I think that the initial glow never really left. Warhammer Fantasy kept me going through the viciousness of secondary school. Years later, I was the first member of my extended family to ever attend a university, and I remember taking my army books with me as a safety blanket. After university, I actually worked at Games Workshop for a good while, and even that did not break my love for the Old World. It was one of the major constants of my life.
We all know what happened in 2015, some more than others but basically, we all know. Fuelled by egos and personal agendas, Games Workshop failed to address the self-inflicted cost problem of the Warhammer Fantasy hobby which had led to a sales fall (the 'selling less than Chaos Black' myth has been debunked but there was a dip). A crude, depressing, rushed 'End Times' was cobbled together, and one of the richest fantasy worlds of the last hundred years was replaced with... something. I always feel a bit bad about knocking Age of Sigmar because it feels like shooting fish in a barrel. In general terms though, the problem was that it was crude, bland, boring, disempowering, simplistic, unrelatable, unstructured, ill-considered, generic and frustratingly bereft of believable motivation. I could go into detail, but I'm trying to be as kind as possible here. Obviously, this was not acceptable. But the human mind has an odd way of reacting to conflict: fight, flight, freeze or appease. I was a fighter, and in all honesty, I didn't always express it very well. I have at times been belligerent to AoS converts, and that was not the right approach. Some chose flight, giving up the hobby altogether. But the freezers and appeasers formed the first true AoS zealots - having spent so much time and money, they needed to rationalize what had happened. Rather than admitting what I had to admit to myself - that we all got suckered - these people reacted by defending Games Workshop in order to justify to themselves the money they had spent. Thus, unfortunately, the relationship between AoS converts and WFB loyalists has never been pleasant or really even that civil. And at the time, GW themselves did not help matters. Both AoS converts and GW staff seemed to be eerily singing from a very similar hymn sheet: "Warhammer is boring/nobody wanted to play it/it's outdated/you just can't handle change/you're a bad person." There was a very ugly species of gloating around the more radical AoS converts, sneering about fantasy being 'dead'. It seemed to grossly offend them that others might prefer another game (again, I acknowledge that I at times may have acted unfairly to AoSists myself).
But something strange happened, and I can't tell you when for sure. I know when it was for me: about thirty minutes after reading the last bit of the End Times. Years in marketing led me to guess even then that some lame Hollywood reboot was coming: the writers didn't seem to just want to end WFB, they seemed to want to completely bury it, make it look so unappealing that nobody would miss it. I had zero hope for WFB's official survival. And right then, I decided that it would not be so: you cannot kill something that exists in the mind and the heart. I had my books and models: my Old World was not going to lie down just because of a corporate marketing decision. My friends felt the same. We began to plot the bones of what would eventually become 'Age of Rebuilding'.
On the day AoS was released, more cringeworthy and underwhelming than our worst fears had expected, our direction was validated. I remember we had a bunch of fantasy games in my apartment that day. Nothing bad happened to us, no magical GW nuke fell on us. I knew then that WFB would survive, if only in this one corner of Berkshire.
Time went by, and I became slowly aware that we weren't alone. Mutterings, voices from underground, whispers of gaming clubs and online communities who had no interest in AoS. As time went by, it became clear that Warhammer Fantasy was beloved enough that it simply didn't need official support. More astonishing still, it was actually recruiting. slowly, of course: I'd be surprised if there was one new WFB player for every hundred new AoS players. But nonetheless, recruiting. It would never be as widespread as before, that went without saying, but it wouldn't fall away as Games Workshop clearly hoped. What's more, whilst a degree of AoS kicking was involved (again, guilty), the general shape of the community was as healthy and positive as one can ever expect from a wargaming community. This actually made sense: only those who loved Warhammer Fantasy remained. The more toxic power gamers and those with no strong opinion had all drained away. That didn't mean the remainder always agreed, but it did mean that every view was passionate and sincerely held. The people who remained were not willing to passively accept that Games Workshop knew best, were aware that they were choosing a more difficult path and care enough to do so anyway. These were people who understood that if Warhammer Fantasy were to survive, supported by the community, they would have to invite more work on themselves. And everyone in the community, in some way or another, rose to that occasion. Whether it was continuing to play Fantasy, writing new stories, creating new units, running campaign weekends and tournaments, attending those same events... by the very choice to go with what they loved rather than what was easy, those people all made the effort. They were all... we were all... working not just for our hobbies but for the continuation of something which we thought was worth preserving. Importantly, we weren't waiting for Games Workshop to save us. In those early days in particular, it was clear that Games Workshop was not interested in our opinion on the matter. To understand recent news, it is important to recognize that the Warhammer Fantasy community was not on its knees crying to Games Workshop for salvation. Warhammer Armies Project, The Elector Counts, Champions of Destiny, even my own humble Age of Rebuilding project... these were all evidence that we didn't need Games Workshop and weren't expecting anything from them. Sometimes we would buy their moels. Other times we would search eBay and buy from up-coming companies who flooded to fill the void. We purchased square bases separately when they weren't included or cut them from MDF if we had to. We improvised, combined, tinkered, substituted - because astonishingly, Warhammer Fantasy had transcended its owner. It had taken on a life independent of Games Workshop.
And so the world turned and turned again. The rain fell on the just and the unjust alike. A new management took over Games Workshop. I would be remiss not to mention that this new management was not only more intelligent but also more sympathetic. They engaged in properly conceived marketing and engagement campaigns. They partially stepped back from a lunatic pricing policy with numerous good-value combination sets. The people who gave the world AoS to the world were outright hostile to the Old World: the new management much less so. WFB began to feature in 'Time-warp' articles and was referenced elsewhere. The scornful contempt was replaced with a more respectful tone. Interestingly, it seemed that some ongoing releases were devised for a dual audience: 2019's Night Goblin release only needed square bases to be near-perfect for WFB. These changes in attitude were appreciated - at least by me - because it showed that the new management had some civility which their predecessors lacked. But still, no serious analysis suggested an official comeback for WFB. Their attitude had softened, the product had tacitly taken on more appeal to the old guard, but they were still wholly committed to AoS (which I still believe to be the case).
Then came Friday, 15th November. The day that none of us saw coming. The announcement that in 3-4 years, the Warhammer Fantasy world would return (with a slightly tweaked name of Warhammer: the Old World). I have no idea what they will do with this. And neither do you. By their own admission, they are in the earliest planning stages. If I had to guess wildly with nothing to back me up, I would guess a 28mm scale game similar to 6th or 8th edition, supported by Forgeworld.
Obviously, I like everyone else am overjoyed. But before I get into that, let's look into what this is not.
There's a small, unworthy part of most WFB fans (and that includes me) which really wants this to mean that AoS is failing. To that I say simply: no. Nothing of the kind. AoS is, in my view, a bad product. But it is simple and requires little thought, which unfortunately appeals to many people. More importantly, you can sell any poor product if you're skilled at marketing. I know whereof I speak. And the new Games Workshop management is very good at marketing. AoS was seemingly designed as a vehicle for profit, and from what I can see it is achieving that. It's a cash cow. It does not come from a place of love but of ruthless financial consolidation. AoS will continue to be a cash cow for a long time - not forever, as I'll come back to later, but for a long time.
If you go onto any AoS group, you will see wild hysteria. Some of the same people who told me that I couldn't handle change four years ago now appear to be dissolving at the very suggestion of the Old World's return. The apparent fear is that Warhammer: the Old World will displace AoS. Whilst there would be a certain cruel justice to this, I would like to reassure any AoSist that this is not the case. Old World, whatever form it takes, will be a niche product more akin to Necromunda of Adeptus Titanicus - probably more popular than either, but on that sort of level. Or indeed, as Games Workshop themselves have said, like The Horus Heresy. The reason for this is twofold: firstly, they are successfully milking the AoS cash cow, so it would be silly to drop it unless they needed to. Secondly, can you imagine for a moment the shareholder meeting where they had to stand up and explain that they were canning a profitable product which they had spent half a decade talking up? It would be a glaring strategic error.
Another point we need to address is that this is not an act of generosity on the part of Games Workshop. It isn't quite correct to say 'they listened' because that puts the Warhammer Fantasy community in the position of supplicants with the noble Games Workshop swooping in to give us love again. What actually happened was that the Warhammer Fantasy community didn't go away. The new management were almost certainly savvy to the fact that throwing away a portion of paying customers wasn't a cunning plan in the first place, but the continued popularity of Fantasy makes the business case clear: these hobbyists have money. They will spend it on the hobby. Games Workshop is presumably now of the opinion that allowing third parties to have that money unopposed might not be their best plan. Simply put, why would a business refuse money when they - being the official holder of the IP - can provably make a profit simply by reviving a product which only their own ego threw away to begin with?
Now, having talked about what this is clearly not, let's move on to what it is and why I'm very happy about it.
In the first case, there is a reputational/legacy aspect. AoS is clearly a money-spinner, but that's all it is. It's a good device for pumping out product, but there's no underlying loyalty or integrity. If they dropped AoS tomorrow in favour of something else, I'm confident that in four years there would be no AoS community to speak of. They would move on to whatever came next. It's also worth noting that the more cartoony, bland aesthetic of AoS steers it into competition with multiple online games. At the moment, that's a strength. But it might not always be. Restoring Warhammer Fantasy might well be a way of ensuring that in years to come, Games Workshop is perceived by investors as having continuity and a responsible sense of its own history. When explaining how your revenue streams work, it helps to be able to say 'we've been offering this since 1983' rather than 'we dump an IP as soon as someone's ego demands it and there's a sales dip'. A company that doesn't jump about all the time is more reliable and less likely to do something stupid with an investor's money. So in that regard, the move makes sense.
There's also the fact that it never hurts to have an ace in the hole. AoS is profitable, but it's entirely soulless, relying on cashing in on certain trends. The world will turn again eventually. There's no doubt that the minute it flags Games Workshop will dump AoS in a flash and move onto whatever seems likely to have most mass appeal in the background. But if they ensure that there is a steady stream of background products creating a baseline, this shouldn't cause them too many problems.
But most of all, what I think this represents is a colossal vindication for Warhammer Fantasy fans. It almost doesn't matter what Games Workshop does. There's a chance they'll make a massive pig's ear of it. But the point is, the Old World proved to be the world that just wouldn't die. It wouldn't die to the point where Games Workshop thought they'd better get back in on the action. And that shows a level of love, dedication and engagement which is bigger than Games Workshop. Even if they flub it up, Warhammer lives. Warhammer will live. If they mess it up, I strongly suspect that they'll have another go. And looking at the way that they announced it, I believe quite confidently that it will be our Old World and not some half-baked AoS-ified version. Look at the logo - very old-school, with the more subtle colour palette of the early 2000s. The fact that they call it 'The Old World' rather than 'The World That Was' shows that they understand the audience for this forthcoming project. I'd be shocked to find any references to AoS in whatever they do. The Old World may never be as prominent as it once was, but then none of us expected it to. None of us ever expected an official acknowledgment. Games Workshop tried to drag us with them. But by staying the course and doing what we were passionate about, we dragged them.
I do have to point out they were wrong about one thing. In the mailshot, the banner image said 'The Old World will live again'. Well Games Workshop, your heart was in the right place, but I have to correct you. It won't 'live again'. It never died.
One other thing. Archaon Everchosen, you three-eyed punk. Go find some other world to pick on. Because we're not going anywhere.
