What’s the point in GW releases?

[dawfyddParticipant 11926xp 1]

Now I’ll admit to having been sat watching the pre-orders page on one or more of my preferred third-party stores at 09:59 on a Saturday morning, maniacally pressing “refresh” so as to not miss out on a pre-order, but that’s just for me, sometimes scoring an extra for friends/parts. The sad truth is that a subsection of the community who are well aware of the desirability of certain boxes will find ways to game the system. Hells, that’s even a big part of why GW introduced both a queuing system on their website, as well as having the standard version of (most) of their books release at the same time as Limited Edition versions.

It’s not all despair though – I thought I’d lucked out of a box of Kasrkin in their standalone release given how they sold out everywhere, ditto The End And The Death Part One, and would have to wait for reprints of both as I couldn’t afford to order them until the day before their release. I happened to pop in to my FLGS the Saturday they released and they had stacks of both on hand.

(it does pay to have a root around as well –  some smaller, less well known web stores can have items you’d not expect to be available knocking around)

[dazlambParticipant 1219xp 1]

I wonder what will happen when the ‘Olde World’ finally gets released as I have not brought anything GW for a while.    The Olde World is GWs chance to get some money out of me again as I have a soft spot for the setting but from the sound of things they have been pushing the FOMO thing more and more for the last decade and I am not sure if I will bother even if the minis are good.   I still like GW models and got a GW goblin army to use in Kings of War 😀

[grantinvanman 2180xp 1]

Here in Canada, I will often hit the online shops in Quebec – the French versions will be sold out, the English – not. It’s not always a truism, but it sometimes works.

I agree with the frustration on the releases. I went to university with author David Annandale, and a hardcover limited edition I wanted and was willing to pay for. Gone in a blink. I’m glad he’s successful, I guess?

The same kind of thing happens with guitars that I happen to be into. A Fender Custom Shop “El Mocambo” edition, made from reclaimed wood from a famous bar in Toronto, didn’t even get ONE copy to Canada. And the master builder was Canadian, ironically. I would have sold half my collection to get one. Didn’t stand a chance.

[poosh 4207xp 1]

These boxes are tied to shifting existing stock that isn’t selling so it’s somewhat arbitrary how many boxes they produce to be fair. It is very odd that they put 2 named characters in Boarding Patrols instead of a VS £130 box set (though the last recent one, “Soulforge King” isn’t selling….) they must have done that on the fly.

GW have outpriced so many who want to enter the hobby that these Patrols sell out because for many they’re the only way to get some GW miniatures at reasonable prices.

[wolfie65Participant 1238xp 0]

@bubbles15 – Reality check: ‘AI’ and government are now one and the same…..

[grantinvanman 2180xp 0]

Break out the tinfoil hats! 

[dazlambParticipant 1219xp 0]

I wonder what the AI will come up with to maximize GWs profits maybe it will be that they just need 42 whale customers spending  116 million dollars (should an evil AI have a American or British Accent) each  and everybody else is surplus to requirements.

[bubbles15Participant 2308xp 0]

Nah wolfie. Artificial intelligence would do away with government. We don’t really have true artificial intelligence systems. As it is, folk think programmed responses are AI. It is not.

[holly 12044xp 1]

Similar debacle yesterday on the website apparently- crashing shortly after 10am and losing lots of customers baskets. When they came back up, all out of stock – but no shortage of books and Lion’el Johnson models at silly prices on eBay. I just think it’s a real shame that they aren’t making enough stock for customers, and their processes to prevent bots and scalpers just aren’t working.

I’m not even trying to get Limited Edition items – just a novel, and even the non-limited novels sell out in minutes.

With prices just going up and up and up and supply issues like these – I’m close to being done with GW completely.

[sundancer 42973xp 1]

“All news is good news” or something. There must be some analysis somewhere that has numbers showing “this maximises profit short term”.

There is no other sane explanation to it.

[dawfyddParticipant 11926xp 3]

Yeah, it really is bonkers. And they rub salt in the wound by having their regular weekend “Come look at the new pre-orders!” email/social media post go out HOURS after most of the it has sold out.

[phaidknott 7023xp 1]

Well you’re trying to “beat the bots” (and the fact that the ordering system and the baskets crashed sounds almost like a DDS attack with the “purchases” by these bots swamping the GW system). There’s a few things that GW could do to dampen down the bot purchases. From the simple “One item per address” (after all what gamer would be likely to buy more than one item, never mind five or ten of them), to commercial software that picks up on rapid purchases from the same IP on your storefront and disallows the transactions (although that would cost GW money, and after all perhaps they don’t care as long as “someone” is buying the minis).

 

I’ve even seen a LGS/GW stockist advertising their stock via eBay on short supplied items for scalper prices. But mostly there’s a small group (probably hobbyists themselves) using bots to buy up “limited” release items (perhaps five or ten copies) using the bot software (it’s pretty easy to configure, and you can start spamming the website 10 minutes BEFORE the pre-orders go live (although that requires them to know what the items EXACT webpage to run before it appears on the GW site (dunno how they manage that, but there obviously a way as the bot software hits loads of commercial webstores)).

 

But perhaps GW needs to look at why they allow multiple customer purchases from the same address (or even better STOP with the whole FOMO/Limited release marketing they do and just release the item individually (no more buying a large box with sixty percent of the miniatures you don’t actually want to gain access to the ones you DO want), which I feel is the BEST way for GW to handle things. I do actually wonder what the percentages here are for Scalpers vs “Normal Customers” (we probably knee jerk with our perception of the problem and it’s not a big as we presume it to be)? All I do know, it’s VERY annoying to pay four to five times the recommended retail price for an item you know GW will not be restocking ever again (as I did with some Necromunda Tactics cards), causing the vendor to no doubt cackle with glee 🙁

[onlyonepinman 18060xp 2]

I’ll just add this to the list of “reasons I don’t buy GW products”

[bexx 2172xp 2]

We are hearing the same thing from more and more of our customers. They’re just fed up with the way they do business.

[solarParticipant 2781xp 0]

3D printing is the way people

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