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Post by glennwilliams on Jul 11, 2013 6:38:57 GMT -9
$1900! Good night! They have completely lost their minds. Glad I decided awhile ago to stop giving them money. The games were fine for the most part, but their prices have completely lost touch with reality. I guess their new target demographic is anyone that makes $100,000 a year. Perhaps their target market is fanboys who became day traders or barristers? In contrast, look at the Dust minis and terrain.
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Post by spaceranger42 on Jul 11, 2013 7:26:05 GMT -9
Wow, Glenn, you are not kidding about that contrast. It strikes me funny since Fantasy Flight is in bed with GW. Kev, you are essentially correct about copyright issues but with the burden of proof being on GW it is so totally is not worth their legal staffs time to pursue litigation. It would cost them more money than they would ever get from any of us In the deal with the 3D printers, I saw a lot of guys have plans pulled from sites but I am pretty sure it is because they were charging for the use of the plans. I don't think I have even played 40K since I stopped working for the company, though I still have my Dark Angels, my wife still has her Daemons. I doubt I will ever play Fantasy Battles ever again but I am keeping my Britonnians There are enough indie game rule sets, like Song of Blades, which totally meet my wargaming needs I totally remember when GW carried other stuff. I still have some of their original Lord of the Rings stuff from the 80's. 28mm heroic scale, vastly superior to the 25mm scale of their current LotR battle game scale. I honestly think that they are just as confused by market as we are by them. Insert the old addage of grabbing a tiger by the ears and all that. For years they pimped their paint brushes because they were natural fiber (really nice brushes actually) now they are all about the synthetic brushes, which I personally cannot stand for anything other than junk work. Now I want to work on some 40K-esque paper models. Damn this whole being at work thing . . . where is a pad of graph paper when I need it. Also, for those who have not looked into it, Finger and Toe models are awesome for everything but especially for war torn ruins. Dave Graffin also has some really nice ruined buildings.
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Post by aaron on Jul 11, 2013 8:08:17 GMT -9
Kevin is absolutly right in that GW can and often does enforce their copyright interest in their products and if we make something that infringes on their abulity to make money then they do have grounds to sue us. for instance if they are selling the terrain for x dollars and we make terrain that looks just like it and publicly offer it to everyone. People then stop buying GW's terrain and just use ours then GW looses money, if they can prove in a court of law that the loss of money was directly related to the terrain that we are giving away and that terrain is in direct copyright infringement then GW will probably win said case and we would have to make some kind of restitution. So if we continue with this endeavor I would suggest a re-creation that excludes GW symbols and anything that can be in direct infringement, then if they come back at us we can say hey this is just generic war gaming terrain and if it just happens to look similar to yours then oh well.
Actually spaceranger I think it is worth GW's time to pursue the copyright infringement because if they don't they could loose their copyright.
Wyvren I was born in '72 so I don't really remember D&D in '76 I was 4, but I remember Hero Quest and I remember when GW Split from TSR and how UGLY that was. TSR was the GW of the time and they forced GW to split off so they could do their own thing ... LOL how funny that it's come full circle. At fist Paper craft for me was the poor mans alternative to GW'S outrages prices but now after doing it for myself and seeing how it is an art-form that has it's own nuances I see it's value as it's own craft.
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Post by spaceranger42 on Jul 11, 2013 8:29:02 GMT -9
I miss TSR D&D, Star Frontiers, Gangbusters, Boot Hill, Gamma World. Oh I know WotC still supports a lot of that stuff, and I am really glad they republished 2nd ed core books in nice covers, but I spent a lot of my childhood with TSR products. I like Brother aaron's line of thinking, even if the ornery SOB part of my brain wants to thumb my nose at GW.
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Post by Vermin King on Jul 11, 2013 8:43:18 GMT -9
As far as the outrageous price point. A major rule of marketing is to always allow the customer to spend as much as he is willing to spend. You can always drop the price, but raising the price means you have probably made some sales at less than the maximum the folks were willing to spend.
There will always be some folks out there that have more money than sense, and have to have the latest thing as soon as it is available. GW is just catering to those folks before doing price reductions and clearance. Just maximizing profit...
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Post by aaron on Jul 11, 2013 13:38:42 GMT -9
Honestly I think GW is doing something we don't know about. when I say doing I mean they are cutting their own throats for a reason. GW is imploding and I don't think it's completely unintentional. If you look at their business model and what their mission statement is it's pretty contradictory. They want to be the premiere gaming company but they restrict sales and compete with their venders, they are trying to shut down internet sales and then they gouge their venders with high prices and ridiculous minimum purchase orders. They refuse to sell in certain countries and double charge for shipping if more than one order is made. Then there is the latest 240% price hike which now puts their products into the same financial league as GM. If they are trying to be the premier gaming company they have a very odd way of going about it. unless something isn't stirring the cool-aid. They were a really solid company for a long time and then they went public and all that changed.
Maybe it's just my conspiracy theory but this smacks of corporate leveraging and hostile take overs sort of thing. drive the company into the ground dump the stocks, then buy them all back when they are really low and then when you are in the position of power bring the company back from the brink . I think that when the corporate shenanigans are done and the dust settles you will see GW dropping prices, their main site will refer you to local venders and online stores will come back. Or I'm wrong and they are making some of the worst business decisions in the history of business and they will be a distant memory in five years.
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Post by spaceranger42 on Jul 11, 2013 14:03:51 GMT -9
Right after I left the company 70% of their US stores went to single employee operations and they had a major cut in hours of operation. There was a time when being a store manager would net you a nice bonus based on your stores profits, but now they seem to be barely getting by. My store had four employees and we still had a difficult time running all the events that corporate required us to run, paint the store items and build terrain for the tables, keep the place clean and see to customers. Now if the guy on the clock needs a pee break he needs to usher everyone out and lock the door. This strikes me as an unwuse paradigm.
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