Does Kirby deserve all the hate he gets?

>Without Kirby, there's a good chance GW would have gone down like FASA, TSR, and the rest. Pre-Kirby GW was a mess, if you dispel the nostalgia.
Horseshit, pre-Kirby GW was small, but steadily growing and doing fine. It's exactly the reason he bought it out. Once in charge, he started making nothing but cuntish decisions - GW became hugely successful because of Lord of the Rings and nothing else.

Give me a quick rundown in what kirby did. I read the 40k books but have never touched the tabletop.

>Kirby is the guy most responsible for getting you in the hobby.
>Nope, it was Relic
This desu. Dawn of war I. Thank you for the nostalgia man

Kirby came up with starter sets, he's a legend.

So much this.
The guy who pushed for GW to allow relic make a game off their IP was the one who deserves every single praise that can be given for making 40k known around the world.
Without that game their marketing and price policy sucked so badly that they would not have grown to the proportions it has today.

>Sure he made a lot of bad decisions

Did he even made a good decision?

As someone who worked at GW at the time, unironically this. Dawn of War mainstreamed 40k in a way that none of the preceding games ever had. It was huge and it resulted in a huge surge of new players.

>nostalgia
Holy shit, just started DK campaign map ambience.
youtube.com/watch?v=JJLyJVfCAG0
The shit are literally pinacle of Oldhammer spirit.
The wide, deep, dark, cold, horrfick, ancient and really unfriendly space

>GW became hugely successful because of Lord of the Rings and nothing else
u wot
GW was already well established as the top dog in wargaming by 2001.

>tfw DoW was highly significant in 40K becoming as big as it is
>tfw Total Warhammer could have done the same for fantasy if they hadn't squatted the setting

It really shocks me that Fantasy now gets all this vidya love only after it's been squatted.

Hell of a lot easier to copyright Chaos Marines compared to Dwarves though.

>In this thread we share alternative facts.

/thread

Bought the company, turned it from a successful brick and morter tabletop game business known for high risk high reward, and turned it into the Disney Corporation of tabletop gaming.

GW decided that vidya competes with models, not advertises them. Because they're idiots.

So they are whoring out WFB to literally anyone willing to eat the cost themselves because it technically has no models to buy, they think its permanently divorced from AoS.

>GW decided that vidya competes with models, not advertises them. Because they're idiots.
Basically this all games do is tap into a market that was never going to buy the models in the first place. And with luck maybe >10% would have gotten into the main hobby over it, seems like a win win to me.

>nuGW is killing off every single specialist game
>nuGW is shutting down every forum for communication between customers and GW
>nuGW it totally ignoring all questions, comments and concerns voiced by their customers
>nuGW has openly stated that it doesn't care about the gaming aspect of the hobby and that most of its customers don't even play games, so let's never update rules or publish errata and FAQs
>nuGW goes for multiple editions without publishing codexes for armies and puts out codexes twice a year at best

nuGW aren't saints and I have plenty of complaints about their bullshit, but it's definitely not the same bullshit

Only thing I really dislike about GW these days besides the prices are the fact they just dropped scratchbuilt terrain and anything having to do with the hobby aspect outside of painting.

Well, and the fact that whenever I walk into the nearest GW I have to sit through a sales pitch even when I know what I walked in to get which is usually a cheap box of Empire models.

>Partially true
>True
>True
>Mhm
>He already forgot the indices money grab

>u wot
He is right, first years of LoTR it was their most successeful game.

>Basically this all games do is tap into a market that was never going to buy the models in the first place. And with luck maybe >10% would have gotten into the main hobby over it,
Sure Tom, movies aren't advertises them too, am I right?

Becoming sub-human would be am improvement for you.

Hello Kirby, are you enjoying your retirement?

GW was largish at the time, but LotR pushed the company into overdrive. In fact, this year is the first time it's profits have matched and exceeded that particular time period.

GW was the only company doing fantasy and sci-fi minis in plastic back then.
Also the only miniature gaming company with brick and mortar stores all over the world. That was already in the 90s. Way before LotR came along.

They were not just largish, they had the monopoly on non-historical wargaming.

The profits from the LotR game just enabled them to open up more stores.
That kind of backfired when the hype died down a few year later, hence the on-man stores and stuff like that.

Kickstarter is kind of the thing that opened the doors for a lot of smaller companies.
Mantic was the first serious competition GW had with plastic models.

Thanks for the (you)

That was just because of bad timeing. It was only after THQ went belly up and freed up the video game licesnse for everything and CA could start working on total Warhammer, but by that time it was tolate, the wheels of AoS was already turning. It is ironic though

8E and Primaris are considered part of GWs current redemption arc you dumb faggot

People who prefer 7E should literally be killed in real life for their stupidity and sheer shit taste, as should people who go "b-b-but I was talking about 3E" or some other bullshit, because they are indirectly implying 8E isn't an improvement over 7E when it comes to gameplay and balance when it unobjectively, factually is.

First post best post

>People who prefer 7E should literally be killed in real life for their stupidity and sheer shit taste

Be sure to kill yourself in real life too when your opinion of 8th inevitably changes and one day you realize 8th has become wildly unbalanced thanks to codex creep and the gameplay is shallow combo stacking.

That much?

This
I had built slace marines and a rhino. But i got them for like 10$ cuz i thought they were cool
But DOW got me to finally start and get interested in the hobby. Absolutely worth it.

Not really. A lot of the policies that people complain about are still going strong, despite him "leaving." Kirby was nothing but a face for the same toxic corporate bullshit that we all hate and that still runs the show.

FAQ and Errata are still woefully insufficient and don't update anywhere near frequently enough.

We still have no real forum for discussion with them. The Facebook team is its own discrete and irrelevant body, and they can easily screen what questions get replied to through streams and articles.

Prices are still creeping up WAY faster than actual rises in purchasing power, they just don't do it in annual blanket increases. The indexes were a disgusting cash grab, and that they have the temerity to charge us money for their bug fixes (Chapter Approved) is hilarious.

It's too early to tell, but balance doesn't really look like it's improved. There are still power lists that utterly devastate casual builds, and most of them are based on shit that even the slightest amount of play-testing or rational thought would have caught.

There is a difference between a big gaming company, and a big company. Gaming as a hobby is tiny compared to other industries.

yes

>We still have no real forum for discussion with them.

Use e-mail, or twitter, or Facebook. Getting a companys attention never has been easier.

primaris marine designs started in 2013 -- they gave out Jes Goodwin art prints with the limited edition rulebook

8th ed design started in 2013, same with Age of Sigmar.

Kirby started age of sigmar.

GW works many many years in advance, the books they start teasing to you are sitting in warehouses. It takes a long time to boat product around the globe. Everything "new" has been sitting in warehouses for a month before it goes up for pre-order

Kirby took a small company and then globalized it with mostly successful practices, as he continued to lead the company he eventually let his hobby get in the way of upcoming products and balance changes. He constantly micromanaged just about every team GW had and would tune points costs based on how he felt products should be.

NuGW has only made one rule book edition. How could they have skipped codices.

>"muh relic games"

eh, not really, like if you talk to GW store managers or any of the higher ups they'll flat out tell you that DoW had no measurable impact on sales or growth, remember that during DoW1 GW tracked every single purchase giving greater weight to starter sets and army boxes and they reported no spikes or large trends upwards.

40k just grew at a constant rate and like yeah dow must have had SOME impact but overall there is no correlation between video games (low effort, instant gratification) and model hobbies (high effort, long term payoff)

all in all video games have a much smaller impact than their starter sets, you sell a box to one kid who shows his friend the two armies or gives them half or convinces the friend to buy a box and swap parts and bam. The boxes spread the hobby and promote growth more than a video game or novel.

Total warhammer isn't nearly as well done as DoW1. I know someone's going to list a bunch of failings and how OP unit A was in expansion B or stehl rain. But in general DoW1 got the ambience and feel pretty damn right, so it got a huge following back in the day. Total war just hasn't done the same.

This is the final sin of Kirby, this alone should make everyone hate that faggot.

This is wrong, for the same reason that you can have comic book movie flops that are utter shit but rake in money.

It's not about a single game, it's about a franchise and it's about advertising. DoW was the first serious foray into another medium and the most important thing was that DoW was successful enough for a sequel. Go on steam, check out how many Warhammer products you can find. After you've saturated the market with products they start advertising for each other in an exponential way. You don't like the models? Oh, that's too bad, but have you seen our movie/book/comic/computer game? DoW let them reach more people, and now that there are more products to consume every consumer is both a potential buyer for every product line, and also a vector for drawing in more consumers.

yes

So due to no one really buying lotr anymore and the loss of the profit meant they had to cut the staff from stores? That's unfortunate.

Proofs faggot

How does being a worldwide phenomenon benefit me or my playing group?

No.

He deserves more.

>Use e-mail, or twitter, or Facebook. Getting a companys attention never has been easier.
Easier than when they had an official forum that the codex writers frequented?

>like if you talk to GW store managers or any of the higher ups they'll flat out tell you that DoW had no measurable impact on sales or growth,
Any source?
Because if I remember correctly under Kirby GW don't bothered with marketing researches
>Total war just hasn't done the same.
Because..?

You live in the world.

Fuck off, Tom.

>Because..?
Well for one thing, the universe is fucking dead. Sure, some of the models are still available, but only some. You can not go to a GW and get yourself any Brets at all and many other lines already have huge holes.

>Well for one thing, the universe is fucking dead.
Nope, the game dead, as we can see in TWW universe are alive and pretty well.
>Sure, some of the models are still available, but only some. You can not go to a GW and get yourself any Brets at all and many other lines already have huge holes.
Well sure, because they've killed the game, which is already cannot make TWW DoW of WHFB,

>worldwide phenomenon

>Being this delusional.

Holly fuck.

didn't we get Blood Bowl and Necromunda back, what are they killing off?

Technically yes, but holy fuck, Blood Bowl are just old rules for 60$ (it;s sort of expensive for board game).
And Necromunda are quite different from old Necromunda (you might check it Shadow of War general)

who /I would not have bought Dawn of War if I wasn't already a 40kfag/ here?

The decision to step down.

Yes.

>>nuGW has openly stated that it doesn't care about the gaming aspect of the hobby and that most of its customers don't even play games

But this is true.
Most people who buy their products never finish assembling or painting enough to even start a game.

Kirby made shitloads of cash off the back of Lord of the Rings and used it to modernise the company.

Many shitty decisions were made- deaths of bitz, specialist. Kirby and his wife ( who spearheaded many shitty IT decisions) made loads of moolah.
Much better company now he's retired.

that was under kirby moron. i think it's fairly obvious that has changed with the sheer amount of games they;ve been pumping out in the last year.

I'd say it's two different things. One can appreciate how much better 8e is from a gaming standpoint while also thinking that the lore around Primaris, and more generally, herohammer and Primarch cocksucking, is retarded.

What a load of fucking horseshit. You blatantly weren't around at the time.

He was never the savior though, user you are replying to is either a lying faggot or is trying to sound like they know about shit that happened before the tragically failed abortion attempt that brought them into the world.

Of course. Why is this a question?

Army box sets (at better discounts) were around long before Kirby, you moronic goatfucker.

Faggot complaining about codex creep in 8th..

Sorry 7th faggot, go kill yourself.

>total war didn't get the ambience of warhammer fantasy battles down.

>brick and mortar stores all over the world...90s. Way before LotR came along
GW big store push in the US came around the same time LOTR was released. They wanted to increase visibility, and built in expensive malls, etc. It was a bad idea, that cost them shit tons of money because the stores weren't making a profit. They may have said their business plan was always for the stores to simply expand their customer base, not make money, but that was either a lie or a stupid business plan.

>profits from the LotR game just enabled them to open up more stores
No, it gave them increased visibility as it brought people in who were simply interested in LOTR goods and then saw that there was more. A friend told me countless people just came in for things like the Balrog. Then bam, they suddenly know about WFB/40k. Obviously not everyone's suddenly buying up new stuff, but suddenly a lot more people become aware that table top gaming is a thing, and GW is the 1st company they know about.

>Mantic was the first serious competition GW had with plastic models.
Whats the deal with you and plastic models, GW has had plenty of competition. Their still the biggest, but other companies with plastics wasn't the only thing to scare them. Privateer Press had some good ideas and GW followed suit. Hard back, full color books (that were a little more expensive), hey look GW doesn't do softcover b/w codices any more. Individual faction starter sets, hey look discounted GW army boxes. PP with their latest relesed introduced colored plastic starter sets, hey look what GW just did with those new mini starter boxes, blue plastic ultramarines, and green plague marines. Not saying that PP is anything GW has to worry about now, but GW is hardly the super successful, cutting edge, ahead of the curve, monolith of a TTG company you think they are.

Games Workshop was already a runaway success and the alpha dragon of the miniatures games industry in the 80s. It should be pointed out that the company was doing great at the time of the management buyout, but after a decade and a half of running miniatures companies, Bryan Ansell apparently wanted a change of pace and Jackson and Livingstone hadn't had a hand in the company since they started writing the Fighting Fantasy books. So the buyout led by Kirby was no sudden coup (like so much of the drama with TSR), but simply the kind of shift in management/ownership you get in a healthy company every once in a while.

No he's simply an anti-hero.

Minority I guess, because unlike previous 40k games (Rites of War, Chaos Gate, Final Liberation, Fire Wariior) DoW literally aimed for guys who just likes good strategy games.
And that's what makes me sad while looking at modern 40k vidya

>It really shocks me that Fantasy now gets all this vidya love only after it's been squatted
Fantasy had a really good video game years ago, newfag.

>Fantasy had a really good video game years ago
Yeah, Dark Omen and Shadow of Horned Rat, Mark of Chaos was awful and WHO was fucked by EA.

Yep, and on cue the autistic shill barges on in and shits up the conversation. Someone doesn't like 8th Ed "Fuck you faggot KYS". Someone says they dont like new design of Primaris and DG "Fuck you faggot KYS". Someone says they like both 8th edition and 7th edition and they have fun playing both "Fuck you faggot KYS and your family and your pets".

Dude why you gotta shit up every 40K thread with your angsty sperg outs? People are allowed to have opinions that aren't yours and enjoy things you may not.

Sorry but was meant for You're a spergy faggot

Power listing is a side effect of the internet people can access them easier and the net is full of autists who only care about winning

Shadow war Armageddon isn't necromunda it's more like a skirmish for the full game
Real necromunda is coming back with the old gangs - pictures in latest white dwarf and he rumour sites

>Real necromunda is coming back with the old gangs
New Necromunda is going to be more board game, than skirmish wargame

the starter is going to be a board game. something you can play right out of the box without excessive scenery. there'll be a supplement book right after with the more traditional rules.

>there'll be a supplement book right after with the more traditional rules.
Just like Shadow of War, right?

you mean shadow war armageddon? i don't understand how idiots like you keep thinking it was anything more than a one off. necromunda for the main races. the supplement has already been announced fuckwit.