Why I dislike Games Workshop

Feel free to ignore this post. It's written in the grips of a hangover, and thus it probably makes no sense.

Wargaming is a well known side of tabletop gaming. The flipside of the coin to Roleplaying, if you will. Rather then a focus upon the individual and their efforts to save the world, Wargaming casts it's focus wider, aiming to recreate the feeling of massive battles, all the while depersonalising the tragedy of such events. However, I play the Total War games and love them, so I lose all right to criticise them for depersonalising mass slaughter.

Games Workshop is the Wargaming company I've had most of my experience with. When my brother was in his early teens he was bitten by the bug, and loved his Ork army in Warhammer 40,000. It was a brighter era, back in 2nd Edition Warhammer 40K. The Squigs were funny, crazy little muchroom monsters. The Gretchin were sneaky little gits who stole their weaponry so they could join in the biffs and couldn't threaten anything. Ork guns were as likely to blow up their owner as destroy a tank in one shot, and just as likely to patter out a weak spray of bullets that couldn't dent paper. But, most importantly, it realised it was a game, and as such didn't take itself immensely seriously. Each race fulfilled a niche, not just in the gaming aspect, but in what it provided to the players. If you wanted a deadly serious threat to the world, you'd play as Chaos. If you wanted super soldiers killing everyone despite being outnumbered three to one, you'd play as Space Marines. If you wanted weak-ace humans who's only real bonus is numbers and tanks, you'd go Imperial Guard. Orks provided the comic relief.

Then about the beginning of 3rd edition, everything changed. The focus shifted from providing entertaining stuff for the players, to milking the gamers. The rules now required you to have a large number of troops, even in your basic Space Marine force (the "only a few troopers but each of them highly powerful" army). If you wanted your force to be competitive, you had to buy more basic troopers. Oh, and all the rules. And the codex for your chosen race. And sometimes you were unlucky and they released a revised codex.

The charm and light-heartedness of some of it (namely the Orks) all vanished under a wave of grim, gritty and darkity McDarkdark. I'm not stupid, even at the young age I was reading about all this in 2nd edition I realised how dark the universe was. But it wasn't all dark. The aforementioned Orks were mostly lighthearted, with stories about the docs nailing pieces of metal to an Ork in the shape of an arm, and it working (when the Ork just wanted the wax cleaned out from his ear). Now the 'Docs' of the Orks are grim and threatening evil doers, despite the entire race still retaining their originally comical method of speach and terms. It's as much of a strange contradiction as the latter Harry Potter book's grim setting being populated with "muggles".

I have to admit, having browsed through the 3rd edition rulebook (I believe they're up to 5th, now), I don't mind some of the modifications they made to the rules (such as the changes to the way saving throws work). But it would be willful ignorance to believe Games Workshop altered the rules to focus more on large scale 'army' conflicts over small scale skirmishes (as it was originally designed to be) out of anything other then an interest in forcing you to spend more money.

"Of course they want more money!" you cry, annoyed at me, "they're a business!". I direct your attention to the wikipedia page for "Andy Chambers" (I'm not gonna get the link, you can do that yourself mates). It states that he was the individual who tilted the company away from being gamer orientated (in other words, looking out for the gamers first) to being business orientated. Read up on how he did that.

Flat out withdrawing support for games that didn't provide regular income (Blood Bowl, etc, despite the fact they're now making a computer game about that particular board game).
No longer focusing on their previous loyal customers and providing for them, instead turning their focus onto the younger kids with more disposable income (I.E. Their parents).

Any company that changes it's intended audience like that gets no sympathy from me. Yes, I understand company's are in it to make money, that doesn't mean I have to like their decisions.