Understanding the Old World setting - when did it go south for you?

[HerbertTarkel]

After 1991, 3rd Edition. When Ian Livingston, Steve Jackson and Bryan Ansell sold Games Workshop, it became something entirely different whilst wearing the same name.

It is no surprise that so many people regard 3rd edition as the high point of WHFB, because after that you have Tom Kirby, criticised for trying to squeeze every dollar out of the franchise, without the love of the previous owners for their own creation. It was under his leadership that GW started to crack down on tightening the IP, whilst previously GW had encouraged collectors to use whatever models they had.

They even encouraged using deodorant and recycling the stick!

No, wait that’s 40k

[Freddy]

They even encouraged using deodorant [...]

"An elegant weapon for a more civilized age" 

[anevilgiraffe]

In 2015 when AoS came out I was intrigued.  Here was a game where you could use fantasy armies to play games on terrain that wasn't just historical terrain with a fantasy twist. 

The rules were simple and the games were based on narrative scenarios instead of points.  I loved it!  The setting was fresh too and had a lot of places to go.  Post-apocalypse fantasy was how I

hate AoS, it isn't a world, battles aren't over this collection of cottages at a crossroads or some remote farm, it's too abstract now, has no sense of place, it's just these astral planes and the lumping together of factions oversimplifies any relationships they might have.

[Basementboy]

it's too abstract now, has no sense of place, it's just these astral planes and the lumping together of factions oversimplifies any relationships they might have.

100% agree. The setting is just to vague and broad for me to understand- that was true for WFB to an extent, but it at least had some well-established places to tie everything down- Middenheim, Altdorf, Praag, etc. The Mortal Realms just feel like a great big void to me.
But no hate to anyone who enjoys it! I guess it gives you a lot of freedom to create your own lore within the world, I just find that less appealing than the more interesting setting that was Warhammer Fantasy.

[Freddy]

hate AoS, it isn't a world, battles aren't over this collection of cottages at a crossroads or some remote farm, it's too abstract now, has no sense of place, it's just these astral planes and the lumping together of factions oversimplifies any relationships they might have.

Exactly, especially in the early days it was just super-super heroes against super-super-super heroes to save the ahsoimportant pillars of the world or some similar bullsht, but in the end not tied to a proper world it was just a weird, kaleidoscopic acid trip without any weight or feel of sympathy.

[anevilgiraffe]

yep, you need borders to fight over, passes to invade, resources to pillage... it's all just ghosts vs sigmarines for some reason.

even before WFRP, the WFB world was populated, you fought over fields and hamlets, control of that vital trade route or just straight up against an imaginable evil that wanted to kill everything, but even then the stakes felt real, it was rooted in a world with geography.

[Freddy]

even before WFRP, the WFB world was populated, you fought over fields and hamlets, control of that vital trade route or just straight up against an imaginable evil that wanted to kill everything, but even then the stakes felt real, it was rooted in a world with geography.

There are different approaches for fantasy, some people did not like it as fighting for a muddy road crossing was not fairytale enough and saw WHFBs histirocal wargame heritage as an unnecessary baggage from the past. And apparently "Warhammer Fantasy was never meant to be high fantasy" was not an acceptable answer

[anevilgiraffe]

high fantasy is just too far for me, it's too hand wavy and stuff happens. things don't happen in a vacuum, you need to feel that there is somewhere that that armour comes from, that there is somewhere that the iron to make the armour came from.

[Rick]

high fantasy is just too far for me, it's too hand wavy and stuff happens. things don't happen in a vacuum, you need to feel that there is somewhere that that armour comes from, that there is somewhere that the iron to make the armour came from.

Yes, this. At it's best, the Old World was firmly rooted in a world you could relate to - the pseudo-european flavour of the main areas was such that you could borrow what you wanted from history and use a dash of fantasy to fill in the blanks. Just like many great fantasy authors do - the world they create may be unique but it is familiar, relatable; we can imagine ourselves in that familiar (ish) world and the fantasy elements just add an extra layer.

[Skipper]

I'm not sure when it happened,  but the game went from fun to prebattle list building.  I really liked the silliness of the ORcs and Goblins.  Their unpredictability and randomness used to make me laugh.  I honestly do not remember when it changed, but what got me to sink my teeth into it was the Orc and Goblin army book where the article about orcs bringing along goblins for support was fine, but in desperate times they simply became a snack.

I played a few local tournaments that were fun back then, but eventually things got to competitive.Here is my take on the change in the scene.

FUN:
Orchestra and Goblins vs Dwarves. 1st turn
- Doom diver on a lucky roll takes out the anvil of doom on the First action, what a great start for me.
- Giant crossing a low wall tripped and fell of the board.
-next doomdiver crashed into the main goblin horde with the leader and caused so many casualties that it had to test.  It failed and the core command warband ran taking 2-3 neighboring one with it.
-Shamen cast the spell stomping foot of doom (whatever it was called) on the Iron Breaker dwarf unit and killed many of them,  then preceeded to stomp on a number of my other units causing more morale failure cascades.
- Looney hidden in two of the night goblin mobs released randomly causing more damage to the Orcs and Goblins.
- by the end of the first turn I had gone from an incredible start to one of the most fun disasters I've ever had, The Dwarven player went from almost rage quiting after the loss of the anvil to complete disbelief as the orc and Goblins self destruction in front of them.

Bad- no fun
-Having to build 80 figure massive supper mobs supported by Skarsnik in order to just stand up to the opponents supper units.  The flair of flank and maneuver just disappeared as well as the humorous silliness, and with it my interest in the game.

I do not remember when this occurred or what edition, but that change pretty much started the end of the old world for me.  When the fun died, so did my interest.

Skipper
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My

[Freddy]

high fantasy is just too far for me, it's too hand wavy and stuff happens. things don't happen in a vacuum, you need to feel that there is somewhere that that armour comes from, that there is somewhere that the iron to make the armour came from.

Exactly, the catch of high fantasy is that a good fictional world shall be coherent within itself and when everything happens because of magic, coherency usually quickly falls apart, also the wow factor in supernatural elements will get quickly inflated away. Also when everything is decided by the outcome of superheroes close combat duels, the whole army-world thing just starts to make no sense at all. (This is my biggest problem with Horus Heresy, and 40k too is constantly pushed into this direction.)

The flair of flank and maneuver just disappeared as well as the humorous silliness, and with it my interest in the game.

A really good point about maneuvering, tabletop wargames should always have a strong maneuver element, when it is all about list building and combos, the models-on-the-tabletop part simply starts to feel superflous.

[Belligerentparrot]

I do not remember when this occurred or what edition, but that change pretty much started the end of the old world for me.  When the fun died, so did my interest.

There was still the silliness in 4th edition (I loved the night goblin fanatics and the squigs) but list building definitely took priority then. Actually it wasn't even really list building in my adolescent gaming group: you spent the maximum allowed on characters, especially on finding combos between various magic items, and whoever executed their combos first won the game.

It was no surprise we abandoned miniatures for Magic the Gathering in '95

[Luigi]

Interesting questions.

To me the setting never went south. I mean the setting itself was never a problem; sure there are plenty of later additions I didn't like but I always just ignored what I disliked and used the setting as a background, an excuse even, to just motivate me to paint my dwarfs and create a unique story that would tie all my dwarf miniatures together.

When the game got discontinued, I barely noticed, I kept playing with friends and I kept painting dwarfs that might or might not have been GW models.
I appreciate the general setting, I enjoy the rules enough, and that's all I need then.

What went south, if anything ever did, was GW approach to the game. But even then, it's less the game and more me growing up or changing tastes. When TOW was announced, younger me would have been ecstatic, but I was and still am totally indifferent. And seeing the discussion around the game being, for the most part, about list building and meta chasing, really makes me appreciate "dead" editions better. 

[Rick]

"That is not dead
Which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons
Even death may die."

Sorry but I just HAD to put that in there. No game is ever 'dead' if you have the rulebook and the willingness to use it - prompted by this thread, I dug out my WFB 3rd book and I might have a go, but with Oathmark figures I think.

[AKULA]

I don't know when it happened, but when Norsca became all chaos was stupid, you have instances of Norsca all over the place, Lustria and as ships pilots in the whatever the Med is in Warhammer, all now chaos tainted and yet tolerated by these nations that otherwise are at war with chaos.

So... i've never really paid much attention to the "warhammer world" but i remember with fondness a softback A4 campaign set in Lustria, with norsemen looking to loot a temple, lobotimised slaves, Slann and bolt pistols... all the "Chaos 40k" stuff was way past my attention span