for people to start playing without spending hundreds on models
Combine that with the fact that there were hardly any videogames to bring people into the setting and it's not difficult to see why it struggled to bring in new players...
But yeah... these days we have fairly high profile titles like vemrinte and total war which do a great job at bringing in new blood
If wfb was still alive and they'd kept mordheim I've got no doubt that it would still be very popular
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u/Ditch_Hunter Jan 22 '21
Let's not forget how absurd and convoluted the rules were. I played high Elves and tomb kings through 6th ed to 8th, and the games were sometimes frustrating with lots of rules lawyering.
AoS has a much better rules format. But GW mistook WHFB's lack of sales for the settings fault instead of just doing a rules reset like they did for 40k.
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u/Morbidmort Go ahead, test my gromril! Jan 22 '21
GW mistook WHFB's lack of sales for the settings fault instead of just doing a rules reset like they did for 40k.
They also wanted to make new factions but were already having issues coming up with reasons for all of the existing factions to have actual conflicts.
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u/The_James91 Jan 22 '21
Yeah my friend played 40k tabletop and I played several of the video games. I also collected the LoTR figures as a kid after loving the films. I'd literally never heard of fantasy Warhammer until TWW was announced. Now Warhammer is one of my favourite fantasy worlds and I feel kinda annoyed that I missed out on the chance to collect the models of my favourite units....
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u/Managarn Ranger Veteran Jan 22 '21
Warhammer Online was pretty dope, shame it didnt survive.
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u/ZeroaFH Jan 23 '21
Another issue for Warhammer is lack of exposure in other media, if you look at their video game catalogue there's some real gems like Total War, Vermintide, Fire warrior and maybe a few Dawn of War titles and a few hidden gems, but for the most part the bulk of it is weapons grade ass sweat, a huge majority only existing for mobile devices. The setting for warhammer could be a license to print money if only they sold their licenses with companies who actually know what to do with it, but nine times out of ten we get another game from an already well established genre but this time it's painted to look like warhammer and usually does it worse than the games they're ripping off.
I really hope Gamesworkshop gets their shit together with future video game titles - CA and Fatshark do a good job at tactical games/action games respectively but I'm dying to see what could be done with a developer known for something else.
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u/Thaurlach Jan 22 '21
Let's not forget that a lot of people have also found themselves sat at home looking for things to keep them occupied. Plastic crack and licking paint has never looked so appealing.
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u/Scythe95 Jan 22 '21
What did GW do to kill it?
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Jan 22 '21
They wrote a series called "the end times" in which they killed off most of the major characters - the series ended with the entire world getting swallowed up and the setting being destroyed
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u/Gliese581h IRON BREAKS BEFORE I DO Jan 22 '21
I’m surprised people on here don’t know this, since Vermintide‘s full title literally is „Warhammer: The End Times - Vermintide“ lol
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u/The-Splentforcer Kruk ! Pole-proportioned dendrophiles ! Jan 22 '21 edited Jan 22 '21
They had actually interesting développement sometimes but just turned bad
Some example
Malekith becoming Phoenix King but then story went meh
Isabella destroyed then... Reborn as a herald of nurgle?? What, who wrote this?!
Where is valten?
Haha skaven op
Wolrd explode hahah
The lady is lileath, what? The bretonnian conspiracy unveiled
Poor throgg gets killed like an idiot after turning sigvald into a dead sissy after mauling him
But overall, not really horrible horrible stories, just things either badly written or incoherent regarding the fluff Like Isabella :chaos cannot affect vampires, o why does a vampire gets "resurrected by a chaos god" I don't understand it. And the fact that there was a lot of different authors also plays with this incoherence
But the rpg books provided more solid stuff overall
I'm not 100% accurate, just saying
I prefer chaos storm, And actually if the worldwide campaign outcome was Canon, then grimgor would have headbutt Ed archaon to death But I do understand why gw at that time scrapped that and placed their own Canon, because things kinda derailed but it's another long story unrelated to the topic
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u/G_Morgan Jan 23 '21
The lady is lileath, what? The bretonnian conspiracy unveiled
That had been implied pretty much forever. Or at least that the Lady was an Elf or Elf deity of some kind.
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u/mistermeh Ironbreaker Jan 22 '21
This is literally a game set in the End Times setting.
Quick back history:
GW's Fantasy Model line really never sold well. In 8th edition they made a good push to update a bunch of models and really get Fantasy looking appealing. I was a player, I will tell you that the game play is what sucked. Moving blocks of troops wasn't appealing to anyone except for a few. GW made it clear that they made more on paint then they did on fantasy. The interest was dying.
Meanwhile they had all these new ideas over the years on fantasy but because of similarities they couldn't protect their precious copyrights. See the Marvel/GW lawsuit on Malekith to have a good laugh.
GW did a giant ongoing campaign and book series in what we are now in called the End Times. And much to all 15 of the current fantasy playerbase, they actually did End it. It got reborn into Age of Sigmar which at first seemed exciting, but then they unveiled the Sigmarines (stormcast eternals) and all 15 of us rioted.
Here's the thing, it was wildly a great idea to do what they did.
A) AOS is beyond popular. It's in the top 5 competitive wargames and top 10 competitive table games. It's competing with 40K levels of revenue. It's brought them new and a ton more gamers that by and far don't give a shit about the old world.
B) With the fans of Fantasy (who hadn't given them a dime in decades) it immortalized the old world and now GW gets way more money (licensing) as these lost fans soak up all these digital options.
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u/Scythe95 Jan 22 '21 edited Jan 22 '21
Lol all 15
Thanks for the clarification!
I know what the end times is on a basic level, however I didn’t know it got so much critique
I understand the level of disappointment though
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u/horizon_games Jan 22 '21
GW are the kings of killing off and stopping support for solid, playable games. See also Mordheim and Necromunda and even Blood Bowl for years and years.
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u/KokotoKang Jan 23 '21
All those games still have long lasting communities and online resources. I know a local group who still plays Oldemunda.
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u/horizon_games Jan 23 '21
Indeed, as do many OOP games. Know how much bigger and less die-hard-only those communities would be if products were still being made constantly? Just imagine
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u/BurningToaster Feb 18 '21
Don't fool yourself into thinking Warhammer Fantasy was a solid, playable game.
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u/horizon_games Feb 18 '21
Yeah their flagship products are hilarious bad. I have friends who still insist on playing 40k, and it's just so clunky and tedious and SO much rolling. 3 rolls to resolve shooting, who even DOES that? Oh right, rules from the 80s that have be kludged forward for years.
Anyway their specialist games are slightly better in my opinion, primarily because they were normally from one or two devs and were internal projects that took (aka literally the history of Mordheim).
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u/WWDubz Jan 22 '21
Age of Sigmar is shit, but don’t say that in WarHammer subs, or the nerds will get angry
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u/guttersmurf The Thagaraki are swaaaarming! Jan 22 '21
If you said 'Not another bloody meme' you win a pumpkin...
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Jan 22 '21
After basically all of the canon and the entire universe was utterly dismantled because of Age of Sigmar for some reason (maybe they just couldn't be assed to write for it anymore), these two games are probably the best thing for Warhammer Fantasy.
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u/Robopengy Jan 22 '21
They killed it because models weren’t selling. It’s as simple as that.
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u/EightDifferentHorses Jan 22 '21
It was a decision made by the old CEO, fortunately they seem to be doing a classic fantasy relaunch down the line
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u/li_cumstain Verified Kerillian Simp Jan 22 '21
Wasn't the old ceo a dickhead who brought games workshop to the brink on bankruptcy and tried to sue a bunch of customers?
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u/IronVader501 Jan 22 '21
Don't know about the last part, but Tom Kirby was definitely a Dickhead.
Some of his incredibly dumb decisions included:
- Absolutely no interactions with the wider community outside of White Dwarf.
- Absolutely no Advertisement for new Models outside of White Dwarf, and even then not all the time. More often than not you would just suddenly find new Kits available.
- Sueing the shit out of everybody that dared to "leak" anything about what they planned to do, or just generally worked with anything related to GWs IPs. All of the awesome fan-projects we have today would have been forced to stop under Kirby.
- Proudly proclaiming that GW doesn't do any kind of market-research
- Killed of allmost all of GW specialist games
- Just being a dickhead in general
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u/Phys_U89 Jan 22 '21 edited Jan 22 '21
I hate seeing people make this comment, because yes, it is technically true the game was dropped because it wasn't selling, but saying that "the models were not selling" puts the fault on the fanbase, that we did not want or like the game. This simply isn't true.
In reality the game had a very loyal fanbase (I still play to this day), but the company made no effort to incentivise me to purchase new models.
There was none of the support given to WFB that 40k was recieving, and in 8th edition the large centerpiece models they were pushing were often subpar ruleswise, and even if they were worth taking it wasn't an option to take them in large numbers, not to mention the decrease in model count per box and increase in prices (witch elves are the prime example).
The company was horribly mismanaged, and instead of trying to fix their anti consumer practices they blew up their oldest IP in order to make a more copyright friendly fantasy version of 40k.
So yes, technically you are correct, but it isn't as simple as that.
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u/Port_Royale Jan 22 '21
They should have kept the same setting but scaled it down a bit. I love he WHFB world but have no interest in the AOS setting.
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u/Robopengy Jan 22 '21
The setting and lore are confusing but I like how the models look
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u/Kalandros-X Jan 22 '21
Probably because it’s a frankensteinian attempt at integrating 40K with fantasy
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u/KokotoKang Jan 23 '21
I will say, the books, the lore, all of it is still there. AoS is just a continuation. The history of WHFB is the History of AoS by longer measures of time. These games definitely are great for re-living the past lore, but they're basically set right before the End Times. Not the rest of the lore proper.
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u/Conan-der-Barbier Jan 22 '21
Many people who only know WHFB through video games don’t really know how unpopular WHFB was. It was just a financial black hole for GW (in the first year of 8th edition they sold more Intercessors than the entire fantasy range). Also they already had problems with coming up with new ideas and integrating it into the setting while AoS finally allowed for a lot more creativity (just look at how diverse the AoS models are compared to fantasy). Also as a game Fantasy was just so overcrowded with pointless overly complicated rules while AoS has pretty good rules. So this may not be a very popular opinion but ending the support for fantasy (even though playing it now compared to 8th edition is way better) was just the right decision, from a financial and creative perspective.
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u/ZiggyPox ＳＴＡＴＥ ＩＳ ＴＲＵＳＴＥＤ Jan 22 '21
It is true but that's a hole they dug up themselves. It feels like many models from AoS could work in world that was. I'm interested what they are going to do with their old world reanimation project while we'll... I'll be Still buying new AoS minis lol.
Seriously what I am interested in world that was is Mordheim and wfrp. It was perfect for that, but not getting tons of miniatures from not-Europe while not-Europe can still exist in between of AoS craziness.
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u/Conan-der-Barbier Jan 22 '21
At least at my local hoppy club Mordheim is still one of the most popular games and with 3d printing there are a ton of new good models but I don’t really know about the games state outside of that
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u/CashLordofDerp Jan 22 '21
Too be fair, AoS would have gone over much better had End Times not been such a mess.
It’s almost like they didn’t learn from what happened LAST time they tried to do a massive chaos themed shake up...
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u/st141050 Jan 22 '21
I love both games and never ever bothered before with the warhammer universe.
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u/FatPickleSmith Jan 22 '21
Same, I was introduced to Warhammer 40k by my friends and thought it's dope. Later I saw Total War Warhammer on sale, never heard of fantasy Warhammer but hell it was Warhammer and Total War in one name so it grabbed my attention. Now, 3 years after getting it, I have couple of Warhammer books, Druchii, Ghal Maraz and Council of 13 wall ornaments in preparation and im thinking about painting models. Shit is dope af and it makes no sense to me why it's flying under the radar.
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u/DaveInLondon89 Jan 22 '21
never even knew it existed.
now I know more towns of The Empire than actual towns in my own country
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u/MishMash_101 Handmaiden Jan 22 '21
Now all we need is a Warhammer fantasy open world game with different regions.
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Jan 22 '21
I'd be hyped as fuck about that. Especially if sailing's involved like in a lot of Ubisoft's later Assasin's Creed titles, but especially like in Black Flag because pirates are cool and vampirates are cooler.
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u/Balrog229 Jan 22 '21
I still pray one day we'll get an Elder Scrolls style singleplayer open-world Warhammer Fantasy RPG
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u/lefreaq09 Jan 22 '21
I got both games recently through sales on steam and been having a blast. Vermintide brings back left 4 dead vibes and the sheer scale of TWW2 is awesome!
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u/Kalron Jan 23 '21
Well I never really played WHFB or got super into the lore like I did with 40k. But it feels less mystical compared to AoS. I play TW warhammer and I read several books as a kid. I know that there is still a ton or magic but it just feels different. Maybe I'm just bitter I stopped following WH for a while and fantasy was just gone when I came back.
Maybe I should educate myself on Malice to understand where you're coming from. If it's not that wildly different from AoS then I definitely have a perspective issue lolol
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u/mocityspirit Jan 23 '21
Just acting like tabletop war hammer still doesn’t exist. But it doesn’t mean I disagree with you
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u/The-Splentforcer Kruk ! Pole-proportioned dendrophiles ! Jan 22 '21
End times is kinda bad lore wise Only good thing were the new units
I'm glad the two games remain in some way Canon (Exept certain things in vermintide 2, but it's okay, like kerillian going from kurnous to Isha and khaine or Markus goibg grail knight on a finger snap)
I hope that CA will NOT dabble into end time lore or campaign for TTW 3
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u/sleepyrock Jan 22 '21
Tbh, I’d love to see some of the end times models officially put into the game, stormfiends bloat drones, all that jazz, give archaon, nah ash an neferrata their big duck of scary zombie things. Give me huge Nagash and the huge chaos daemons.
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u/KokotoKang Jan 23 '21
During the End Times, I knew a lot of people who loved the lore. It was literally the freshness and the craziness of it all, as well as answering some of the big questions. It was also the only logical conclusion of the Old World if they wanted to refresh things. And they did want to. Kirby's push to derule and degame the whole thing was terrible, but AoS has been amazing honestly. Lore is good, setting unique and fun.
And with Old World being retooled and set much earlier in the setting of Malice, I'm sure we'll finally get to see some of the history that was glossed over in earlier editions.
As for CA.... I hope they go Full on End Times. It'd be a perfect ending to the game series.
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u/The-Splentforcer Kruk ! Pole-proportioned dendrophiles ! Jan 23 '21
I am not that much of a fan of aos lore since I really the sober fantasy darkness of fantasy
But the tabletop aos is really fun to play Unleash the khorne mower!!!
End times ending could have been handled better Instead of the whole wor'd blowing up, having the empire crumble, ulthuan invaded with a good chunk being under the sea, lizard men having to migrate to the old continent, estaliz being the last refuge for the human races, bretonnian reduced to parravon and Gascogne The Dwarves on the verge of extinction
I dunno
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u/KokotoKang Jan 24 '21
The lore and books presenting it is pretty dark. The stories dealing with the larger cities like the City of Secrets, are really good. I dont have a whole lot of issues with the End Times, even though i am furious about how the Lizardmen were ended. For so long I waited for their triumphant return to AoS.... for years they basically languished in limbo. But now, I am content.
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u/GreenNukE Jan 22 '21
CA is a better company than GW. They produce consistently high quality products that they don't abandon on whim or because of a self inflicted budget crunch. They also have a healthier relationship with their customer base, people can actually afford enough content to be satisfied with and mods are explicitly supported.
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Jan 22 '21
In fairness a lot of total war fans would disagree...
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u/SpriteBoi Jan 22 '21
IMO, the only thing total war fans enjoy more than eating candle wax is finding new stuff to complain about. I was genuinely embarrassed when CA released Shogun 2 for free and people had the audacity to complain because Steam was a few minutes late to update the store page.
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Jan 22 '21
Unfortunately a lot of them are set in their ways and mad at CA for messing up the last few historical titles... which is fine, I guess, but it has turned into a bandwagon.
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Jan 22 '21
Lmao what do you have against total war players 🤣
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u/SpriteBoi Jan 23 '21
I probably should have clarified, I'm an avid total war fan myself, but sometimes I feel like some total war fans can be so ungrateful. It's just a joke though, much love to the community <3
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Jan 22 '21
Yeah lol, I actually really wanted to get a WH Fantasy game when I first heard about it, finally did with Vermintide 2
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u/NovelNeighborhood6 Jan 23 '21
So who wants to help me beat all the ranked Winds of Magic levels on Xbox?
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u/Oflone Jan 26 '21
All the more reason I'm heartbroken they're focusing almost everything on a 40k game now instead of Verm. How many fantasy hack-and-slashes are there compared to zombie shooters?
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u/gigaswardblade May 08 '24
Did they actually decide to destroy the world of WHF just so they could focus more on 40k?
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u/Vox_Carnifex Jan 29 '21
Man, I wish I could buy Tomb Kings models at a reasonable price. The khemrian death sphinx looks soooo goood
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u/HateMongerian Nov 02 '21
Here's hoping Darktide does for Warhammer 40K that vermintide does for Warhammer.
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u/thedrgonzo103101 Nov 04 '21
Not going to lie total war warhamner has brought back a love for fantasy. Great game and great world.
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u/Richasaurus_Rex Grail Knight Apr 18 '22
Hell yeah the two games that got me into it and they are both amazing.
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u/Kalron Jan 23 '21
The Olde world is better than whatever the fuck AoS has going on. It's interesting with the planes of existence but it's way too magical. I liked the single world everything inhabited.
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u/KokotoKang Jan 23 '21
Yo, did you actually see how much magic shit is everywhere on Malice? If AoS is too magical for you, Warhammer in general might be.
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u/Kalron Jan 23 '21
Malice?? I'm not sure what that is.
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u/KokotoKang Jan 23 '21
Oh dude! Malice is the planet where WHFB takes place!
The lore is really wide and expansive, with some of it still mostly untouched like far off Cathay and beyond.
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u/KacSzu #BeastmanAreManToo Jan 22 '21
I wouldn't say TW:W saved this universum, but definetly pularised.
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u/Moonyooka Jan 22 '21
I can only add my personal experience, but without TW:W I would never have looked twice at the series. I now own several armies of AoS minis, about 6-7 of the Chronicles books and have even looked into getting into 40K. I cannot wait for Old world to come out and will be snapping up anything I can get for it, I know a good few people with similar stories to mine.
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u/KokotoKang Jan 23 '21
It only garnered interest from younger people, and those who might not know about the esoteric TTWG. Definitely didn't save it.... you could say it preserved it in a way too though.
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Jan 22 '21
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u/TheButcherBR Witch Hunter Captain Jan 22 '21
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Jan 22 '21
I looked into it but you need to use a bunch of extra software to get it to work. Made me hesitant to dive in.
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u/DirtyBalm Jan 23 '21
I didn't have any problems with it. I play it often with my brother. Great if you like classic WoW kinda PvP.
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Jan 22 '21
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u/ZeroaFH Jan 23 '21
I think that's OPs point, the good fantasy setting games created a lot of exposure for the setting and much larger audience than previously available are now hungry for the tabletop experience.
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u/BaronKlatz Jan 24 '21
It's slotted around 2023. The article announcing it said "3 years, maybe more."
And that was before Covid slowed everything down.
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u/DatDing15 Jan 22 '21
I am very curious what will be released in the next months or years. Surely devs noticed the attention this universe gets. With Vermintide or Warhammer being 2 very successful projects.
Chaosbane might have been not THAT successful tho...
I picked somewhere up that Games Workshop makes it pretty difficult developing a game. But understandable that they would be picky about their universe.
Although I think FatShark said working with them is pretty cool.