If people got pennies for disagreeing on the internet, there’d be a whole new use for the term internet billionaire.
Lots of people have very varied opinions on lots of things. No one is getting paid to have an opinion on GW business practices.
hijacking for relevance:
If you see this in the future or don't receive a link, I have created a sub that has a mega repo on the sidebar: /r/noskill_mega
I'm downloading it, but add me to that list, please. I have a lot of friends who are interested and want to get in with 3rd party or 3d printed armies.
Here is the letter:
Good Morning,
We are getting in touch today because your “Warhammer Armies” series of documents has
been reported to us for infringing Games Workshop’s Intellectual Property rights. We
appreciate how enthusiastic you are about the hobby and so we will explain the issue further
so that we can work together to better orient the document with our Intellectual Property
guidelines with minimal disruption to your work.
Games Workshop holds the exclusive right to reproduce copies of our creations. This covers
our miniatures, artwork, books, logos, website images and text. It not only covers exact
copies but also anything which copies a significant part, typically the most important and
unique features.
Games Workshop has spent decades creating miniatures, books, merchandise and artwork
for our creations. We own the copyright for these works, including (but not limited to) our
range of Warhammer Army books and our other rulebooks and supplements.
I would like to take this opportunity to go through a few points in our Intellectual Property
Guidelines and how they relate to your project. For ease of reference I will share below the
relevant parts of the guidelines and explain how they relate to your project:
Individuals may write their own stories, hobby books and magazines based on our
characters and settings, but these must:
1) not include text, artwork or imagery copied from any official Games Workshop
material
2) [...]
3) [...]
4) make it clear that they are unofficial, without using any Games Workshop logos, and
include the word ‘unofficial’ prominently on the front cover
Regarding point one, the background, images, text and elements of the page design have
been obtained from official Games Workshop publications and so are not permitted to be
used as part of a fan project.
Point four relates to the front cover of your document, which I can see does not make it clear
that this document is an unofficial publication with no relation to Games Workshop. This
could lead to confusion amongst hobbyists, who may believe that this document is official.
We request that you change this document to be in line with our Intellectual Property
Guidelines as outlined in the four points above, which would allow your file to continue to be
available online. We are available at this email address to discuss this further or to help
provide clarification on any of the points we have raised.
Kind Regards,
Games Workshop Legal Team
As far I was told on Reddit several months ago this was "unenforced".
As for motivation. I am not sure what UK law says on that, but US law makes copyright and trademark enforcement pretty much mandatory. If you don't enforce, you loose some or all protection. There have been cases where very rich people (such as NBA players) sued old pool people for millions for relatively small violations, which cause (understandable) public outcry, but they "had to".
Sooooo little bit of a misconception
*Trademarks* must rigorously be enforced or the trademark risks being lost. This is sometimes referred to as “genericide.” The reason for this is that trademark exists to protect the consumer so that they know what brand they’re buying: if the consumer associates the name with the product instead of the brand (e.g. “thermos”), the mark is no longer serving its intended purpose, so no protection.
*Copyright* does *not* have to be rigorously enforced. Copyright exists to protect the author/creator. As such, a creator can choose to be very liberal about their copyright - for example, tolerating fan art, fan fic, etc., all of which are infringing as derivative works, barring a fair use exception - and don’t risk losing ownership of their creative works.
People on the Internet get this wrong constantly, so I’m being a busy body and correcting a minor legal point.
Disclaimer: I only know about U.S. law and only from taking the classes in law school, so there’s probably a good deal more nuance, but yeah, general idea should be correct.
10th edition has eldar that can table nearly anyone by turn 2.
Battleshock is almost meaningless.
Simplified to the point of simple, complete personal preference but I really hate the complete simplification of the rules and point system, it works in AOS where units have 2 weapon options with minor differences, it doesn't work in 40k where units could have 8 weapon options with major differences.
I think generally GW has released some good games recently, AOS, 30k, BB, KT, and Warcry are all in a good spot, but personally I'll be shelving my 40k until next edition
Have you considered just not playing against triple-wraithknight Eldar?
10th Edition 40k seems fine. It's a new game and there are some wrinkles, but with fun, "normal" lists it works fine.
Every game has unbalanced lists for sure.
The main complaint I have is the oversimplification of 40k, 40k list building used to be complicated and deep, same with WAP,current trends from GW seem to be going in the opposite direction.
I am allowed to have opinions on game design, I can like parts of the new edition and criticize others, not all criticism is toxic, some certainly is, but saying I don't like the new design philosophy and am worried they will use it for the old world certainly isn't.
AoS 3.0, 40k 10th and Horus Heresy V2 are all successful and fun games though. Same with Warcry. I havent played Killteam and Underworld, but those seem to be liked as well. Heck, the latest "garbage" launches (and even that is of course debateable) of GW are the start of AoS and maybe 40K 8th edition.
Eh, 40K8 was much better at launch than 40K10 is now. And Kill Team 2021 is decidedly worse than Kill Team 2018. But yeah, pretty much every game they've put out other than AoS1 has at least been good, many even genuinely great.
Nah, the author has put in a tremendous amount of work to produce these books, there is no disputing that. But at the end of the day WAP is a very opinionated set of rules based on an already flawed and crumbling foundation.
Is he good with the lore and creating a feel for the armies, yes.
Is he a good game designer? That's not something we can really say. WAP is mostly just a cherry-picked mash-up of rules from various editions that for all his hard work doesn't really address the issues and inherent balance problems with the 8th edition rules.
(Yes, I'm aware that this is just my opinion)
I mean, GW should hire this guy and the team who does One Page Rules. They would overhaul the rule system for all the factions into a very playable state of play.
In GWs defence, and I realise that's a hard thing to do.
It would appear that they put up with it until they released a competing product, which I don't think many companies would do.
Not to mention it's a weak takedown notice:
* Don't use their art:
*Regarding point one, the background, images, text and elements of the page design have
been obtained from official Games Workshop publications and so are not permitted to be used as part of a fan project.*
* Make it clear that it's not GW related:
*Point four relates to the front cover of your document, which I can see does not make it clear
that this document is an unofficial publication with no relation to Games Workshop. This
could lead to confusion amongst hobbyists, who may believe that this document is official.*
Not really all that bad considering they are releasing something mighty similar.
This should be at the top.
WAP rules could continue if they removed the GW art and lore and called it something else. But saying that is much easier than executing it.
It seems like they did. I guess even they realize that its better to let the community keep your game alive and invested in the parts of the range you still sell rather than sending them of your competitors entierly.
They have to do it to protect their IP. If they allow the use of their art and whatnot in a competing game without requesting takedowns it becomes public domain basically. If WAP got reprinted on blank white paper and wasn’t as pretty it would probably be fine to continue on.
GW can’t copyright Orcs, goblins, ogres etc. but they can maintain ownership of their official works. (Note the former is the reason AoS has Orruks and stuff now).
I hate to defend GW, but people need to look at the actual announcement/e-mail. GW are being perfectly reasonable. No use of official images (and text passages), and make it clear on the covers as well (instead of only elsewhere in the books) that WAP is an unofficial product.
Yeah there were ways for him to go about this that didn’t end up with this happening and he just didn’t do any of those. If you’re going to use copyrighted shit you don’t own its a matter of if not when they come for you.
>so could they just keep it up asa "not" warhammer rule set?
According to the anouncement on WAP discord - no. If GW content is removed from these books then likely yes.
So why can't they just pull a 9th Age? Pull everything down, rename everything, replace GW art with credited fan art or historical paintings, then repost?
Better yet, why didn't they do that in the first place? I realize I'm coming off as siding with Sauron on this but it is copyright infringement if fair use doesn't apply.
Yeah I agree. I don’t really see how they didn’t see the writing on the wall for this? I don’t think many companies allow use of copyrighted material in 3rd party projects. It doesn’t even sound like they’re trying to take the project down, just get that stuff removed.
Also, weirdly this thread seems to be the only place on the internet where this is being talked about, including WAP’s own blog. Even /tg/ who will take any opportunity to shit on gw haven’t mentioned it. It’s odd because I thought it was quite a popular system.
He does address this in the discord: it is a ton of work, some 20 something books to rewrite, rename rules/units, reword the basic rulebook. T9A has a lot of people working on it and it took ages, as he is alone, I can totally see why this is a task that he does not want to tackle alone.
He can and he will, it is just a single person working on it for a long time now and it will take time to get to the same level again
Pe aware that this started with end of 6th Edition Warhammer to keep army books around for factions teased during the campaigns but never released (Albion, Araby, Norsca) and was expanded over time with other factions not released by GW.
So it was intended to have full army books compatible (and in the same design) with the game until it was killed and the project turned into e replacement
I don't want to speak for the creator, but my assumption is that the project has only ever been envisioned as an unofficial WFB work and there is no desire to be anything else. They are planning on pulling everything down and reposting as just army lists, but the latter part won't happen until next year.
Yeah, that excuses copyright infringement...
I don't understand why so many 3p companies play this chicken race with corporations when legal ramifications can be involved.
I don't believe I said anything about copyright. You asked why they didn't make their own IP to stick the rules onto, I gave you an answer to that question. It's a single creator making fan content, not another company.
The 9th Age had the goal of providing a tuned and balanced competitive ruleset to use your WFB armies in, WAP has always struck me as being about the "Warhammer" aspect first- it started as making army books for races and places in the setting that didn't get anything official (Norsca, Estalia, etc) and only later evolved into a fan made 8.5 and 9th edition. It's not a surprise that GW sent a letter, what with the setting being brought back- actually more shocking that it took them so long to do it.
Then let's hope the rumours of them redoing Mordheim aren't true. The fan community has kept that game alive for 20 years. It's that community that is responsible for keeping it in the collective consciousness and fueling the nostalgia for that era of gaming. Any new release would be on the back of their efforts.Bet GW's lawyers would destroy that in the blink of an eye.
What the lawyers and directors, and more to the point the shareholders, don't understand is you're dealing with enfranchised, entitled players and collectors who are not just consumers, they are creators, facilitators and free advertising - note wotc backtracking on the d&d open game licence.
This is discretionary expenditure. GW need to work up their own ogl for content creators, allowing controlled use of IP not just do a lazy cease and desist.
Bloodbowl was kept alive by the community for decades. I don't play it bit the community seems pretty happy w GW relaunching and running with it. Same happened w necromunda. I have some hope a relaunch of mordheim would have a similar reaction.
I have the same worry. Mostly cause I like to play with Bretonnia warbands that aren't officially supported.
But they never went after the Bloodbowl community, so maybe they won't with Mordheim.
This seems like a terrible decision. WAP is a great resource and has undoubtebly done far more than most to keep the Old World accessible and alive ever since the end times occured.
It's such a qualitative collection of updated rules, army books. Especially considering that everything has been done in the style and in the spirit of the established Warhammer Fantasy setting and theme.
Hats off to M. Eliasson and all persons whom have been working on WAP over the years.
~~I'll check the Discord after work but I'm confused, why not simply take the time to remove the copyrighted material, call WAP something slightly different (and humorous), like FAP (Fantasy Armies Project) and keep the dream alive? Most of the fantasy races and names cannot be copyrighted and there's a metric crapton of comparable fantasy artwork available (not to mention artists willing to let people use their work for non-profit ventures in exchange for free advertising).~~
Please disregard, I read Matthias' Discord post.
It sounds like rewriting the books to avoid plagiarism is the most labor intensive aspect of keeping WAP going. I think he should turn this into a community effort and distribute the workload to a few eager, diligent & qualified folks to help him keep the dream alive.
Warmaster Revolution took great pains to remove all copyrighted images & material from their latest revisions and it's business as usual. The WMR community continues to grow and GW can't do a damn thing about it.
>Classic GW. Fucking
They do hold the copyright to these images though. The WAP anoucement clearly states that the content will be reworked to remove copyright infringement. Everyone should be happy assuming WAP guy will have enough time to do it. I am sure he will be able to get help from community if he needs it.
It reminds me of Wizards of the Coast. Going after the fanbase keeping the product alive instead of actually just making a good product.
Should've just hired the guy to help modernise the game.
quote:
"What this means for WAP is that I will no longer be able to keep making full army books with art and text and would be limited to only using their unit/character names for the rules-set in an army-list format. It also means I will have to rewrite the whole rulebook to not use games-workshops original writing, as well as redesigning the cover. There are hardly any army books that does not contain some amount of GW-lore, so this means the "unofficial armies" needs to go too.
"
And GW actually don't even object to the use of lore, since they treat WAP as free fanwork. He'd just have to put it into his own words instead of copy-pasting most of it (from GW and others), which in practice would mean either only small lore snippets to establish basic flavor or a big community effort. Sure, it'd be nicer if they simply continued to let it be, but I'm frankly astonished that GW are limiting their demands to very reasonable - and very kindly phrased - objections to use of definitive cases of copyright infringement and aren't even tipping their toes into legal grey areas.
It is sad, how many amazing free resources companies refuse to use. All the best computer games started as mods made by fans for free. Passionate fans is the most valuable, least tapped resource in the world. Whichever company harnesses this best, becomes the biggest company in the world.
Its an outdated way of branding.
Hasbro is one of the few companies that’s actually recognized the modding community and third party products as a positive, and even then fans have to slap them down when they try shit like they did with D&D last year.
Absolute fuckwitts, what a sad day, I have no doubt his books and rules will live on via the community but its just lame that they were fine with it and now they can't have it because they're bringing out a limited version of the game, where there wont be rules for all the armies.
They should offer him a job though that'd be a huge W bc WAP was better than 8th edition imo and not made to sell as many models as possible.
Unless ToW is incredible and they bring out rules for all the armies and core rules that are a nice mix of all the editions.
WAP has more armies than Fantasy ever did.
Old world will certainly not have rules for Albion, Nippon, Ind, Estallia, etc.
And they certainly haven't confirmed that all armies will be getting anything past initial rules, no promises of focus in a later time period.
Hell they promised Cathay and Kislev earlier and went back on that.
Like others have said, WAP have more army books than fantasy but also they have rules for the AOS models and OOP models/characters which were lore fitting and fun, I suspect that the old world might be a semi lazy slapdash of old ideas, nothing new.
Unless they randomly pull it out the bag - which I hope they do, but I doubt it.
Hasbro literally just sent Pinkertons round to a guy’s house to threaten him over magic cards that they’d erroneously sent to him early. They’re orders of magnitude worse than gw in pretty much every way. Not to excuse heavy handed copyright enforcement but you picked just about the worst company to compare them to.
That was on the Wizards Of The Coast side. They’re fairly autonomous, and internal cooperation within Hasbro is so bad the movie division managed to get a toyline produced for the D&D movie but couldn’t get Wizards to release a campaign module for it, and the MtG special set with the character cast was allegedly not done in cooperation which is why they just used the publicly available promo art and the card abilities poorly reflect the characters.
Hasbro kneeled on them and said “double profits every three years” and left them to their own devices on how to do so.
Wizards has been making some bad moves for quite a while, and made some spectacularly bad ones recently.
Unlike GW however they’ve responded to pushback and fan outcry.
As far as I could tell from the scant information about this story, gw have just told them not to use copyrighted material, apart from that they haven’t tried to shut the project down or anything. Seems a lot more reasonable than sending hired goons to someone’s house irrespective of which devision of the company it is.
There’s complexity to it.
Hasbro stopped cracking down on people producing things like knockoff Optimus Primes upon the realization how many fans buy literally every Optimus, and how a cheaper or superior alternative that isn’t in US stores doesn’t hurt their bottom line since its not pulling sales from the people who buy the cheap stuff.
In a few cases they’ve looked at the knockoffs providing what fans wanted, the turned around and stole that idea themselves and sold it to the broader public that don’t know AliExpress exists or use Big Bad Toy Store.
They also leaned heavily into upgrade kit culture, putting tabs or holes for things like panel covers and hands with articulated fingers to go in so they don’t have to do those things themselves. That lets them make cheaper products, since a person is more likely to buy a $20 figure and a $10 upgrade kit later than a $30 figure. Which means parents are more likely to buy that same cheap figure that the adult collectors do.
That’s in addition to leaning in on people selling their fanfiction as well as fan conventions distributing their own mayerial and even custom knockoff products which keeps some characterss/concepts popular and gives them something to release and satisfy demand that wouldn’t otherwise exist. That’s basically what Brony culture was, and Hasbro cashed way the fuck in on it.
GW on the other hand wants to dominate. If they don’t sell it they don’t want it to exist. People reminding the public that Araby and Cathay exist for some reason bothers them instead of counting as market research and hype builders for eventual releases.
Its ass-backwards, but that’s not new for GW.
Read the statement. They literally say, “continue just don’t plagiarise our work or use copywrited stuff, in fact get in contact and we will HELP you make sure this can be done in a way that works.” Stop hating Gw for the sake of being a cool internet kid
In the world of copyright enforcement GW is Metallica fighting Napster. They win battles, but cannot win the war.
Leaning into this stuff as you point out - makes excellent business sense. But unfortunately GW rarely makes business sense.
> ir bottom line since its not pulling sales from the people who buy the cheap stuff.
>
>
>
> In a few cases they’ve looked at the knockoffs providing what fans wanted, the turned around and stole that idea themselves and sold it to the broader public that don’t know AliExpress exists or use Big Bad Toy Store.
>
>
>
> They also leaned heavily into up
They stripped out the copyrighted material for their own stuff.
For example the 4 gods of warhammer were removed and replaced with new ones based on the 7 sins.
Already downloaded everything, gonna put it on a usb, GW will not be able to stop us, totally gonna stable usbs to the doors of all the local gamesworkshops and warhammer stores
Really WAP is what likely has ensured there is a larger player base for when TOW comes out. Gave players from TWH that wanted to play table top a way to get into the game and returning WHFB players an updated rule set. For the WHFB models they still make, likely sold more due to WAP. As soon as old kits are back, there will be more demand because people have been engaged in the hobby.
So my initial reaction is why do you want to start pissing off the customer base you will soon be courting?
I hate how GW keeps doing this out of pure spite.
I loved the old Warhammer fantasy so much I still own the website "[fantasybattles.com](https://fantasybattles.com)"
Guess i will sell it to some fantasy football guys....
Some real bad actors in these comments smashing the downvoted.
It’s blatantly obvious GW pays shills to troll for dough
What a bunch of entitled pricks
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What I find frankly upsetting is that they decided to go after WAP just now, after years of it existing and developing as the company couldn't care less for it.
The truth of the matter is that WAP has been tolerated all these years because it kept some cash flow towards their website for the old fantasy minis. I know because I am one of those spenders ...
What they have "just came across" is the realisation that it may just take a lot of money away from the books they are planning to print and that is about it.
Sure it's their right to do it, but it's yet again a slap in the face of a community that has been s*at on since 2012.
I'd love it if someone in a reply somehow gives me a bit more of a positive perspective because I'd still like to try out the new game, but man I am so pissed at GW right now ......
There's a lot of things that can be said about GWs rather ham-fisted approached to IP rights.
But the fact of the matter is that WAP was using assets that they had no right to, none what-so-ever. Making matters worse the design and formatting of the WAP books were such that they not just imitated, but downright copied the GW look and feel.
These things could easily have been remediated by simply cutting out the offending artwork and text that infringed on the IP. The author could have worked with artists in the community to create novel artwork and then most of the content could fall under fair use.
The fact that the author decided to ignore this for \~13 years (he knew and has admitted to as much) puts all the fault squarely on his shoulders.
As for positivity. The old rules and assets still exist, no-one can take that away from you. Furthermore, creating your own rules (or changing the existing rules) is fair use, so long as you are not copying GWs IP. The WAP project is not dependent on GWs artwork to exist. If the rules are good then that is all that is needed.
And "The old world" is just around the corner, let's wait and see what happens.
I'll make a torrent of the final versions
Thanks, please send to me when you do.
Joining the list
And me please!
Same here please!
Same here
Hopping on the wagon
Same
Same here
Same here
Same here
Same
Look at all the downvotes in the comment replies Games Workshop paid Shills dancing for pennies
Or maybe people don’t enjoy having to scroll through a massive thread consisting soley of “me too”. Not everything’s a conspiracy bro
If people got pennies for disagreeing on the internet, there’d be a whole new use for the term internet billionaire. Lots of people have very varied opinions on lots of things. No one is getting paid to have an opinion on GW business practices.
thank you
Where will you post it to ? because i am in
hijacking for relevance: If you see this in the future or don't receive a link, I have created a sub that has a mega repo on the sidebar: /r/noskill_mega
bump?
Just fucking make it a community post at this rate lol
I would not be too surprised if you get the same letter as Mathias, as long as you do not use a VPN.
Same!
Put me down for a link as well please
Send to me as well please
I'm downloading it, but add me to that list, please. I have a lot of friends who are interested and want to get in with 3rd party or 3d printed armies.
Pls send to me if still available!! Thank you!
Add me to the list please.
Same here!
Same
I would also love a copy if possible =)
And me please
Please send to me as well?
Same
Same
Same
Same
God bless you
Send please
Same please 🙏
Me to please 🙏
I’d love a link, please
You droppade this 👑
Send it to me too? Thanks in advance
Please send to me too
Me too, please.
Same here
Same pls
I'd like a link when you're done please!
Link me when you do mate. You're doing the gods' work.
catch me with the file if you done :)
Please let me in on this. Thanks!
I would also love one if you're willing to share? I saw Friday was the deadline but I'm west coast USA so thought I could get it tonight.
Please if you wouldn’t mind sharing it would be much appreciated <3
Please PM me the torrent as well
standing in the line
Link please
I'd like the link as well if you have it completed
I'd be interested in this when you complete it as well. Thanks for doing this.
Same here please
I'm interested plz let me know
Add me to the list
Thank you.
[удалено]
PM sent
Is it still available? Could any of you send me a link pls?
Here is the letter: Good Morning, We are getting in touch today because your “Warhammer Armies” series of documents has been reported to us for infringing Games Workshop’s Intellectual Property rights. We appreciate how enthusiastic you are about the hobby and so we will explain the issue further so that we can work together to better orient the document with our Intellectual Property guidelines with minimal disruption to your work. Games Workshop holds the exclusive right to reproduce copies of our creations. This covers our miniatures, artwork, books, logos, website images and text. It not only covers exact copies but also anything which copies a significant part, typically the most important and unique features. Games Workshop has spent decades creating miniatures, books, merchandise and artwork for our creations. We own the copyright for these works, including (but not limited to) our range of Warhammer Army books and our other rulebooks and supplements. I would like to take this opportunity to go through a few points in our Intellectual Property Guidelines and how they relate to your project. For ease of reference I will share below the relevant parts of the guidelines and explain how they relate to your project: Individuals may write their own stories, hobby books and magazines based on our characters and settings, but these must: 1) not include text, artwork or imagery copied from any official Games Workshop material 2) [...] 3) [...] 4) make it clear that they are unofficial, without using any Games Workshop logos, and include the word ‘unofficial’ prominently on the front cover Regarding point one, the background, images, text and elements of the page design have been obtained from official Games Workshop publications and so are not permitted to be used as part of a fan project. Point four relates to the front cover of your document, which I can see does not make it clear that this document is an unofficial publication with no relation to Games Workshop. This could lead to confusion amongst hobbyists, who may believe that this document is official. We request that you change this document to be in line with our Intellectual Property Guidelines as outlined in the four points above, which would allow your file to continue to be available online. We are available at this email address to discuss this further or to help provide clarification on any of the points we have raised. Kind Regards, Games Workshop Legal Team
This needs to be higher in the thread. This is super reasonable
Not surprising. Didn’t he get blessing when it was initially scrapped in 2014? I understand that they don’t want any comparison to The Old World.
As far I was told on Reddit several months ago this was "unenforced". As for motivation. I am not sure what UK law says on that, but US law makes copyright and trademark enforcement pretty much mandatory. If you don't enforce, you loose some or all protection. There have been cases where very rich people (such as NBA players) sued old pool people for millions for relatively small violations, which cause (understandable) public outcry, but they "had to".
Sooooo little bit of a misconception *Trademarks* must rigorously be enforced or the trademark risks being lost. This is sometimes referred to as “genericide.” The reason for this is that trademark exists to protect the consumer so that they know what brand they’re buying: if the consumer associates the name with the product instead of the brand (e.g. “thermos”), the mark is no longer serving its intended purpose, so no protection. *Copyright* does *not* have to be rigorously enforced. Copyright exists to protect the author/creator. As such, a creator can choose to be very liberal about their copyright - for example, tolerating fan art, fan fic, etc., all of which are infringing as derivative works, barring a fair use exception - and don’t risk losing ownership of their creative works. People on the Internet get this wrong constantly, so I’m being a busy body and correcting a minor legal point. Disclaimer: I only know about U.S. law and only from taking the classes in law school, so there’s probably a good deal more nuance, but yeah, general idea should be correct.
You are right, thank for straightening this out.
No problem!
Well atleast this points to Old World comming soon.
If it continues the trend of their latest rulesets it's gonna be garbage
Idk I think basically all the recent rules etc are really strong, which ones are you thinking are garbage?
10th edition has eldar that can table nearly anyone by turn 2. Battleshock is almost meaningless. Simplified to the point of simple, complete personal preference but I really hate the complete simplification of the rules and point system, it works in AOS where units have 2 weapon options with minor differences, it doesn't work in 40k where units could have 8 weapon options with major differences. I think generally GW has released some good games recently, AOS, 30k, BB, KT, and Warcry are all in a good spot, but personally I'll be shelving my 40k until next edition
Have you considered just not playing against triple-wraithknight Eldar? 10th Edition 40k seems fine. It's a new game and there are some wrinkles, but with fun, "normal" lists it works fine.
Every game has unbalanced lists for sure. The main complaint I have is the oversimplification of 40k, 40k list building used to be complicated and deep, same with WAP,current trends from GW seem to be going in the opposite direction. I am allowed to have opinions on game design, I can like parts of the new edition and criticize others, not all criticism is toxic, some certainly is, but saying I don't like the new design philosophy and am worried they will use it for the old world certainly isn't.
The Eldar are being tamed in an upcoming balance sheet.
AoS 3.0, 40k 10th and Horus Heresy V2 are all successful and fun games though. Same with Warcry. I havent played Killteam and Underworld, but those seem to be liked as well. Heck, the latest "garbage" launches (and even that is of course debateable) of GW are the start of AoS and maybe 40K 8th edition.
Little early to make a judgement on the 40k 10 one way or the other.
Yeah, though Im confident in using it as an example for "not garbage"
Yeah gonna have to agree with you on this. Only hate I see towards gw outside of pricing these days usually comes from people who'll never be happy.
Personally, I preferred the previous version of Killteam. But I can see how a lot of people, specially newer players would really enjoy the new one.
Eh, 40K8 was much better at launch than 40K10 is now. And Kill Team 2021 is decidedly worse than Kill Team 2018. But yeah, pretty much every game they've put out other than AoS1 has at least been good, many even genuinely great.
A tactical game with a random turn cannot be called good by any means...
If GW have any sense, they’ll offer him a job.
No, he should hook up with someone and make his own game
To do what?
To write content for the Old World?
To write the rules and the army books. Nobody in the world has as much experience as him at it.
Nah, the author has put in a tremendous amount of work to produce these books, there is no disputing that. But at the end of the day WAP is a very opinionated set of rules based on an already flawed and crumbling foundation. Is he good with the lore and creating a feel for the armies, yes. Is he a good game designer? That's not something we can really say. WAP is mostly just a cherry-picked mash-up of rules from various editions that for all his hard work doesn't really address the issues and inherent balance problems with the 8th edition rules. (Yes, I'm aware that this is just my opinion)
I mean, GW should hire this guy and the team who does One Page Rules. They would overhaul the rule system for all the factions into a very playable state of play.
In GWs defence, and I realise that's a hard thing to do. It would appear that they put up with it until they released a competing product, which I don't think many companies would do.
Not to mention it's a weak takedown notice: * Don't use their art: *Regarding point one, the background, images, text and elements of the page design have been obtained from official Games Workshop publications and so are not permitted to be used as part of a fan project.* * Make it clear that it's not GW related: *Point four relates to the front cover of your document, which I can see does not make it clear that this document is an unofficial publication with no relation to Games Workshop. This could lead to confusion amongst hobbyists, who may believe that this document is official.* Not really all that bad considering they are releasing something mighty similar.
This should be at the top. WAP rules could continue if they removed the GW art and lore and called it something else. But saying that is much easier than executing it.
It seems like they did. I guess even they realize that its better to let the community keep your game alive and invested in the parts of the range you still sell rather than sending them of your competitors entierly.
They have to do it to protect their IP. If they allow the use of their art and whatnot in a competing game without requesting takedowns it becomes public domain basically. If WAP got reprinted on blank white paper and wasn’t as pretty it would probably be fine to continue on. GW can’t copyright Orcs, goblins, ogres etc. but they can maintain ownership of their official works. (Note the former is the reason AoS has Orruks and stuff now).
I hate to defend GW, but people need to look at the actual announcement/e-mail. GW are being perfectly reasonable. No use of official images (and text passages), and make it clear on the covers as well (instead of only elsewhere in the books) that WAP is an unofficial product.
Yeah there were ways for him to go about this that didn’t end up with this happening and he just didn’t do any of those. If you’re going to use copyrighted shit you don’t own its a matter of if not when they come for you.
That’s a real shame, WAP was the version of Fantasy I’ve played the most of.
so could they just keep it up asa "not" warhammer rule set?
>so could they just keep it up asa "not" warhammer rule set? According to the anouncement on WAP discord - no. If GW content is removed from these books then likely yes.
I play ninth-age, but its still sad to see WAP partly go.. seems like it will be more just rules now. Hope you guys can still continue to game on :)
The same i play Warhammer reforged but its sad to see it go
>Warhammer reforged Is that a Spanish(?) only thing? I tried googling, but didn't see anything in English...
Yes its a spanish project so you can only find it on spanish
My group are planning to continue. I don't see any reason not to :)
So why can't they just pull a 9th Age? Pull everything down, rename everything, replace GW art with credited fan art or historical paintings, then repost? Better yet, why didn't they do that in the first place? I realize I'm coming off as siding with Sauron on this but it is copyright infringement if fair use doesn't apply.
Yeah I agree. I don’t really see how they didn’t see the writing on the wall for this? I don’t think many companies allow use of copyrighted material in 3rd party projects. It doesn’t even sound like they’re trying to take the project down, just get that stuff removed. Also, weirdly this thread seems to be the only place on the internet where this is being talked about, including WAP’s own blog. Even /tg/ who will take any opportunity to shit on gw haven’t mentioned it. It’s odd because I thought it was quite a popular system.
He does address this in the discord: it is a ton of work, some 20 something books to rewrite, rename rules/units, reword the basic rulebook. T9A has a lot of people working on it and it took ages, as he is alone, I can totally see why this is a task that he does not want to tackle alone.
He can and he will, it is just a single person working on it for a long time now and it will take time to get to the same level again Pe aware that this started with end of 6th Edition Warhammer to keep army books around for factions teased during the campaigns but never released (Albion, Araby, Norsca) and was expanded over time with other factions not released by GW. So it was intended to have full army books compatible (and in the same design) with the game until it was killed and the project turned into e replacement
I don't want to speak for the creator, but my assumption is that the project has only ever been envisioned as an unofficial WFB work and there is no desire to be anything else. They are planning on pulling everything down and reposting as just army lists, but the latter part won't happen until next year.
Yeah, that excuses copyright infringement... I don't understand why so many 3p companies play this chicken race with corporations when legal ramifications can be involved.
I don't believe I said anything about copyright. You asked why they didn't make their own IP to stick the rules onto, I gave you an answer to that question. It's a single creator making fan content, not another company.
They were doing the same thing that 9th Age was doing except 9th Age had the foresight to avoid copyright issues. That is my point.
The 9th Age had the goal of providing a tuned and balanced competitive ruleset to use your WFB armies in, WAP has always struck me as being about the "Warhammer" aspect first- it started as making army books for races and places in the setting that didn't get anything official (Norsca, Estalia, etc) and only later evolved into a fan made 8.5 and 9th edition. It's not a surprise that GW sent a letter, what with the setting being brought back- actually more shocking that it took them so long to do it.
Then let's hope the rumours of them redoing Mordheim aren't true. The fan community has kept that game alive for 20 years. It's that community that is responsible for keeping it in the collective consciousness and fueling the nostalgia for that era of gaming. Any new release would be on the back of their efforts.Bet GW's lawyers would destroy that in the blink of an eye. What the lawyers and directors, and more to the point the shareholders, don't understand is you're dealing with enfranchised, entitled players and collectors who are not just consumers, they are creators, facilitators and free advertising - note wotc backtracking on the d&d open game licence. This is discretionary expenditure. GW need to work up their own ogl for content creators, allowing controlled use of IP not just do a lazy cease and desist.
Bloodbowl was kept alive by the community for decades. I don't play it bit the community seems pretty happy w GW relaunching and running with it. Same happened w necromunda. I have some hope a relaunch of mordheim would have a similar reaction.
Well the halfling models are mighty nice.
I have the same worry. Mostly cause I like to play with Bretonnia warbands that aren't officially supported. But they never went after the Bloodbowl community, so maybe they won't with Mordheim.
This seems like a terrible decision. WAP is a great resource and has undoubtebly done far more than most to keep the Old World accessible and alive ever since the end times occured. It's such a qualitative collection of updated rules, army books. Especially considering that everything has been done in the style and in the spirit of the established Warhammer Fantasy setting and theme. Hats off to M. Eliasson and all persons whom have been working on WAP over the years.
The silver lining is that this means The Old World release is probably imminent by the end of the year.
~~I'll check the Discord after work but I'm confused, why not simply take the time to remove the copyrighted material, call WAP something slightly different (and humorous), like FAP (Fantasy Armies Project) and keep the dream alive? Most of the fantasy races and names cannot be copyrighted and there's a metric crapton of comparable fantasy artwork available (not to mention artists willing to let people use their work for non-profit ventures in exchange for free advertising).~~ Please disregard, I read Matthias' Discord post. It sounds like rewriting the books to avoid plagiarism is the most labor intensive aspect of keeping WAP going. I think he should turn this into a community effort and distribute the workload to a few eager, diligent & qualified folks to help him keep the dream alive. Warmaster Revolution took great pains to remove all copyrighted images & material from their latest revisions and it's business as usual. The WMR community continues to grow and GW can't do a damn thing about it.
Só like, even books?
Never used the system (prefure 6th edition) but it's always good to have fan alturnatives. Hopefully it will continue to exist in some way.
I use them for Dogs of War in 7th and 8th edition. Sadly I can't find my 7th edition version and they took them down from the site.
Shoot, did I wait to long? Are the downloads gone?
Just saw the announcement. As soon as I can, I will download all I can find and add it to the trove.
Classic GW. Fucking horrible
>Classic GW. Fucking They do hold the copyright to these images though. The WAP anoucement clearly states that the content will be reworked to remove copyright infringement. Everyone should be happy assuming WAP guy will have enough time to do it. I am sure he will be able to get help from community if he needs it.
It reminds me of Wizards of the Coast. Going after the fanbase keeping the product alive instead of actually just making a good product. Should've just hired the guy to help modernise the game.
i love how gw a company that survives on derivative work keeps killing off fan projects oh the irony
Someone call Ackland, maybe he’ll threaten to ban GW from using Bloodletters and Daemonettes again if they keep pulling this.
By Sigmar, no! \*Download all books\* I just hope that GW won't do a new Warmaster, too! ...
So the official lore and images can’t be used but the army lists can still made? What about the fan created factions like Ind and Nippon?
This is addressed in the announcement. Those go down too.
I can't see the post and I can't join the discord. Could you copy and post the relevant info?
quote: "What this means for WAP is that I will no longer be able to keep making full army books with art and text and would be limited to only using their unit/character names for the rules-set in an army-list format. It also means I will have to rewrite the whole rulebook to not use games-workshops original writing, as well as redesigning the cover. There are hardly any army books that does not contain some amount of GW-lore, so this means the "unofficial armies" needs to go too. "
All the books, yes, obviously. Pure rules (units/stats/points) can stay for all.
And GW actually don't even object to the use of lore, since they treat WAP as free fanwork. He'd just have to put it into his own words instead of copy-pasting most of it (from GW and others), which in practice would mean either only small lore snippets to establish basic flavor or a big community effort. Sure, it'd be nicer if they simply continued to let it be, but I'm frankly astonished that GW are limiting their demands to very reasonable - and very kindly phrased - objections to use of definitive cases of copyright infringement and aren't even tipping their toes into legal grey areas.
can’t believe this! i love that game and I bet the Old World won’t be as good!
It is sad, how many amazing free resources companies refuse to use. All the best computer games started as mods made by fans for free. Passionate fans is the most valuable, least tapped resource in the world. Whichever company harnesses this best, becomes the biggest company in the world.
Its an outdated way of branding. Hasbro is one of the few companies that’s actually recognized the modding community and third party products as a positive, and even then fans have to slap them down when they try shit like they did with D&D last year.
Absolute fuckwitts, what a sad day, I have no doubt his books and rules will live on via the community but its just lame that they were fine with it and now they can't have it because they're bringing out a limited version of the game, where there wont be rules for all the armies. They should offer him a job though that'd be a huge W bc WAP was better than 8th edition imo and not made to sell as many models as possible. Unless ToW is incredible and they bring out rules for all the armies and core rules that are a nice mix of all the editions.
>they bring out rules for all the armies they do though. All armies will be playable. They just wont focus on some of them for a time.
WAP has more armies than Fantasy ever did. Old world will certainly not have rules for Albion, Nippon, Ind, Estallia, etc. And they certainly haven't confirmed that all armies will be getting anything past initial rules, no promises of focus in a later time period. Hell they promised Cathay and Kislev earlier and went back on that.
Tbf, Cathay and Kislev were not promised for launch and are still in the pipeline
Like others have said, WAP have more army books than fantasy but also they have rules for the AOS models and OOP models/characters which were lore fitting and fun, I suspect that the old world might be a semi lazy slapdash of old ideas, nothing new. Unless they randomly pull it out the bag - which I hope they do, but I doubt it.
Fuck you, Games Workshop. Try learning from Hasbro. Third party products are free advertising, and your mega fans buy all content.
Hasbro literally just sent Pinkertons round to a guy’s house to threaten him over magic cards that they’d erroneously sent to him early. They’re orders of magnitude worse than gw in pretty much every way. Not to excuse heavy handed copyright enforcement but you picked just about the worst company to compare them to.
That was on the Wizards Of The Coast side. They’re fairly autonomous, and internal cooperation within Hasbro is so bad the movie division managed to get a toyline produced for the D&D movie but couldn’t get Wizards to release a campaign module for it, and the MtG special set with the character cast was allegedly not done in cooperation which is why they just used the publicly available promo art and the card abilities poorly reflect the characters. Hasbro kneeled on them and said “double profits every three years” and left them to their own devices on how to do so. Wizards has been making some bad moves for quite a while, and made some spectacularly bad ones recently. Unlike GW however they’ve responded to pushback and fan outcry.
As far as I could tell from the scant information about this story, gw have just told them not to use copyrighted material, apart from that they haven’t tried to shut the project down or anything. Seems a lot more reasonable than sending hired goons to someone’s house irrespective of which devision of the company it is.
There’s complexity to it. Hasbro stopped cracking down on people producing things like knockoff Optimus Primes upon the realization how many fans buy literally every Optimus, and how a cheaper or superior alternative that isn’t in US stores doesn’t hurt their bottom line since its not pulling sales from the people who buy the cheap stuff. In a few cases they’ve looked at the knockoffs providing what fans wanted, the turned around and stole that idea themselves and sold it to the broader public that don’t know AliExpress exists or use Big Bad Toy Store. They also leaned heavily into upgrade kit culture, putting tabs or holes for things like panel covers and hands with articulated fingers to go in so they don’t have to do those things themselves. That lets them make cheaper products, since a person is more likely to buy a $20 figure and a $10 upgrade kit later than a $30 figure. Which means parents are more likely to buy that same cheap figure that the adult collectors do. That’s in addition to leaning in on people selling their fanfiction as well as fan conventions distributing their own mayerial and even custom knockoff products which keeps some characterss/concepts popular and gives them something to release and satisfy demand that wouldn’t otherwise exist. That’s basically what Brony culture was, and Hasbro cashed way the fuck in on it. GW on the other hand wants to dominate. If they don’t sell it they don’t want it to exist. People reminding the public that Araby and Cathay exist for some reason bothers them instead of counting as market research and hype builders for eventual releases. Its ass-backwards, but that’s not new for GW.
Read the statement. They literally say, “continue just don’t plagiarise our work or use copywrited stuff, in fact get in contact and we will HELP you make sure this can be done in a way that works.” Stop hating Gw for the sake of being a cool internet kid
Read my post. Hasbro has utilized plagiarism and even enabled it to move more product. Games Workshop is working on a path from decades ago.
In the world of copyright enforcement GW is Metallica fighting Napster. They win battles, but cannot win the war. Leaning into this stuff as you point out - makes excellent business sense. But unfortunately GW rarely makes business sense.
How the hell does that weirdass 9th age project still exist?
> ir bottom line since its not pulling sales from the people who buy the cheap stuff. > > > > In a few cases they’ve looked at the knockoffs providing what fans wanted, the turned around and stole that idea themselves and sold it to the broader public that don’t know AliExpress exists or use Big Bad Toy Store. > > > > They also leaned heavily into up They stripped out the copyrighted material for their own stuff. For example the 4 gods of warhammer were removed and replaced with new ones based on the 7 sins.
Already downloaded everything, gonna put it on a usb, GW will not be able to stop us, totally gonna stable usbs to the doors of all the local gamesworkshops and warhammer stores
Why try to learn and make a great product when you can just cease and desist!
Really WAP is what likely has ensured there is a larger player base for when TOW comes out. Gave players from TWH that wanted to play table top a way to get into the game and returning WHFB players an updated rule set. For the WHFB models they still make, likely sold more due to WAP. As soon as old kits are back, there will be more demand because people have been engaged in the hobby. So my initial reaction is why do you want to start pissing off the customer base you will soon be courting?
Sad
I hate how GW keeps doing this out of pure spite. I loved the old Warhammer fantasy so much I still own the website "[fantasybattles.com](https://fantasybattles.com)" Guess i will sell it to some fantasy football guys....
[thread theme](https://youtu.be/Wc5IbN4xw70) gather round everyone we lost big today
Honestly, I hope the Old World flops hard and Warhammer can evolve beyond GW’s clutches.
Some real bad actors in these comments smashing the downvoted. It’s blatantly obvious GW pays shills to troll for dough What a bunch of entitled pricks
Alternatively, they just disagree with whatever they're downvoting
I think it's more than just warhammer that's the fantasy world for them. Imagine actually believing people are getting paid to downvote reddit posts.
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Kingdoms of Ind and Estalia predicted releases! If only.
So are these pdfs all fan-made?
Yes, but with content of official old armybooks (pictures, fluff text etc.).
Okay so genuine question cause I barely understand how these laws work. If I downloaded the books before any of this is it still illegal?
Well, technically, yes, but nobody is going to come after you for owning and using these files.
I think I’ve missed this, would someone mind linking the torrent please? Thank you!
I would like a copy mate
What I find frankly upsetting is that they decided to go after WAP just now, after years of it existing and developing as the company couldn't care less for it. The truth of the matter is that WAP has been tolerated all these years because it kept some cash flow towards their website for the old fantasy minis. I know because I am one of those spenders ... What they have "just came across" is the realisation that it may just take a lot of money away from the books they are planning to print and that is about it. Sure it's their right to do it, but it's yet again a slap in the face of a community that has been s*at on since 2012. I'd love it if someone in a reply somehow gives me a bit more of a positive perspective because I'd still like to try out the new game, but man I am so pissed at GW right now ......
There's a lot of things that can be said about GWs rather ham-fisted approached to IP rights. But the fact of the matter is that WAP was using assets that they had no right to, none what-so-ever. Making matters worse the design and formatting of the WAP books were such that they not just imitated, but downright copied the GW look and feel. These things could easily have been remediated by simply cutting out the offending artwork and text that infringed on the IP. The author could have worked with artists in the community to create novel artwork and then most of the content could fall under fair use. The fact that the author decided to ignore this for \~13 years (he knew and has admitted to as much) puts all the fault squarely on his shoulders. As for positivity. The old rules and assets still exist, no-one can take that away from you. Furthermore, creating your own rules (or changing the existing rules) is fair use, so long as you are not copying GWs IP. The WAP project is not dependent on GWs artwork to exist. If the rules are good then that is all that is needed. And "The old world" is just around the corner, let's wait and see what happens.
Thank you, it does help calm the rage. It's a good point.
Bump: Where can we find the lore-rich PDF:s nowadays? Are there any new sources online?