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serious gaylord posted:My bit that matters is the financial statement not a statement by a chairman who is clearly so divorced from reality he's getting the boot. It persists because the chairman of the company said it in an official financial thing released by the company, which is all that the vast majority of people are going to read. Most people aren't going to delve any further than "GW is/was run by a literal crazy person".
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Aug 26, 2014 20:54
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Generally, with most sane companies, when the person in charge spouts a concrete number in an official document, people tend to assume they're not making it up on the fly, yeah? I don't see how you think it's in GW's favour that he was just spouting random numbers in the annual report. Or doing it deliberately. Neither is exactly good.
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Aug 26, 2014 23:03
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serious gaylord posted:Except heres the bit that matters, directly from the Financial report and not the barmy statement. If anything, you're proving the point that everyone in this thread is trying to make; GW's higher ups have no loving idea what is even happening within the company they are running. I'm sure that contradicting financial figures on two separate official documents regarding the same financial year must look great to their investors 
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Aug 27, 2014 02:20
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GW stock is at the lowest point it's been since about May. It needs to drop another 20% to match its worst record over the last ~2.5 years. Seems pretty flat at the moment, sadly.
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Aug 27, 2014 02:31
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Seriously, I've worked in several different companies where the order of the day was "cover your rear end" and "protect your spot at all costs", and where the top people were literally shielded from the company's goings-on by a sycophantic army of yes-men who were desperate to prevent their boss from finding out just how hosed up things were in their department/division/entire company. Usually this delusion persisted right up to the point when they were finally let go or told to retire (if that ever happened, that is). Just like it has in Kirby's case. In some cases there were big sweeping changes and the company was slowly moved onto a different course (not necessarily a better one mind you, just different). In other cases people just kept going right along the same lines, with just a few token changes to let people know there was a new boss in town. My guess is that when Kirby finally departs it's going to be much more the latter than the former, because GW is too far down the rabbit hole at this point to be able to pull up and fix what's broken (short of being bought by another company, that is).
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Aug 27, 2014 03:58
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serious gaylord posted:My bit that matters is the financial statement not a statement by a chairman who is clearly so divorced from reality he's getting the boot. To be fair, spending almost £1 million on a website is still pretty ridiculous. Just not as 4x ridiculous as Kirby's horrible preamble makes it seem. Edit: If the removal of Kirby does nothing else, I hope that GW starts to re-examine their outdated and sometimes bizarre IP protection angle when it comes to marketing. Not allowing suppliers to show images of your products you want sold always stood out to me. Would have been interesting to see where GW'd be now if they swung the other way and went for more market saturation and media presence. Picture actually paying money to go to the movies and watch a 40k movie that didn't suck. Kids buying Captain Boltmore action figure to play with during his Saturday morning cartoon. Being able to grab a new starter set at the local Walmart. Of course I'm not a marketing/business guy, so for all I really know that strategy could have bankrupt them by now. thiswayliesmadness fucked around with this message at 05:40 on Aug 27, 2014 |
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Aug 27, 2014 05:26
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thiswayliesmadness posted:To be fair, spending almost £1 million on a website is still pretty ridiculous. Just not as 4x ridiculous as Kirby's horrible preamble makes it seem. That's the ironic part: even if Kirby hadn't said that stuff in the preamble about the website costing four million quid, and had said it only cost just under a million, they still spent waaaay too much money on it for what they got (namely, a website that's even more confusing and useless than before, complete with the loss of all their customer accounts & data). Quibbling about whether Kirby said "four million" or "one million" is just picking nits. quote:Edit: If the removal of Kirby does nothing else, I hope that GW starts to re-examine their outdated and sometimes bizarre IP protection angle when it comes to marketing. Not allowing suppliers to show images of your products you want sold always stood out to me. Would have been interesting to see where GW'd be now if they swung the other way and went for more market saturation and media presence. Picture actually paying money to go to the movies and watch a 40k movie that didn't suck. Kids buying Captain Boltmore action figure to play with during his Saturday morning cartoon. Being able to grab a new starter set at the local Walmart. Of course I'm not a marketing/business guy, so for all I really know that strategy could have bankrupt them by now. It's a delicate balance that has to be struck, no question. Go too wild in licensing your IP all willy-nilly, and you end up with a brand that's watered down and viewed as having been "cheapened" by being so widely available. On the other hand, go the GW route and you end up with an IP that is also worthless because you're not properly leveraging it to make it as profitable for you as possible (because you are apparently treating your "ripped off from every fantasy and sci-fi work ever made" universe like it is made from literal gold or something). Anyways I remain skeptical that Kirby's departure is going to change anything at all. His yes-men within GW are apparently all going to remain pretty solidly entrenched within the company, and so he's going to very likely have some sort of influence in some way. And even if neither of those end up being the case, I reiterate that GW is at this point likely just too far gone for Kirby's departure to have much of an impact. The damage is done, he's just bailing out before the fallout arrives.
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Aug 27, 2014 07:04
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thiswayliesmadness posted:Captain Boltmore action figure  Now with real heretic-execution action! 
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Aug 27, 2014 09:00
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Tom Kirby isn't crazy, he's forging a narrative. 
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Aug 27, 2014 15:28
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Just gonna leave this here. 
Not a viking fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Sep 3, 2014 |
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Sep 3, 2014 16:15
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Lol, a good salesman woudl just see that as an opportunity to hook a kid onto TWO systems. It's so loving true though.
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Sep 3, 2014 18:19
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I've never met someone like that, but I don't doubt for an instant that they exist.
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Sep 3, 2014 18:22
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Man, I remember meeting one of those guys and he wasn't even running an official GW outlet. This one just punches the industry's gut as a whole.
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Sep 3, 2014 18:30
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I've met too many.
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Sep 3, 2014 18:31
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That looks like it was drawn in the early 90s.
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Sep 3, 2014 19:09
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It's from the Viz, it could have been drawn any time in the last two decades and it would look like that.
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Sep 3, 2014 19:25
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Not a viking posted:Just gonna leave this here. Holy poo poo this is amazing.  wizardstick posted:It's from the Viz, it could have been drawn any time in the last two decades and it would look like that. Yep, that's one of the things that makes Viz so wonderful, they've barely improved since I first read it in the early 1990s. E: though now I think about it, it can't be recent as there are two people working at that "War Workshop". 
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Sep 3, 2014 20:35
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Ok. It's archeologist time. In order to properly date this artifact, we must use clues from it. This is clearly from the post-wood elf era. Now, based on the fact that a boxed set with chaos lord and retinue is offered, I think we're looking at something that's possibly in 3rd edition 40k, though it may be from the early 4th edition dynasty. Do we know for sure that skaven rat ogres are being purchased as a single box set here, or are they being purchased as single-figure boxes? In addition, the paint names clearly mark this as before the great paint renaming of the upper branding period. I would guess that the rules for these berserkers were developed by Andy Chambers, though it could be Jervis Johnson, based on the window displays--which, despite being satirical, imply dioramas and a large primary color corporate logo, as opposed to the later twin system logos emblazoned on eagle emblems. I would be very curious to get a closer look at some of the accessories behind the counter. I believe if we see a pin-vise, we could decisively date this work.
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Sep 3, 2014 22:33
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Haha or a quick google search reveals a message board thread about people buying the issue for the strip in 2006. Started thinking that comparing Viz and GW's history as British counter-culture institutions would be interesting but then realised that they are totally dissimilar and it would only lead to grief.
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Sep 3, 2014 23:22
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You know, it's too bad GW is too cheap to let Karen Traviss write for the Black Library. Her brand of insanity applied to an IP like Warhammer would generate glorious nerd-rage
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Sep 4, 2014 00:15
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On the contrary, Karin Traviss is someone uniquely suited to writing for something like Warhammer 40K. It's like casting Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, a perfect slam-dunk. She'd probably go on to be one of their most popular authors.
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Sep 4, 2014 01:23
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Who is Karen Traviss?
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Sep 4, 2014 01:25
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SirPhoebos posted:You know, it's too bad GW is too cheap to let Karen Traviss write for the Black Library. Her brand of insanity applied to an IP like Warhammer would generate glorious nerd-rage Gay. Space. Marines.
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Sep 4, 2014 01:42
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TheCosmicMuffet posted:Gay. Space. Marines. Exactly, why hire someone to write fluff that the deluded part of your audience will never accept, and the perspicacious part already knows is true.
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Sep 4, 2014 01:43
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Night10194 posted:Who is Karen Traviss? She's a writer who mostly does licensed tie-in stuff, namely Halo and Star Wars, and is nerd infamous for writing a bunch of Star Wars books about Hard Clones making Hard Choices and how all Jedi are lame and dumb and smell like butts or something. Basically she writes low-grade military sci-fi and loves to wax rhapsodic about soldiers soldiering and so she'd be an absolutely perfect fit for something like Warhammer 40K which is all about Hard Guardsmen/Marines making Hard Choices and how Chaos is lame and dumb and smells like butts.
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Sep 4, 2014 01:56
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JerryLee posted:Exactly, why hire someone to write fluff that the deluded part of your audience will never accept, and the perspicacious part already knows is true. Scientific revolutions are made of the grist from milling difficult ideas against the stone of social mores. And when they succeed, the enemy is forced to make a leadership check or retreat 2d6 inches. 3d6 if they have expeditious retreat. 3d6 take the highest and subtract it from the lowest if they have 'Stearn'. 4d6 take the mean average and compare it to the mode to produce a value which then results in a series of 6 sided die rolls; if you roll a 6, stop rolling, but otherwise keep a rolling total and then determine, based on the equation y=x^x + x4+ 2 how many dice to roll, where x is the value rolled on a 6 sided die. Then take the value y, and roll under it on leadership value of d6s, and, if the number of 'hits' against an enemy of T4 is greater than the total wounds remaining in the unit, hire Karen Traviss.
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Sep 4, 2014 02:03
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TheCosmicMuffet posted:Gay. Space. Marines. JerryLee posted:Exactly, why hire someone to write fluff that the deluded part of your audience will never accept, and the perspicacious part already knows is true.
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Sep 4, 2014 02:13
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Kai Tave posted:She's a writer who mostly does licensed tie-in stuff, namely Halo and Star Wars, and is nerd infamous for writing a bunch of Star Wars books about Hard Clones making Hard Choices and how all Jedi are lame and dumb and smell like butts or something. Never read any star wars books, but from your description this would actually appeal to me. Jedi are boring as poo poo and completely 1 dimensional. All I care about are manly imperial troopers in skin tight body armor fighting manly battles against panzy rear end space terrorists (rebels). Throw in a tatooine volleyball scene and it would be gold.
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Sep 4, 2014 02:42
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She also had a massive Mandalorian Fetish. But not a fetish for Mandalorians as anyone else had portrayed them, just her perfect vision for them. But yeah, she didn't like Jedi either and made them into mustache twirling villians half the time.
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Sep 4, 2014 02:47
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That sounds fantastic, but I'm sure it was executed as well as GWs heresy books
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Sep 4, 2014 03:19
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TheCosmicMuffet posted:Gay. Space. Marines. English Lit posted:The Dark Angel Which frankly holds infinitely more interest for me than the "...But half of them are ~CHAOS~!" route they went. And even still, Ian Watson's flatulence-as-station metaphor in Space Marine is fun social commentary. Also, the Chaplain eating your fallen brethren's blood and making GBS threads out a memorial marble. Everybody should read Space Marine and be sad that it was marginalized. Oldhammer had such good thoughts. They severely dumbed-down everything into pastiches of cartoon violence, and it ultimately hurt the worldbuilding. moths fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Sep 4, 2014 |
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Sep 4, 2014 03:24
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TheCosmicMuffet posted:Scientific revolutions are made of the grist from milling difficult ideas against the stone of social mores. Since this is GW and will never happen... October 11, 2015
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Sep 4, 2014 04:00
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BULBASAUR posted:Never read any star wars books, but from your description this would actually appeal to me. Jedi are boring as poo poo and completely 1 dimensional. All I care about are manly imperial troopers in skin tight body armor fighting manly battles against panzy rear end space terrorists (rebels). Basically, if you gave any shits about Star Wars' Extended Universe, almost everything written by her would send you into a seething rage. But since you don't, yeah it seems that you are the perfect audience. Also she handles criticism as well as Zoe Quinn.
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Sep 4, 2014 04:52
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SirPhoebos posted:Also she handles criticism as well as Zoe Quinn. turn left phoebos nooooo
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Sep 4, 2014 09:39
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Didn't Traviss also complain about it being unrealistic that the main Star Wars cast could survive so much for so long and proceeded to drop a goddamned moon on Chewbacca's head or was that some other hack like Stackpole?
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Sep 4, 2014 12:48
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adamantium|wang posted:Didn't Traviss also complain about it being unrealistic that the main Star Wars cast could survive so much for so long and proceeded to drop a goddamned moon on Chewbacca's head or was that some other hack like Stackpole? That was Salvatore that actually wrote that book, though to be fair it was part of a whole series by a bunch of authors. They had major plot points they were given to work into their novels that were part of an overall storyline, and Salvatore got "kill Chewie", more or less.
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Sep 4, 2014 13:01
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The Gate posted:That was Salvatore that actually wrote that book, though to be fair it was part of a whole series by a bunch of authors. They had major plot points they were given to work into their novels that were part of an overall storyline, and Salvatore got "kill Chewie", more or less. Travis worst offences came from the follow up series to that where she turned the jedi into incompetent idiots that were regularly slaughtered by Tacticool Mandalorians and she straight up killed characters that effectively 'belonged' to other authors because she didn't like them. Also she had a massive meltdown over people saying her writing was bad.
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Sep 4, 2014 13:07
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Isn't she pretty much the only Star Wars Expanded Universe author to ever get fired from the job?
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Sep 4, 2014 14:56
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I first read some star wars EU stuff in 1996. I haven't read any star wars EU stuff since 1996. Terri-bad. I'd be willing to give it one more shot though before I totally write it off, hijacking the GW is doomed thread, can anyone recommend any 'must read' EU books? I'm not 100% sure on what I read, it might have been the post-RotJ series, I definitely remember Leia orbitting Endor and freaking out about the point of the emperor's death passing through her.. or something dumb like that. Anyway, recommend me SW EU pls
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Sep 4, 2014 14:59
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Darksaber. Its the ... lightsaber is in my phone's autocorrect/complete. 
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Sep 4, 2014 15:04
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