byram said:
GW blows, they treat there customers like cattle, im just surprised that people havent stayed away from them a long time ago......
Yea, I do agree that the way they treat customers leaves a lot to be desired. My interest began to wane a good few years ago - when 'veteran' gamers were forced into in-store gaming solely on Thursday nights. Oh, and the fact they began to take hubris at my kit-bash conversions using a mixture of non-GW components.
However, I am fairly lucky in the fact that I live close to the GW HQ and have access to the gaming hall - I can just organise a game with a couple of friends and saunter on down pretty-much whenever I want to.
But GW is waring off on me...the rules are far too simple and rather boring for my liking...gone are the days of 2nd Ed 40k with its psychic cards, much more diverse unit profiles, profiles for every weapon, differant movement characteristics for units. The one problem I had with that Ed was that it was given to bouts of Herohammer - characters could (and often where) tooled up to become Gods. Gah, I still remember Bloodthirsters with a straight profile of 10.
Needless to say, SST looks like it could offer me a much more interesting game.
As to your surprise that more people havnt turned away - my theory is that it is because GW have such a near-monopoly on the wargames market people find it hard to turn from such a ready and easy source of a gaming community. Countless clubs exist to play their games in, GW stores have facilities to play their games in and almost everybody who has moved into the non-historical gaming community have played (and probably started playing) GW products.
The same cannot be said for GWs competition. With a much smaller percentage of players playing a certain non-GW game and very few places outside of the home to play it many would be put off turning to an alternate games system. GW has a conveniance factor involved - its much easier to find gamers who play GW games than, say, Rackam or Privateer Press. If you moved into a knew area it would be far easier to find people who played whfb or 40k than Warmachine. This strength guarentees GWs success - they thrust wargaming into a popular hobby and are often the first experience of wargaming many experience. I know this is true in my case.
With such strengths behind it I can see why people are reluctant to turn to alternative products - the community is nowhere near as strong.
Having said that, I am speaking from experience in the UK - the problems with gaming community may not be so pronounced elsewhere.
Either way, if SST is worth playing, which it looks very much like it is, then it is a necessity to foster a strong and close community - without regular players then there is little chance in actually *playing* the game and gaining the support of new gamers. What point is there playing a wargame if there is nobody to play against?
Again, I'm not sure *how* GW would buy heavily into those two companies...
