‘Warhammer: The Old World’: Is Facing It’s First Big Crisis – How To Start
Not everything is smooth sailing for The Old World. The community is buzzing, but putting together a new army is an uphill struggle.
It’s been a little over a month since Warhammer: The Old World launched. Overall, the launch went well, and a big community has sprung up, or maybe reformed, around the game. The game itself is great, and one of the best GW has done in a long while. People are hyped about the game, playing it at FLGS and trying to get events going around the world. However, at the same time, this is a dangerous time for the game, and it’s facing its first real crisis: how do you get into the game? Let’s take a look at that.
How Do I Get Into The Game?
So here is the issue the game is facing. How do you, as a new player get into this game? The fact is that the options for the Old World are pretty limited. Currently, only two of the nine armies have any support. Only a portion of those armies can be bought right now. And that’s if you can find the product that is often sold out both from GW and FLGS. There is a second wave coming, and Orcs as well, but the community will have to wait and see how easy these will be to get.
All of this is very discouraging to a new player. Trying to get into a game and finding no stock available can kill excitement for a game. Just look at Legions Imperialis. If you are a fan of one of the six armies for The Old World for which nothing announced, you don’t even know how long it will take for models to come out. This isn’t a small issue. If you want to play Empire will you be waiting a few months, or two years, for any models? It’s a big barrier to entry for newcomers.
The Players Are Using Old Stuff
If it’s so hard to get stuff, how can a lot of people be playing right now? Well, life.. uh, finds a way. But more seriously, people are using whatever models they can get their hands on. Many are dusting off and rebasing old armies from WFB. Others are buying second-hand models from around the world, often at crazy prices. Some are buying third-party models, whole others are converting AoS models. Yet other groups of players are turning to 3d printing. Maybe a majority of people are doing some combination of the above.
This is an annoying, often risky, and pricy process. It’s something that old players who had collections can do. It’s something that people who really, really, really want to get into the game can do. However, it is not something that an average person interested in the game can or will do. This is creating a pretty high barrier of entry to the game. It’s also leading to a lot of people playing armies they CAN play (often built for older editions) rather than what they WANT to play. This can lead to some skewed views on the game, and other issues.
Why Should Stores Support The Old World?
One of the issues this is army availability situation is creating is a question of why stores, or in the long run maybe GW, should support the game. Right now, I’ve seen a lot of people playing The Old World. I’ve seen a lot less people buying The Old World. This isn’t because they don’t want to. It’s because they can’t – there either isn’t stock or the product isn’t out yet. So, they are turning to other sources. But these sources don’t drive business to a store. So why, as a store, should you devote resources to supporting The Old World or having people come in if they can’t buy products from you? This is an issue I’ve seen a number of store owners dealing with and discussing. These owners want to support the new game, but can’t sell product for it.
A Question of Support
All of this is leading to a crisis for the The Old World. New players can’t get into it, and old players risk not having stores to play at. Now, look, most of the stock issues come down to production constraints. The same is true of why all the factions aren’t out. It’s just not possible, and I don’t blame GW for that. What I think it comes down to more is a question of support, or at least perceived support.
People have some legitimate questions about how much GW is going to support the game. After all, many of the players saw GW kill off their old game, WFB with the END TIMES campaign. They’ve been burned once before. So when these old school players see a lack of stock or a slow release schedule, it’s natural for some to jump to the conclusion that the game isn’t well supported. When they see that there are no The Old World events on the GW circuit this year, it makes them worried. When they read that Cathy and Kislev, which were teased at first, aren’t coming, they wonder. Rumors about people not being allowed to play The Old World in GW stores, don’t help.
So What Can Be Done?
Look, I don’t want to be alarmist. This issue isn’t going to “kill” the Old World. A lot of the players survived the death of Warhammer Fantasy and kept playing 8th Edition, so a group will always be playing The Old World. However, it could make a big difference between if The Old World is just old veteran players using their old collections or if it’s a vibrant, growing game community with a lot of new players. So what can GW do to help with this?
Well, fixing supply issues and getting all the armies out ASAP is the best thing. It’s also the least realistic. However, what they can do is do a few more open things to show their commitment to supporting the game. Some sort of roadmap for upcoming releases, as they’ve done with other games, would be a massive boost. A rough timeline for the core armies coming out (1 year? 2 years?) would help reassure a lot of people. Commitment to core faction box sets being regular stock and not one time releases would help. More events would help. All of these things would cost GW very little, but could hopefully help keep the hype alive over this hump in the road.
Let us know if you think the lack of product is hurting the game, down in the comments!
