Why do fans hate "The End Times"?

[Hooley]

re Money: Sure they have to make money, but also you have to remember how incompetent GW are as a firm. They don't advertise, they don't ask customers what they want, they overprice everything, the ONE good thing they had in terms of fantasy was their IP.

re story progressing: Some (not all) fans wanted some progression, but not Armageddon! There are hundreds of creatives ways the situation in the fantasy world could have changed.

More fans wanted balanced army books and a main game book that was clear and didn't require multi-page community driven FAQs. The biggest tournaments all had HEAVY comp packs, limiting blatantly overpowered setups. We complain a lot here on ROR about balance because its a natural thing to do but its nothing compared to the imbalance of vanilla warhammer fantasy 8th edition.

I definitely sympathize with the Games Workshop frustration. I appreciate your insight, that provides a lot of clarity to my OP question. Just out of curiosity, do you plan on playing Total War: Warhammer?

[TenTonHammer]

Between you and me mate i thing slayers being made into honor less mercenaries who would just as soon fight for archon for some gold......would kill it for you

[Hooley]

I love WH FB for the same reason Tolkien fans love their world or the STAR WARS fans love theirs.
It's deep rich almost 6 thousand years of iconic lore, that is based on fantasy ciches, real life myths and legends. There are thousands of lists of paper about something that exists and another thousand about why and how.
I sincerely doubt that any reboot of any universe can produce the same experience when you read it - a truly Old World - so I would be really surprised that Sigmarines and the Age of Whatever turn out to be a great read.

Touché. Well, I purchased "The Realmgate Wars" Collection with my "End Times", I'll have to let you know how it pans out.

[Hooley]

Between you and me mate i thing slayers being made into honor less mercenaries who would just as soon fight for archon for some gold......would kill it for you

Oh dear, that doesn't sound too promising...

[Scrilian]

At least the fyreslayer art is badass, but dawi as honorless mercenaries... oh boy

Spoiler:

[Penril]

They are no longer Dawi; they are Duardin™.

Elfs are Aelfs™.

Orcs are Orruks™.

Giants are Gargants™.

Ogres are Ogors™.

Trolls are Troggoths™.

Vampires are Soulblights™.

I would go on but this is really painful...

[Scrilian]

Spoiler:

[Gobtar]

The books:
I personally felt the End Times started off really well...then sank hard, some of the characters were written poorly, there was a TON of deus ex machina, which just took me out of the books, and the struggle and strife were made trivial. They destroyed the world, they had the destination plotted made whatever corner-cuts they could to reach this goal.

Alot of the ending just felt cheap, and the aforementioned Deus Ex Machina was not cleverly done, or purposefully done (like showing the gods actively planned). GW actively takes on the persona of the Chaos god, tearing apart this world with whatever tools they could, and walking away bored when they were done. This $400 dollar equivalent of "Rocks Fall, everyone dies, reroll characters" left me unenthusiastic about its successor, especially with the 80s B-film styled sequel fodder.

Nagash was good read 4/5 would read again, minimal DexMach (Only the battle with night goblins and dwarfs wasguilty of it).
Khaine was somewhat decent, some of the elves were horribly miss-written, some of it was weird, Malekith was pretty solid 2.5/5.
Glottkin: Wot? No seriously, this is where the books lost me 1/5
Archaon: 3/5 the big man was written well, chaos was portrayed well...but it sorta just goes on an acid trip...and the ending was extremely contrived and horribly written INHO.

As for the miniature aspect:
The End Times was seen as this glorious dawn of revitalization that Fantasy desperately needed. 8th had become stale, burdened and bloated with special rules that made all armies similar. Gone was the importance of the average statline (S3 T3 I3 A1). The entry level of the game was too high because you needed so many more models to play the game.

Lords and Heroes came back as a way to mitigate that, and powerful magic was indeed cool and interesting, new models were on the horizon and Fantasy players all around the world were excited for the next chapter. As storm of chaos before it, End times was seen as the herald of a new edition. How wrong we were...

The End times took a world 30+ years in the making, and killed it. Everyone who bought new armies/ models for the end times, felt betrayed, and these books were seen as nothing more than a money grab, while they set up their new game...Age of Sigmar.

The aesthetic of the old world has been lost, and its crime which warranted this death sentence is wrought of something so infuriatingly trivial. Copyright. Games-Workshop lost a lawsuit with Chapter-house studios (a creature of their own creation), something that has caused GW to make sure every product and item can be copy righted. "the Imperial Guard" became Astra Militarium, it's logical from a business point of view but its also contrive.

Enter Fantasy: Like 40k after it, Fantasy is a world that has everything, fills every niche, based on real history, this reality is creatively your high-school dnd game where you want to put everything in it and have it all work together.

The races are based off of real world elements but transformed in a cool way (this makes it easy to identify and pick favorites). Most fantasy worlds have all the same features, it's the subtle differences that get amplified and the mood that resonates with the audience.

This is the problem, the same tropes that all fantasy worlds have are tropes that cannot be bound by royalties and stamped with a copyright logo. Orcs need to be Orrucks, Dark elves need to be called Shadowkin...

The irony is real here, was that Chapter-house studios was filling a niche that was left by GW, coming out with models that worked with 40k that didn't have models yet. Rather than coming out with superior models, or making sure such a niche no longer exist, they went the corporate method, and when it came back to bite them in the ass. The players ultimately suffered for it. GW has done far more harm to themselves than Chapter-house could have ever done.

Why do fans hate "the End Times" because it's a the screaming violent murder of a much beloved world, and an end of an era, all done as clinically yet as hastily as possible. "The End Times" will forever be the tombstone of Warhammer Fantasy.

[TenTonHammer]

Even with the destruction of the world and the creation of the new one

malekith is still living with his mother and is basically the principle skinner of warhammer

one good thing that came out of the end times

GW/black libary told the story of archaon

[Grobbok]

Idk, End Times Volumes and Novels are great.

ok, but one is bad, the whole world is Kbum, destroyed!