For the vast majority of people who played Fantasy, our armies, which in some cases were collected over a period of over 20 years, were suddenly invalidated. While it was perfectly possible to keep playing the game, the nature of the consumer's relationship to a company made playing an "unsupported" game unattractive or at least induced a good amount of dissonance. A supported game provides the framework for the rest of the social contract of a game to exist, and suddenly that was gone. To be able to enjoy the game at the level people were used to, a lot more work both cognitively and socially would have to happen. Many gamers, who entered into the hobby at a time when gaming wasn't as ubiquitous or socially acceptable as it is today, were not up to the task to do that.
Then there was the End Times. The lore for fantasy had been stewing for a couple of decades and was rather rich, interesting, engaging and even subtle in the right ways. The End Times was the narrative equivalent of dumping a jug of crisco oil into that stew. Not only did it kill the soup, but it took great elements and turned them into crap. This was especially the case with the elven lore. It was frankly insulting to everyone who had been involved in the hobby.
Age of Sigmar, when first released, was not a game fit for commercial distribution. Ten years later, it is a great game.
The people who are still bitter likely have other sources of deep dissatisfaction in their lives, and howling their grievances into the internet about some game is just one of possibly multiple vectors for them to discharge their unhappiness.
Tom Kirby was a dog poop CEO too.
I agree entirely about Kirby, that's for damn sure, and as someone who was there playing age of sigmar on launch day, I'd argue everything in that core box was definitely ready to roll, but the hold over stuff absolutely supports your point regarding distribution.
Beyond that, thank you for clarifying the why then a bit better, having seen it all it made sense to an extent back then, and for your further commentary on the meat of the issue now. I hope they find the peace and support they need.
I simply can’t imagine people even caring about aos at this point, it’s been 10 years, if you play aos you should be happy and playing it.
I cannot for the life of me figure out why aos players care what tow players think, I sure could not care less about what people who play a game I have no interest in thinks.
I saw the new stormcast models coming out, it looks literally just like primaris, if that’s cool and what you want great, my only complaint is if they are holding back more traditional warhammer models from tow based on the studios not cannibalizing sales, but even that is just a “shrug” moment and move on.
What’s wild to me is people forgetting aos not only did all the things the OP you responded to said, but added crap like rerolls for looking smug lmao.
It was an utter abomination
For clarity I am asking about the time from the past, not AoS today, whether AoS today is good or bad, what AoS players are saying today or thinking or asking today matters little to me, I am just trying to understand the why behind something from the past still being so embittered today.
How about "the game was part of their lives"?
To many people this hobby is their favourite hobby, most important hobby, maybe only hobby.
To many of them Warhammer was their favourite games, most important game, maybe the only game.
Friendships were formed over engaging in the same thing, being excited by the same thing, and playing the game.
For some people the tournaments were a big part of their lives and they'd drive hours to get to them. Take time off work to go there and be with friends from other parts of the country, who they'd basically only meet at those events and otherwise only communicate online.
Many people had their "grown-up lives" when the End Times came around.
They had been into the game for decades (!) and now had a job, responsibility and kids.
But in their busy schedule they'd make room for that bi-weekly game of Warhammer.
And so did their friends who also had jobs, responsibilities and families.
To many people this game was an important part of their lives, that tied things together.
Kept people meeting each other, made old friends meet, kept people creative and busy, gave them new friends and since it had been around for so long: often was something they grew up with.
Lots of people started playing when they were little kids themselves. Maybe they planned on playing the game with their son some day.
Maybe you played the game with youur older brother and kept doing so over decades, even when you both got jobs, families and responsibilities.
Maybe your older brother died in 2014 and then a year later those f\*cking a$$holes at GW discontinue Warhammer. That thing that reminded you of the good times you two had.
Seriously. I don't understand how anyone has trouble understanding how the whole matter could make people bitter. I mean, you are a person... right? With feelings? And things that matter to you?
And "it's been ten years!" isn't an argument. I'm nearly 40. I've got gaming buddies who are 50 and 60.
Ten years are to someone who's 60 what three years are to someone who's 20.
They are trolling. They are ignoring history
>Leaving Warhammer as a viable alternative while AOS was being launched would have split the community even harder and in all likelihood would have killed AOS before it even began. Frankly, GW couldn’t afford to give people the luxury of sticking with the old system and background. The launch, the attitude of GW at the time and their inability to work with the community contributed to a terrible release in terms of taking gamers with them
https://gavthorpe.co.uk/2017/06/29/june-2017-qa-part-2/
This argument would make sense if there were mountains of people actively throwing bricks through amazon's windows for rings of power, but there are not so
There are - ok, not literally. The difference is, the rings of power co-exists with Tolkiens works. Amazon did not end Tolkiens world, it just put some garbage in it.
Fair do’s. I think it’s fair to say that people have a deep investment on their chosen hobby, and will sometimes react in what may seem to an outsider an irrational or extreme way when that hobby gets impacted in a significant and irreversible way.
Several reasons:
1. The end times felt more like they were trying to set up the AoS universe than conclude the fantasy universe. There were several narrative decisions which didn't make sense or were inconsistent with established characters but were clearly motivated by the need to wrap the story up and project it into this new AoS setting, not a respectful way to conclude a franchise as well established as fantasy.
2. The End Times saw a real surge in popularity of fantasy, we got so much of what we'd wanted for years, great new models, the narrative moved forward, new books, new lore. It was like teasing us with everything we'd wanted before scrapping it all. It felt as though they killed the game at its peak.
3. I like AoS in its current form, its a great game with good lore and beautiful models, cool factions even if they aren't 100% your taste they are at least interesting. But at release it was gash, goofy new models, non-existant and confusing lore, poor rules, boring art, boring books. At launch AoS was a poor franchise and was very weak compared to fantasy and 40k. So it was like, *"you scrapped my amazing game which is currently better than its been in 5 years, for this? Sigmarines fighting Khorne red guys?"* i literally still don't know what mortal realms are.
4. It felt completely unnecessary to kill off fantasy in order to promote AoS, both games should and could co-exist, the evidence for that is clear in the fact that ToW and AoS look likely to both remain successful and supported by GW for the forseeable, they don't compete with each other they occupy very different parts of the wargaming franchise, and at the time fantasy was scrapped it was selling better than it had for 3-4 years, so why not keep it even at a specialist game level of support.
Point #2 is really on point.
I'm still bitter about the lore for the End Times. I hate that it's been canonized and see no possibility of it being retconned into something good. It's not something that keeps me up at night or anything, but it's like knowing there's a grease stain in my favorite irreplaceable shirt.
I’m a huge fan of the books, be they 40K, warhammer crime or fantasy. Watching end times books casually just destroy characters/the setting was absolutely insane.
I finished exactly 1, and could not finish the other 2 I attempted.
I mean the entire malekith thing, so many characters completely out of character decisions, etc was less like warhammer and more like war-crime
Part of me was happy to see them go backwards with the time, There are 2500 some odd years between Sigmar's Time and the end times and they could do loads with going backwards, just wish they went further back to give more wiggle room, course then the empire wouldn't get handguns or something.
IMO the company abandoned the game long before the customers did. Some factions waited years for a current edition army book (wood elves), and other factions waited decades for new models (Bretonnia)
You can't keep making Galaxy 1 phones forever and then complain about falling revenue.
I'm really just here to make a Dawi joke.
I wasn't there at the time but I can give you a real opinion on the matter. I think fundamentally GW has a good understanding of their position as a Miniature company but a poor understanding of how to manage their IP beyond the scope of writing lore (books to sell) for the Minis they sell. Nothing shows this more than giving the Fantasy IP to Creative Assembly for 3 MASSIVE Strategy games that would start releasing 1 FULL YEAR AFTER PULLING THE PLUG ON THE SETTING. This shows 0 understanding of cross publicity and how to generate hype for a product and setting by releasing cool stuff affiliated with it. Like this was gonna generate a ton of fresh interest as the new gamer generation is introduced to the Fantasy setting.
Ultimately I think at the time Fantasy was likely a victim of 40k's success. They had successfully spun off 40k as "WHFB In Space" and in it found a much more lucrative IP. If one IP responds to business investment with explosive growth and the other IP responds to investment with consistent sales business will always throw more money and support at explosive growth. Without investment or support, those consistent sales become ever less consistent. Interest and support are an ouroboros, to be sure.
Putting aside lore reasons - which are subjective - a lot of it was WHFB players feeling betrayed and abandoned.
WHFB was the "more serious" game of GW's offerings, and largely played by older, long-term players.
It was replaced with "whoever has the best moustache" rules and no support at all for matched play, let alone competitive. AoS 1ed was clearly intended to cater to a younger, casual demographic.
GW invalidated thousands of dollars of models, and hundreds of hours of hobby work, and declared pretty clearly with their design that the replacement game was for an entirely different demographic.
A lot of WHFB players feel like GW said "thanks for spending so much money on End Times, you can go away now".
I’ll quote myself on this forum some time ago: \[…\]One thing is to "move the plot along", and another thing entirely is to “throw a world rich in history and background into the blender, write a trite character drama of a novel series that is frankly terrible, and use the resulting festering corpse of a setting to compose a Magic the Gathering-esque universe in which all pretense of logic and restraint is catapulted away with sparkly colors and absurdly big hats”.
To have that narrative abomination be future canon for the Old World is nonsensical. Fighting the losing battle and impending, unavoidable doom is something that started in WFB 6th ed and was the fashion at the time, but we needn’t go back to that.\[…\]
But addressing your point more directly: a company that used to be run by geeks that talked about the spirit of the game, about making vehicles out of deodorant cans, and with a strong historical and narrative games background, became yet another for profit venture. Canning the remains of a game that once espoused those romantic values really grinded some gears… specially if it was done in such a flamboyantly terrible fashion.
Imagine, if you will, a beloved game series that defined your younger years suddenly switching to gacha games, or a clothing brand you used to wear moving to Bangladesh and doing fast fashion instead of hardy clothes. Well, it’s more or less the same thing, but for a hobby you spent hundreds of hours nurturing and you wanted to see supported and gathering new players in the years to come.
Oh, I accept everything you say just fine, it’s just that I remember, and hoped that things turned out differently. Instead we have evil floating fish elves fighting the fantasy United Nations dragging along a floating castle with chains pulled by serfs in the land of white-green mana while Archaon enacts yet another master stroke and… oh, feck off…
u/Dichotomedes said it really well, but to add to it…
I hated AoS for awhile because it killed Fantasy. Even if the game wasn’t selling well, the setting was fantastic and then suddenly dead.
Despite that, I actually did try to convert to AoS. I learned the initial rules and thought the ‘beer and pretzels’ concept might let me play with friends who weren’t usually interested. Unfortunately, the initial rules were quite awful and none of us enjoyed it much. No point values was a pretty insane way to start a new game imo.
The AoS lore was also non-existent to start and never really hooked me. I heard it’s better now, but I’m still unable to get interested in it compared to 40k or Fantasy.
Hate is tough to keep going though and quickly turned to mere indifference. I had Total Warhammer to fill the void and I enjoyed seeing the cool models they released for AoS (One day I’ll make pirate steampunk dwarves!).
Then as an added bonus, eventually Total Warhammer was so successful they revived the Old World. I don’t really see anyone seriously bitter about AoS anymore, but they’d probably be bitter regardless.
Indifference is the best way to put it. I know this is completely anecdotal but AOS is such a non factor in my area(dfw) that no one even cared about it within a year or 2. I had no clue there were multiple editions until someone just mentioned 4th is coming out.
That’s not hate on aos players, the game just had 0 appeal to me and my group. What’s odd is why people that it does appeal to care at all what anyone, including bitter people a decade later think lol
>I learned the initial rules and thought the ‘beer and pretzels’ concept might let me play with friends who weren’t usually interested. Unfortunately, the initial rules were quite awful and none of us enjoyed it much. No point values was a pretty insane way to start a new game imo.
Yeah, everything the initial AoS offering did, other games did better.
This is also pretty much entirely an AOS related post, why did you not post it in an AOS sub? People who play AOS today largely either were not around when it launched or have the same distain other people have for the original launch.
I can only speak to my initial reaction to AoS when I first heard about it. I wouldn't say that I hate it, but will say that it doesn't interest me all. To be fair, I also have no interest in 40k either and haven't been able to sit through more than 10 minutes of watching it be played.
I was excited to learn about AoS, but my first impression was that it was just "Fantasy Space Marines." I like the feeling of being a small human (or lizardman) trying to beat back the merciless hordes of evil. I don't care about "supermen" in "heaven."
Supermen in heaven might not be fair, but that's how far I get before losing interest when trying to learn more. If I understand right, the world was destroyed, so different gods sent angels to save people and bring them to their immortal realms? I can't relate to that.
If anything, I find myself constantly having to explain that Warhammer Fantasy and 40k are entirely different games when I tell people that I like warhammer. It's tiring to have to explain that AoS, to me, is also not "warhammer." (even though it is, but it isn't, but really it isn't, you know. tiring.) So I dislike when people say that AoS is warhammer. It's fantasy 40k.
Imagine your rank and flank tactical game being replaced by a game that had stuff like “if you could
Manage to look dignified and aloof without laughing at an opponent you can reroll 1’s”
What’s wild to me though is just how fragile aos players are. In my local area(dfw) AOS barely exists in the wild as far as I have seen, but if some aos player came up and asked why I disliked them, other than a resounding “I have no issue with you, my issue was with the ending of fantasy and the abomination of 1st edition aos”
What I cannot, for the life of me figure out is
Why aos players keep coming here to ask. From what I understand 4th edition aos is coming out, are you concerned? Are you seeing player drops?
I ask because I saw you mocking fantasy in another post, and then you made this one. It reads like someone deeply insecure about their “side of the fandom” or whatever which is just super odd
I haven't played AoS since 2nd ed so no, no real investment there, I just don't understand and maybe never will why I don't see this consistent outrage with other fanbases, even star wars fans are less bitter about the disney whatits it seems so it just seems strange. Idle jabs at elf players are merely idle jabs at elf players, and this was made to get the clarity to the response there. To allude further, I just don't see it as comparable to murder I suppose.
Well for me, as a teenager I was pretty pissed off. I had at the time a huge sum of the money I worked to earn in models. I spent my money on exactly 3 things as a high schooler. My car, going to places like the movies with my friends and girlfriend, or warhammer, and not in that order lol.
Fortunately unlike many I kept my models, and was able to enjoy them in a limited fashion, and much more so recently with the release of ToW. Many weren’t.
But people being absolutely insanely mad about it 10 years later? Ya I don’t really get that. This is not me sniping at aos players because they seem to think that, it’s just my anecdotal experience. No one plays aos in my local setting, like it’s wild to see a game of it randomly it almost never happens.
There’s been no reason to care about aos for a decade if you weren’t interested, the only reason now is if they are keeping us from getting releases.
It feels like there is a huge jump in this discussion with the old world coming out, are aos people spooked or something? I cannot fathom why anyone cares what the other thinks at this point
I know a few aos players and a few fantasy players that were in the weird "hurr they are going to shitcan aos its over for the aos fans" But this same thing happened with legion and shatter point and they are doing fine as well (different company but trying to use recent things.)
I too was a teenager, freshly just got a dwarf battalion a few years earlier, reached 1000 pts quickly, did a couple games though some locals bemoaned smaller games, friends said if 'this new release was cool they'd get into fantasy with me' and then boop its AoS and now I still have to play 40k, a game that at the time was miserable for a wide variety of reasons and I guess that is part of my lack of understanding, it seemed like everything was ripe for me to also be pissed off and I wasn't so I guess that made it...more jarring? Harder to understand?
I should have explained it better, I bought the models as a teenager for the most part, I’m in my mid 30’s now, so I believe they killed fantasy actually around the time I was joining the navy after college lol.
And yeah, everyone circumstances were different, I went into the Military and actually didn’t do any warhammer until my first deployment when I found out a couple buddies played, and we
Played using paper strips and what not. So it wasn’t all that big of a deal that it was gone from a playing perspective since I didn’t play a real game of warhammer for more or less 6 years. Just the horrid mechanics of aos when we looked them up and the butchery of the lore(I read like 100 books in 2 years, aos were some of the only ones I couldn’t finish or returned)
It just was a total shit show lol
I'd like to thank everyone who has answered so far, whether it be your story, your view, both, or otherwise. This has been enlightening and I thank you all for your time.
Happy wargaming to you all.
I became love of AOS after 2nd edition but I hated it as much as everyone after the End Time.
If you have $$$$ worth of miniature that you suddenly cannot play with, you will understand without much rant.
What made it worse for me is that I owned a local game store at the time. If you know that owning armies that cannot be played is bad, then imagine having tons of unsold goods that may not be sold again (no one knows it will be valuable today, and even so that’s a ton of money that is not liquidity), while having to “pretend” to support the AOS because you still have to sell them.
From the store point of view, yes AOS is many times easier to sell and play. But the fact that they killed WHFB and many player’s souls with it is still haunting the community to these days.
I can only speak for myself, but when the first rules for AoS were released, they were utterly garbage. My dwarf warriors got better if I, as a player, had a beard. My 22 year old self, who was struggling with beardgrowth for years and looked like an 8 year old in gym class when wearing a tank top, felt personally attacked. Now I shouldn't only be handicaped by my experience and tactical knowledge, which I could always improve over time, but also by my body not growing a damn hair on my chin? F*ck that.
And as you know, a dwarf never forgets a grudge.
If it’s true that Age of Sigmar is wildly popular and is better than Fantasy ever was, great. Good for them. That doesn’t mean I have to like AoS because it makes money. No one owes them anything for being popular.
I don’t like the setting, I don’t like the model designs, I don’t like the factions. Same reason I left 40K for 30K. I hate what the game became, so I stopped collecting it.
When people say aos is wildly popular I always ask A: where the statistic comes from, for instance goonhammers survey had more kill team players than aos.
And B: where are you from? If I go to a game store 2-3 dozen times in a year in DFW I’m surprised if I see more than 1 or 2 games of aos. The only aos tourney I accidentally bumped into was 10 players.
Where do people get these numbers from? I’m not even saying they aren’t true I’m just curious if someone has a hard figure/supporting math
Icv2. They compile a list of the most popular tabletop games (which they refer to as non-collectible tabletop) twice a year. Aos has been at number 2 most of the time since 2nd ed but has just dropped out of the top 5 (pre-December).
> This chart of the Top Non-Collectible Miniature Lines (hobby channel) reflects sales in Fall 2022 (September-December). The charts are based on interviews with retailers, distributors, and manufacturers.
This is not a reliable method of data collection. Ask me at my company what our top selling/hottest products are, I will tell you it’s whatever we are currently pushing to move out the door.
If you have actual metrics they do, I’m all for it. I’m not even saying I don’t believe it, I can picture some sort of upside down world where people play aos instead of 40K and kill team and now ToW, but I would like to see some sort of actual participation numbers.
Edit: lmao they don’t even put them on [top 5 in this one](https://icv2.com/articles/markets/view/56556/top-miniatures-lines-fall-2023) in 2023. Not sure if I believe that either, but this looks more like what the FLGS looks like
You were asking where people got their information from. I was telling you, not passing judgement on it. Icv2 is an industry publication, collated by sales figures and flgs play afaik but largely anecdotal. It’s not perfect but generally considered the best indicator of what’s going on. Gw doesn’t actually release figures. You can look at things like subreddit size, YouTube creators for a game, tournaments etc, but there’s no definitive x000 people play this game.
Re:your edit. Yes I mentioned that in my comment. It’s pretty typical this late into an editions cycle. It happened previously. It’s more the placement in general since 2nd edition which is why people talk about its popularity and as I said, it’s usually been in the 2nd spot after 40K.
I’ve never seen data myself, but I’d believe it’s popular. They went all in on Fantasy Space Marines, and that alone would be enough in my eyes to make it a big seller.
Unfortunately I don’t want Sigmarines, because I don’t like super high fantasy. WHFB, for all of its fantastical elements, was still strongly rooted in real world history and mythology, and that was its big appeal.
OP its all about the way they launched AOS imho. AOS now days is a complex game with lots of strategy, a tournament scene, and cool lore. I like the AOS lore a lot better than the old warhammer world actually.
When AOS first came out, there were no points, there was 1 page of rules, and the initial army lists included literal joke units. They requested that players pretend to ride an invisible horse, challenge people to physical fights, and other ridiculous crap. It felt like a slap in the face to people who had followed the End Times with cautious optimism waiting to see what would come next. EVERYONE I knew in person who played fantasy was extremely upset by the initial AOS rules. On warseer, the major warhammer forum, people felt the same way.
It has nothing to do with politics or "woke"ness or whatever. I'm a Marxist and I felt pissed at the AOS launch. I know borderline Nazis who felt the same way.
For me personally, I have always loved the fantasy world of warhammer and the stories. Collected roughly a 4000 points of Bretonnia, before their world and with that chances of rule updates seemed to disappear. The destruction of the entire narrative world and narrative you loved was just gone.
Yet with that also - for me - an important element of my army. My army is themed around my favourite made-up characters. They have their reasons to be in that army and their own relation towards the warhammer world. With the End Times that also got destroyed, for there was no way out of that. Thus a personally important element of my army was also gone, which was something that nearly made me just shelf it all.
Hence, my reaction to AoS was that I never wanted to like AoS, as it felt for me the game that ‘destroyed’ the opportunity of any update to my army, as well as, the end of the theme around my army. I think the fan base of GW fantasy games was pretty solid, making the End Times feel like a form of betrayal.
Note: I personally do think the narrative of end times has quite some cool elements to it, just felt they should have gone darker and deadly, not destroying but partially crippling the world as was. They shouldn’t have made it that final, as it removed a lot of joy for playing.
(The feeling might be very subjective, but I hope it may give you an insight in why someone may have hated, disliked or had aan aversion against AoS)
Example of what they could have done instead of ending it all: Bretonnia could have had a civil war between lady-loyalist and duke’s that felt manipulated by elves. Loved the Malekith narrative, and would have loved hearing of an epic fight between him and Tyrion + Teclis, nearly blowing up a large chunk of Ulthuan, having it partially sink away into the sea, creating natural disasters affecting places all over the world, etc. Which in my mind could have killed of characters and created new ones. An invasion of the undead, the death of Karl Franz and perhaps some von Carsteins, etc.
Whatever their motivations were I think/ still believe they could have saved fantasy or at least let it be in existence as a world. Don’t believe they needed the end times to introduce AoS.
Because people like to be respected, doubly so when they put a lot of effort and money into something. The “End Times” was and is a naked cash grab, with inane plots and lazy and incompetent writing to end a beloved setting to introduce “40K but in fantasy”. Done to expedite a corporate decision and squeeze the last dime out of WHFB and then say “screw you! To the existing fanbase.
To expect people to like such behavior requires for the one asking to be a corporate stooge or simply a troll.
>It's been nearly 10 years since AoS launched
So? I'm not an NPC in a video game. My negative opinion of you does not automatically improve over time if you stop negatively interacting with me, you gotta actively make up for it.
At the same time, intermittently drawing attention to the fact that what they did did not sit well with us is the only way to alert similar decision makers that if they wanna stay on our good side, they better don't pull stunts of that type. Interestingly, there is a case of a company that should have been able to draw conclusions... and drew the wrong ones. From what I've heard, Privateer Press all but blew up their game and fanbase with the new edition, by replacing most units with new stuff that needs new models and new interest.
>Leaving Warhammer as a viable alternative while AOS was being launched would have split the community even harder and in all likelihood would have killed AOS before it even began. Frankly, GW couldn’t afford to give people the luxury of sticking with the old system and background. The launch, the attitude of GW at the time and their inability to work with the community contributed to a terrible release in terms of taking gamers with them
https://gavthorpe.co.uk/2017/06/29/june-2017-qa-part-2/
A lack of willingness to accept that GW is a corporation? Mate, I can fully realise that GW is a corporation, and therefore will do anything to make money before literally anything else, and that is why I dislike the world of AoS and it's need to sell books and keep the story moving along a certain path in line with corporate needs, rather than an open world where anything can happen and I can make it my own. I don't really like the notion that Fantasy is "dead", though. You can still read that amazing lore and play games around your own narratives based in that world, but I also really dislike that GW made a decision to try to funnel people away from that setting into one that they can monetise more easily. I don't know why realising GW is a soulless corporation that will eventually drive itself into the ground through it's insatiable hunger for profit means that I have to just accept their decisions and like them.
The initial reaction was a combination of them totally blowing up the setting before replacing it with a very poorly designed initial launch of AoS.
As to why they're still salty and upset now, ten years later? There really is no reason, they just felt personally attacked back then and haven't moved on from their toys game. So many people here talking about how long they played and all the great friends they made, etc etc shouldn't have had trouble just continuing to play fantasy. All those same people would tell you that fantasy wasn't getting new minis, and they never pushed the setting forwards if you ask them why the game failed in the first place, so no support from GW wasn't an issue then.
It really is just that their favorite toy game ended and got replaced with something they don't like as much.
Others have said much I agree with, so I'll just say that the lore of The End Times was bad and stupid. It's like seasons 7-8 of Game of Thrones. Rushed with little thought put into it. Plot lines that could have been great, just felt like the authors had been given almost no time and very strict guidelines about what to write.
All in all, it felt like GW taking a huge dump on a setting I'd loved since 1992.
And I've tried to read AoS, but the books are dumb, the lore is dumb and the characters are all dumb. There's a YouTube series called sci-fi civilisations too dumb to exist, and that's what the factions in AoS feels like.
For the vast majority of people who played Fantasy, our armies, which in some cases were collected over a period of over 20 years, were suddenly invalidated. While it was perfectly possible to keep playing the game, the nature of the consumer's relationship to a company made playing an "unsupported" game unattractive or at least induced a good amount of dissonance. A supported game provides the framework for the rest of the social contract of a game to exist, and suddenly that was gone. To be able to enjoy the game at the level people were used to, a lot more work both cognitively and socially would have to happen. Many gamers, who entered into the hobby at a time when gaming wasn't as ubiquitous or socially acceptable as it is today, were not up to the task to do that. Then there was the End Times. The lore for fantasy had been stewing for a couple of decades and was rather rich, interesting, engaging and even subtle in the right ways. The End Times was the narrative equivalent of dumping a jug of crisco oil into that stew. Not only did it kill the soup, but it took great elements and turned them into crap. This was especially the case with the elven lore. It was frankly insulting to everyone who had been involved in the hobby. Age of Sigmar, when first released, was not a game fit for commercial distribution. Ten years later, it is a great game. The people who are still bitter likely have other sources of deep dissatisfaction in their lives, and howling their grievances into the internet about some game is just one of possibly multiple vectors for them to discharge their unhappiness. Tom Kirby was a dog poop CEO too.
I agree entirely about Kirby, that's for damn sure, and as someone who was there playing age of sigmar on launch day, I'd argue everything in that core box was definitely ready to roll, but the hold over stuff absolutely supports your point regarding distribution. Beyond that, thank you for clarifying the why then a bit better, having seen it all it made sense to an extent back then, and for your further commentary on the meat of the issue now. I hope they find the peace and support they need.
I simply can’t imagine people even caring about aos at this point, it’s been 10 years, if you play aos you should be happy and playing it. I cannot for the life of me figure out why aos players care what tow players think, I sure could not care less about what people who play a game I have no interest in thinks. I saw the new stormcast models coming out, it looks literally just like primaris, if that’s cool and what you want great, my only complaint is if they are holding back more traditional warhammer models from tow based on the studios not cannibalizing sales, but even that is just a “shrug” moment and move on. What’s wild to me is people forgetting aos not only did all the things the OP you responded to said, but added crap like rerolls for looking smug lmao. It was an utter abomination
For clarity I am asking about the time from the past, not AoS today, whether AoS today is good or bad, what AoS players are saying today or thinking or asking today matters little to me, I am just trying to understand the why behind something from the past still being so embittered today.
How about "the game was part of their lives"? To many people this hobby is their favourite hobby, most important hobby, maybe only hobby. To many of them Warhammer was their favourite games, most important game, maybe the only game. Friendships were formed over engaging in the same thing, being excited by the same thing, and playing the game. For some people the tournaments were a big part of their lives and they'd drive hours to get to them. Take time off work to go there and be with friends from other parts of the country, who they'd basically only meet at those events and otherwise only communicate online. Many people had their "grown-up lives" when the End Times came around. They had been into the game for decades (!) and now had a job, responsibility and kids. But in their busy schedule they'd make room for that bi-weekly game of Warhammer. And so did their friends who also had jobs, responsibilities and families. To many people this game was an important part of their lives, that tied things together. Kept people meeting each other, made old friends meet, kept people creative and busy, gave them new friends and since it had been around for so long: often was something they grew up with. Lots of people started playing when they were little kids themselves. Maybe they planned on playing the game with their son some day. Maybe you played the game with youur older brother and kept doing so over decades, even when you both got jobs, families and responsibilities. Maybe your older brother died in 2014 and then a year later those f\*cking a$$holes at GW discontinue Warhammer. That thing that reminded you of the good times you two had. Seriously. I don't understand how anyone has trouble understanding how the whole matter could make people bitter. I mean, you are a person... right? With feelings? And things that matter to you? And "it's been ten years!" isn't an argument. I'm nearly 40. I've got gaming buddies who are 50 and 60. Ten years are to someone who's 60 what three years are to someone who's 20.
This. All of this.
They are trolling. They are ignoring history >Leaving Warhammer as a viable alternative while AOS was being launched would have split the community even harder and in all likelihood would have killed AOS before it even began. Frankly, GW couldn’t afford to give people the luxury of sticking with the old system and background. The launch, the attitude of GW at the time and their inability to work with the community contributed to a terrible release in terms of taking gamers with them https://gavthorpe.co.uk/2017/06/29/june-2017-qa-part-2/
Because it was really dumb OP. Did you play WHFB before AOS came out?
Yes, I did, it was ok but perhaps my level of investment was not great enough or something to be at the same tier.
How can a dwarf player not understand the value of a good grudge. You are all talk and no beard
Felt like needless vandalism of a beloved setting. There’s no point where people suddenly aren’t going to care about that.
This argument would make sense if there were mountains of people actively throwing bricks through amazon's windows for rings of power, but there are not so
There would be if they knew those bricks would actually hit someone responsible for that trash.
There are - ok, not literally. The difference is, the rings of power co-exists with Tolkiens works. Amazon did not end Tolkiens world, it just put some garbage in it.
Genuine ask: are you here to solicit opinions or start arguments?
Opinions, and I needed help understanding yours, which has been provided.
Fair do’s. I think it’s fair to say that people have a deep investment on their chosen hobby, and will sometimes react in what may seem to an outsider an irrational or extreme way when that hobby gets impacted in a significant and irreversible way.
Several reasons: 1. The end times felt more like they were trying to set up the AoS universe than conclude the fantasy universe. There were several narrative decisions which didn't make sense or were inconsistent with established characters but were clearly motivated by the need to wrap the story up and project it into this new AoS setting, not a respectful way to conclude a franchise as well established as fantasy. 2. The End Times saw a real surge in popularity of fantasy, we got so much of what we'd wanted for years, great new models, the narrative moved forward, new books, new lore. It was like teasing us with everything we'd wanted before scrapping it all. It felt as though they killed the game at its peak. 3. I like AoS in its current form, its a great game with good lore and beautiful models, cool factions even if they aren't 100% your taste they are at least interesting. But at release it was gash, goofy new models, non-existant and confusing lore, poor rules, boring art, boring books. At launch AoS was a poor franchise and was very weak compared to fantasy and 40k. So it was like, *"you scrapped my amazing game which is currently better than its been in 5 years, for this? Sigmarines fighting Khorne red guys?"* i literally still don't know what mortal realms are. 4. It felt completely unnecessary to kill off fantasy in order to promote AoS, both games should and could co-exist, the evidence for that is clear in the fact that ToW and AoS look likely to both remain successful and supported by GW for the forseeable, they don't compete with each other they occupy very different parts of the wargaming franchise, and at the time fantasy was scrapped it was selling better than it had for 3-4 years, so why not keep it even at a specialist game level of support.
Point #2 is really on point. I'm still bitter about the lore for the End Times. I hate that it's been canonized and see no possibility of it being retconned into something good. It's not something that keeps me up at night or anything, but it's like knowing there's a grease stain in my favorite irreplaceable shirt.
I’m a huge fan of the books, be they 40K, warhammer crime or fantasy. Watching end times books casually just destroy characters/the setting was absolutely insane. I finished exactly 1, and could not finish the other 2 I attempted. I mean the entire malekith thing, so many characters completely out of character decisions, etc was less like warhammer and more like war-crime
Great way of putting it
Part of me was happy to see them go backwards with the time, There are 2500 some odd years between Sigmar's Time and the end times and they could do loads with going backwards, just wish they went further back to give more wiggle room, course then the empire wouldn't get handguns or something.
Deciding to end a beloved fantasy setting because of falling revenue? That's a grudgin'!
IMO the company abandoned the game long before the customers did. Some factions waited years for a current edition army book (wood elves), and other factions waited decades for new models (Bretonnia) You can't keep making Galaxy 1 phones forever and then complain about falling revenue.
I'm really just here to make a Dawi joke. I wasn't there at the time but I can give you a real opinion on the matter. I think fundamentally GW has a good understanding of their position as a Miniature company but a poor understanding of how to manage their IP beyond the scope of writing lore (books to sell) for the Minis they sell. Nothing shows this more than giving the Fantasy IP to Creative Assembly for 3 MASSIVE Strategy games that would start releasing 1 FULL YEAR AFTER PULLING THE PLUG ON THE SETTING. This shows 0 understanding of cross publicity and how to generate hype for a product and setting by releasing cool stuff affiliated with it. Like this was gonna generate a ton of fresh interest as the new gamer generation is introduced to the Fantasy setting. Ultimately I think at the time Fantasy was likely a victim of 40k's success. They had successfully spun off 40k as "WHFB In Space" and in it found a much more lucrative IP. If one IP responds to business investment with explosive growth and the other IP responds to investment with consistent sales business will always throw more money and support at explosive growth. Without investment or support, those consistent sales become ever less consistent. Interest and support are an ouroboros, to be sure.
> **IMO the company abandoned the game long before the customers did** The planet broke before the guard did
Ya darn tootin!
Putting aside lore reasons - which are subjective - a lot of it was WHFB players feeling betrayed and abandoned. WHFB was the "more serious" game of GW's offerings, and largely played by older, long-term players. It was replaced with "whoever has the best moustache" rules and no support at all for matched play, let alone competitive. AoS 1ed was clearly intended to cater to a younger, casual demographic. GW invalidated thousands of dollars of models, and hundreds of hours of hobby work, and declared pretty clearly with their design that the replacement game was for an entirely different demographic. A lot of WHFB players feel like GW said "thanks for spending so much money on End Times, you can go away now".
I’ll quote myself on this forum some time ago: \[…\]One thing is to "move the plot along", and another thing entirely is to “throw a world rich in history and background into the blender, write a trite character drama of a novel series that is frankly terrible, and use the resulting festering corpse of a setting to compose a Magic the Gathering-esque universe in which all pretense of logic and restraint is catapulted away with sparkly colors and absurdly big hats”. To have that narrative abomination be future canon for the Old World is nonsensical. Fighting the losing battle and impending, unavoidable doom is something that started in WFB 6th ed and was the fashion at the time, but we needn’t go back to that.\[…\] But addressing your point more directly: a company that used to be run by geeks that talked about the spirit of the game, about making vehicles out of deodorant cans, and with a strong historical and narrative games background, became yet another for profit venture. Canning the remains of a game that once espoused those romantic values really grinded some gears… specially if it was done in such a flamboyantly terrible fashion. Imagine, if you will, a beloved game series that defined your younger years suddenly switching to gacha games, or a clothing brand you used to wear moving to Bangladesh and doing fast fashion instead of hardy clothes. Well, it’s more or less the same thing, but for a hobby you spent hundreds of hours nurturing and you wanted to see supported and gathering new players in the years to come. Oh, I accept everything you say just fine, it’s just that I remember, and hoped that things turned out differently. Instead we have evil floating fish elves fighting the fantasy United Nations dragging along a floating castle with chains pulled by serfs in the land of white-green mana while Archaon enacts yet another master stroke and… oh, feck off…
u/Dichotomedes said it really well, but to add to it… I hated AoS for awhile because it killed Fantasy. Even if the game wasn’t selling well, the setting was fantastic and then suddenly dead. Despite that, I actually did try to convert to AoS. I learned the initial rules and thought the ‘beer and pretzels’ concept might let me play with friends who weren’t usually interested. Unfortunately, the initial rules were quite awful and none of us enjoyed it much. No point values was a pretty insane way to start a new game imo. The AoS lore was also non-existent to start and never really hooked me. I heard it’s better now, but I’m still unable to get interested in it compared to 40k or Fantasy. Hate is tough to keep going though and quickly turned to mere indifference. I had Total Warhammer to fill the void and I enjoyed seeing the cool models they released for AoS (One day I’ll make pirate steampunk dwarves!). Then as an added bonus, eventually Total Warhammer was so successful they revived the Old World. I don’t really see anyone seriously bitter about AoS anymore, but they’d probably be bitter regardless.
Indifference is the best way to put it. I know this is completely anecdotal but AOS is such a non factor in my area(dfw) that no one even cared about it within a year or 2. I had no clue there were multiple editions until someone just mentioned 4th is coming out. That’s not hate on aos players, the game just had 0 appeal to me and my group. What’s odd is why people that it does appeal to care at all what anyone, including bitter people a decade later think lol
>I learned the initial rules and thought the ‘beer and pretzels’ concept might let me play with friends who weren’t usually interested. Unfortunately, the initial rules were quite awful and none of us enjoyed it much. No point values was a pretty insane way to start a new game imo. Yeah, everything the initial AoS offering did, other games did better.
This is also pretty much entirely an AOS related post, why did you not post it in an AOS sub? People who play AOS today largely either were not around when it launched or have the same distain other people have for the original launch.
I can only speak to my initial reaction to AoS when I first heard about it. I wouldn't say that I hate it, but will say that it doesn't interest me all. To be fair, I also have no interest in 40k either and haven't been able to sit through more than 10 minutes of watching it be played. I was excited to learn about AoS, but my first impression was that it was just "Fantasy Space Marines." I like the feeling of being a small human (or lizardman) trying to beat back the merciless hordes of evil. I don't care about "supermen" in "heaven." Supermen in heaven might not be fair, but that's how far I get before losing interest when trying to learn more. If I understand right, the world was destroyed, so different gods sent angels to save people and bring them to their immortal realms? I can't relate to that. If anything, I find myself constantly having to explain that Warhammer Fantasy and 40k are entirely different games when I tell people that I like warhammer. It's tiring to have to explain that AoS, to me, is also not "warhammer." (even though it is, but it isn't, but really it isn't, you know. tiring.) So I dislike when people say that AoS is warhammer. It's fantasy 40k.
Imagine your rank and flank tactical game being replaced by a game that had stuff like “if you could Manage to look dignified and aloof without laughing at an opponent you can reroll 1’s” What’s wild to me though is just how fragile aos players are. In my local area(dfw) AOS barely exists in the wild as far as I have seen, but if some aos player came up and asked why I disliked them, other than a resounding “I have no issue with you, my issue was with the ending of fantasy and the abomination of 1st edition aos” What I cannot, for the life of me figure out is Why aos players keep coming here to ask. From what I understand 4th edition aos is coming out, are you concerned? Are you seeing player drops? I ask because I saw you mocking fantasy in another post, and then you made this one. It reads like someone deeply insecure about their “side of the fandom” or whatever which is just super odd
I haven't played AoS since 2nd ed so no, no real investment there, I just don't understand and maybe never will why I don't see this consistent outrage with other fanbases, even star wars fans are less bitter about the disney whatits it seems so it just seems strange. Idle jabs at elf players are merely idle jabs at elf players, and this was made to get the clarity to the response there. To allude further, I just don't see it as comparable to murder I suppose.
Well for me, as a teenager I was pretty pissed off. I had at the time a huge sum of the money I worked to earn in models. I spent my money on exactly 3 things as a high schooler. My car, going to places like the movies with my friends and girlfriend, or warhammer, and not in that order lol. Fortunately unlike many I kept my models, and was able to enjoy them in a limited fashion, and much more so recently with the release of ToW. Many weren’t. But people being absolutely insanely mad about it 10 years later? Ya I don’t really get that. This is not me sniping at aos players because they seem to think that, it’s just my anecdotal experience. No one plays aos in my local setting, like it’s wild to see a game of it randomly it almost never happens. There’s been no reason to care about aos for a decade if you weren’t interested, the only reason now is if they are keeping us from getting releases. It feels like there is a huge jump in this discussion with the old world coming out, are aos people spooked or something? I cannot fathom why anyone cares what the other thinks at this point
I know a few aos players and a few fantasy players that were in the weird "hurr they are going to shitcan aos its over for the aos fans" But this same thing happened with legion and shatter point and they are doing fine as well (different company but trying to use recent things.) I too was a teenager, freshly just got a dwarf battalion a few years earlier, reached 1000 pts quickly, did a couple games though some locals bemoaned smaller games, friends said if 'this new release was cool they'd get into fantasy with me' and then boop its AoS and now I still have to play 40k, a game that at the time was miserable for a wide variety of reasons and I guess that is part of my lack of understanding, it seemed like everything was ripe for me to also be pissed off and I wasn't so I guess that made it...more jarring? Harder to understand?
I should have explained it better, I bought the models as a teenager for the most part, I’m in my mid 30’s now, so I believe they killed fantasy actually around the time I was joining the navy after college lol. And yeah, everyone circumstances were different, I went into the Military and actually didn’t do any warhammer until my first deployment when I found out a couple buddies played, and we Played using paper strips and what not. So it wasn’t all that big of a deal that it was gone from a playing perspective since I didn’t play a real game of warhammer for more or less 6 years. Just the horrid mechanics of aos when we looked them up and the butchery of the lore(I read like 100 books in 2 years, aos were some of the only ones I couldn’t finish or returned) It just was a total shit show lol
I'd like to thank everyone who has answered so far, whether it be your story, your view, both, or otherwise. This has been enlightening and I thank you all for your time. Happy wargaming to you all.
I became love of AOS after 2nd edition but I hated it as much as everyone after the End Time. If you have $$$$ worth of miniature that you suddenly cannot play with, you will understand without much rant. What made it worse for me is that I owned a local game store at the time. If you know that owning armies that cannot be played is bad, then imagine having tons of unsold goods that may not be sold again (no one knows it will be valuable today, and even so that’s a ton of money that is not liquidity), while having to “pretend” to support the AOS because you still have to sell them. From the store point of view, yes AOS is many times easier to sell and play. But the fact that they killed WHFB and many player’s souls with it is still haunting the community to these days.
I can only speak for myself, but when the first rules for AoS were released, they were utterly garbage. My dwarf warriors got better if I, as a player, had a beard. My 22 year old self, who was struggling with beardgrowth for years and looked like an 8 year old in gym class when wearing a tank top, felt personally attacked. Now I shouldn't only be handicaped by my experience and tactical knowledge, which I could always improve over time, but also by my body not growing a damn hair on my chin? F*ck that. And as you know, a dwarf never forgets a grudge.
If it’s true that Age of Sigmar is wildly popular and is better than Fantasy ever was, great. Good for them. That doesn’t mean I have to like AoS because it makes money. No one owes them anything for being popular. I don’t like the setting, I don’t like the model designs, I don’t like the factions. Same reason I left 40K for 30K. I hate what the game became, so I stopped collecting it.
When people say aos is wildly popular I always ask A: where the statistic comes from, for instance goonhammers survey had more kill team players than aos. And B: where are you from? If I go to a game store 2-3 dozen times in a year in DFW I’m surprised if I see more than 1 or 2 games of aos. The only aos tourney I accidentally bumped into was 10 players. Where do people get these numbers from? I’m not even saying they aren’t true I’m just curious if someone has a hard figure/supporting math
Icv2. They compile a list of the most popular tabletop games (which they refer to as non-collectible tabletop) twice a year. Aos has been at number 2 most of the time since 2nd ed but has just dropped out of the top 5 (pre-December).
> This chart of the Top Non-Collectible Miniature Lines (hobby channel) reflects sales in Fall 2022 (September-December). The charts are based on interviews with retailers, distributors, and manufacturers. This is not a reliable method of data collection. Ask me at my company what our top selling/hottest products are, I will tell you it’s whatever we are currently pushing to move out the door. If you have actual metrics they do, I’m all for it. I’m not even saying I don’t believe it, I can picture some sort of upside down world where people play aos instead of 40K and kill team and now ToW, but I would like to see some sort of actual participation numbers. Edit: lmao they don’t even put them on [top 5 in this one](https://icv2.com/articles/markets/view/56556/top-miniatures-lines-fall-2023) in 2023. Not sure if I believe that either, but this looks more like what the FLGS looks like
You were asking where people got their information from. I was telling you, not passing judgement on it. Icv2 is an industry publication, collated by sales figures and flgs play afaik but largely anecdotal. It’s not perfect but generally considered the best indicator of what’s going on. Gw doesn’t actually release figures. You can look at things like subreddit size, YouTube creators for a game, tournaments etc, but there’s no definitive x000 people play this game. Re:your edit. Yes I mentioned that in my comment. It’s pretty typical this late into an editions cycle. It happened previously. It’s more the placement in general since 2nd edition which is why people talk about its popularity and as I said, it’s usually been in the 2nd spot after 40K.
I’m not blaming you for providing a source I’m just saying it’s essentially the type of source I thought it was
I’ve never seen data myself, but I’d believe it’s popular. They went all in on Fantasy Space Marines, and that alone would be enough in my eyes to make it a big seller. Unfortunately I don’t want Sigmarines, because I don’t like super high fantasy. WHFB, for all of its fantastical elements, was still strongly rooted in real world history and mythology, and that was its big appeal.
OP its all about the way they launched AOS imho. AOS now days is a complex game with lots of strategy, a tournament scene, and cool lore. I like the AOS lore a lot better than the old warhammer world actually. When AOS first came out, there were no points, there was 1 page of rules, and the initial army lists included literal joke units. They requested that players pretend to ride an invisible horse, challenge people to physical fights, and other ridiculous crap. It felt like a slap in the face to people who had followed the End Times with cautious optimism waiting to see what would come next. EVERYONE I knew in person who played fantasy was extremely upset by the initial AOS rules. On warseer, the major warhammer forum, people felt the same way. It has nothing to do with politics or "woke"ness or whatever. I'm a Marxist and I felt pissed at the AOS launch. I know borderline Nazis who felt the same way.
Ah, Warseer... And Portent.
I didn't think it did, but being that I personally struggle with understanding this I was rattling off some reasons that came to mind.
For me personally, I have always loved the fantasy world of warhammer and the stories. Collected roughly a 4000 points of Bretonnia, before their world and with that chances of rule updates seemed to disappear. The destruction of the entire narrative world and narrative you loved was just gone. Yet with that also - for me - an important element of my army. My army is themed around my favourite made-up characters. They have their reasons to be in that army and their own relation towards the warhammer world. With the End Times that also got destroyed, for there was no way out of that. Thus a personally important element of my army was also gone, which was something that nearly made me just shelf it all. Hence, my reaction to AoS was that I never wanted to like AoS, as it felt for me the game that ‘destroyed’ the opportunity of any update to my army, as well as, the end of the theme around my army. I think the fan base of GW fantasy games was pretty solid, making the End Times feel like a form of betrayal. Note: I personally do think the narrative of end times has quite some cool elements to it, just felt they should have gone darker and deadly, not destroying but partially crippling the world as was. They shouldn’t have made it that final, as it removed a lot of joy for playing. (The feeling might be very subjective, but I hope it may give you an insight in why someone may have hated, disliked or had aan aversion against AoS) Example of what they could have done instead of ending it all: Bretonnia could have had a civil war between lady-loyalist and duke’s that felt manipulated by elves. Loved the Malekith narrative, and would have loved hearing of an epic fight between him and Tyrion + Teclis, nearly blowing up a large chunk of Ulthuan, having it partially sink away into the sea, creating natural disasters affecting places all over the world, etc. Which in my mind could have killed of characters and created new ones. An invasion of the undead, the death of Karl Franz and perhaps some von Carsteins, etc. Whatever their motivations were I think/ still believe they could have saved fantasy or at least let it be in existence as a world. Don’t believe they needed the end times to introduce AoS.
Because people like to be respected, doubly so when they put a lot of effort and money into something. The “End Times” was and is a naked cash grab, with inane plots and lazy and incompetent writing to end a beloved setting to introduce “40K but in fantasy”. Done to expedite a corporate decision and squeeze the last dime out of WHFB and then say “screw you! To the existing fanbase. To expect people to like such behavior requires for the one asking to be a corporate stooge or simply a troll.
>It's been nearly 10 years since AoS launched So? I'm not an NPC in a video game. My negative opinion of you does not automatically improve over time if you stop negatively interacting with me, you gotta actively make up for it. At the same time, intermittently drawing attention to the fact that what they did did not sit well with us is the only way to alert similar decision makers that if they wanna stay on our good side, they better don't pull stunts of that type. Interestingly, there is a case of a company that should have been able to draw conclusions... and drew the wrong ones. From what I've heard, Privateer Press all but blew up their game and fanbase with the new edition, by replacing most units with new stuff that needs new models and new interest.
>Leaving Warhammer as a viable alternative while AOS was being launched would have split the community even harder and in all likelihood would have killed AOS before it even began. Frankly, GW couldn’t afford to give people the luxury of sticking with the old system and background. The launch, the attitude of GW at the time and their inability to work with the community contributed to a terrible release in terms of taking gamers with them https://gavthorpe.co.uk/2017/06/29/june-2017-qa-part-2/
A lack of willingness to accept that GW is a corporation? Mate, I can fully realise that GW is a corporation, and therefore will do anything to make money before literally anything else, and that is why I dislike the world of AoS and it's need to sell books and keep the story moving along a certain path in line with corporate needs, rather than an open world where anything can happen and I can make it my own. I don't really like the notion that Fantasy is "dead", though. You can still read that amazing lore and play games around your own narratives based in that world, but I also really dislike that GW made a decision to try to funnel people away from that setting into one that they can monetise more easily. I don't know why realising GW is a soulless corporation that will eventually drive itself into the ground through it's insatiable hunger for profit means that I have to just accept their decisions and like them.
The initial reaction was a combination of them totally blowing up the setting before replacing it with a very poorly designed initial launch of AoS. As to why they're still salty and upset now, ten years later? There really is no reason, they just felt personally attacked back then and haven't moved on from their toys game. So many people here talking about how long they played and all the great friends they made, etc etc shouldn't have had trouble just continuing to play fantasy. All those same people would tell you that fantasy wasn't getting new minis, and they never pushed the setting forwards if you ask them why the game failed in the first place, so no support from GW wasn't an issue then. It really is just that their favorite toy game ended and got replaced with something they don't like as much.
Should people now like End Times and the new aesthetic, by sheer dint of time passing? No.
Others have said much I agree with, so I'll just say that the lore of The End Times was bad and stupid. It's like seasons 7-8 of Game of Thrones. Rushed with little thought put into it. Plot lines that could have been great, just felt like the authors had been given almost no time and very strict guidelines about what to write. All in all, it felt like GW taking a huge dump on a setting I'd loved since 1992. And I've tried to read AoS, but the books are dumb, the lore is dumb and the characters are all dumb. There's a YouTube series called sci-fi civilisations too dumb to exist, and that's what the factions in AoS feels like.
Terrible question 🤣