Big WD overhaul

[RevEv]

"increased content" - something would be better than nothing. Right now White Dwarf has nowhere to go but up - it has already reached rock bottom in terms of content.

Oh, I don't know!

I treated myself once to a WD while away from home on business. I was really looking forward to a good evening reading it in my hotel room but made the mistake of opening the magazine in the restaurant. The content was so poor, nothing more than pictures of new models (a true catalogue), that I had scanned through the whole magazine in the time between ordering a pizza and said meal arriving.

[AlexHolker]

Since my previous post was removed...

There are good ways and bad ways to add content to White Dwarf. Things like short stories and Index Astartes-style encyclopaedia articles are good. Decent battle reports, tactics and painting articles are good. New rules are fine, as long as they are either purely optional or remain readily available once the magazine sells out (and no, it doesn't count if you require the ownership of a specific brand of tablet). Limiting the availability of rules for unlimited availability models is bad.

[The bearded one]

I'm gonna wait and see. The rumoured pitch sounds good, more or less what we wanted (getting rid of the 'glorified catalogue' format). Let's hope it turns out like that in reality

[Reinholt]

Since my previous post was removed...

There are good ways and bad ways to add content to White Dwarf. Things like short stories and Index Astartes-style encyclopaedia articles are good. Decent battle reports, tactics and painting articles are good. New rules are fine, as long as they are either purely optional or remain readily available once the magazine sells out (and no, it doesn't count if you require the ownership of a specific brand of tablet). Limiting the availability of rules for unlimited availability models is bad.

A few quick thoughts:

1 - If you want people to pay for something, it typically needs to include something that is a benefit for them. The core reason WD sales have fallen off a cliff (at least from the numbers I poached from a few GW stores) is that it is primarily composed of pictures of models and advertisements for said models. Those are things of value to GW (they can attempt get you to buy more models), but not of value to the customer (guys, we already know you are selling the models, thanks). It is, shall we say, unusual at best to attempt to get customers to pay money for you to advertise to them.

2 - I think when people speak of the golden age of white dwarf, while the timeframe might vary somewhat, there are a couple of common themes that drop out: rules were included in the magazine, hobby articles were found beyond just the very basic "here is how we made the studio army that looks exactly like the box cover" type, and the worlds in which GW games were played were expanded.

3 - Ultimately, the other problem is that magazines are limited run. If GW is going to put rules in WD, you run into unavailability problems (as they did back in the day); either they will need to produce chapter approved books at end of year or publish the rules online (welcome to the 1990s!) after some point in time. Or, even better, if people have a subscription to white dwarf, produce PDFs of the magazine and have them available on the website. Worst case, yes, some people will steal them... but if you still have at least some advertising in there and are getting people fired up about the hobby, why should you be upset that people are stealing what will make them buy more models?

Just saying.

[Radium]

We'll see if this actually happens. Would be great if it did though!

[avien]

I am cautiously optimistic about this. It was background pieces in WD articles of old that inspired a lot of my old conversions, one off squads or even the odd campaign or two... And some of those one offs turned into full armies.

My subscription expires in a few months so who knows, I may actually have a reason to renew it, something I would not have anticipated given the content for the last couple of years.

I'm just hoping it isn't a facelift with no actual change.

[arthurfallz]

I would like to see it reduced to 5 issues a year, rather than a monthly issue. There's no need for a monthly magazine if they can't fill it with significant content. If it's going to be a 12/year magazine, they need to look at expanding the scope to non-GW products (reviews of movies, other games, RPGs).

Battle reports need to be play by play. I love reading those, and so do a lot of people. They are also great examples of rules, a place to demo new scenarios and campaigns. This just seems obvious to me - provide faqs as people play, make each WD a micro-rules update. They could even grab contentious armies and demonstrate how they think they're balanced or fun.

Articles on modelling and the ease of it are always great to see. Colouring patterns, interesting conversions and the like.

I would love to buy a magazine dedicated to my hobby, but I refuse to pay for so little content.

[Ponge]

Might get me interested in WD again, I haven't bought one in ages since the content just doesn't justify the price.

[Erazmus_M_Wattle]

It would be nice if they did update the magazine. I hope they go for a nice glossy cover like proper magazines. Too much flicking and the ink comes off the cover. I mean come on.

More content would be nice too. A bit of variation among their articles to include the oldies like me other than only the articles aimed at 12 year olds. That I feel is the missing ingredient from the good old days.

...but I'll believe it when I see it. I just don't think the higher ups have the guts or wisdom to actually allow too much of a radical change. The old guard headed up by the likes of Kirby are just getting too old and set in their ways now. Not young and adventurous like they used to be.

[Replicant253]

Good news if true but i am slightly concerned that we might return to the days of far too many rules updates cropping up and becoming unweildy to keep track of.

The best thing they could do is to return to fully embracing their extensive catalogue of games. That would make WD a true GW hobby magazine because at the heart of the problem for WD is that they have run out of ideas due to their blind focus on the three core games (one of which has been withering on the vine).

Bolster your source material to include the specialist games and all the other fun games GW has done and WD would be a fantastic monthly feast of gaming material.

[loveless]

The cost of the magazine is absurd. They need to add in a hell of a lot more content to make it worthwhile, and I doubt any change will cover it. The rare times that the mag does include content (like the recent Daemon issue), it vanishes from shelves everywhere within minutes (over here, at least).

I can't be bothered to pay extra to get "no ads" when every other page is a "Hey! We still sell [model x]! Go buy one! Or seven!" - they'll never let advertising come into their magazines, though, which is diappointing given that the extra cost is passed along to the customer.

Frankly, for the cost, unless this changes into something the size of Newtype, I can't see it ever being worthwhile.

[Commissar Merces]

I don't know if I can be won back...I actually dug through some of my older white dwarfs from a few years ago (like 4-5) and was stunned by the detail in battle reports (with non studio armies!) and the hobby sections. Chapter Approved too! If White Dwarf actually went back to this format, I would probably start buying them again instead of flipping through them at my GW then putting them down.

I almost made a bet with my GW manager that if there were less than 25 pages of advertisements, I would buy a battle force.

[The bearded one]

I think you can see it becoming more worthwhile than it currently is though, even if it would still not be worth buying, it would at least be a bit better than it used to be these past years. If you were to represent the 'worthwhile-ness' ( ) on a graph, it'd still be in the negative, but at least not comically far negative.

[Commissar Merces]

Honestly, the magazine right now is so poor it doesn't surprise me sales are down. I mean it really goes beyond poor into the realm of a tragic comedy.

Improvements that must happen to make it worth ANY cost.

1. Turn by turn battle reports with maps
2. Non studio armies in battle reports
3. LESS than 10 pages of advertisement
4. Chapter approved
5. Short stories
6. Scenarios
7. good articles/battle reports/modeling advice/REAL painting guides for 40k, Fantasy, and LoTR every month. Doesn't have to be all those categories at once but at least 1-2 of them per game.
8. Fire their editor
9. Make rule editions (SoB, Daemons) available online
10. Less pictures, more artwork

[sigur]

Sounds very interesting indeed. Since about the release of 8th edition WHFB GW really try their best to up their game in most every regard. They think about what they're doing now and really try to be the best. Say what you will about GW but they are doing their best now and aren't afraid to make changes. That alone is commendable. I haven't bought a WD in many years - last one I bought was the one with the Black Templars Scout on the cover I think and before thatz it already was quite a few years since I got the magazine last. What mostly drives me off is the prohibitively high price. It's more expensive than Wargames Illustrated but the latter always somehow inspires me to try out new stuff. Not that WI was the epitomy of wargaming magazine greatness. In the end though it's not about me of course. If WD improves and becomes an interesting magazine that's great and I'm all for it, wether I buy it or not.

[synapse]

im actually thinking with issue 400 coming up soon(ish), maybe theyre thinking of 'rebooting' it, starting fresh from issue 1 to further distance itself from the old run? unlikely, but the approach of this landmark issue might be the fulcrum for this change. guess well find out soon enough

[sigur]

Starting from issue number 1 again would have no merit what so ever, only downsides. This sounds like something GW would have done in 2000 - pretending to become a new company doing something new and slapping everybody in the face who until then (or a few years prior to that) liked what they had done so far.

[Odin]

"increased content" - something would be better than nothing. Right now White Dwarf has nowhere to go but up - it has already reached rock bottom in terms of content.

I think it's been there for nearly a decade.

[logan054]

Honestly, the magazine right now is so poor it doesn't surprise me sales are down. I mean it really goes beyond poor into the realm of a tragic comedy.

Improvements that must happen to make it worth ANY cost.

1. Turn by turn battle reports with maps
2. Non studio armies in battle reports
3. LESS than 10 pages of advertisement
4. Chapter approved
5. Short stories
6. Scenarios
7. good articles/battle reports/modeling advice/REAL painting guides for 40k, Fantasy, and LoTR every month. Doesn't have to be all those categories at once but at least 1-2 of them per game.
8. Fire their editor
9. Make rule editions (SoB, Daemons) available online
10. Less pictures, more artwork

And thats why I use to buy white dwarf, I would love to see chapter approved return, I would love to see rules for alternate armylists using existing armybook/codexs.

[Sheena Easton]

I would be happy with a return to the days of WD140 -200ish where content was split between systems, battle reports were actual battle reports with many small pictures highlighting important parts, detailed maps and wonderful narrative making it a story - like say WD155 which introduced The Skull Wand Of Kaloth (on a Shaman who was incinerated before he could use it!) WD157 which has that brilliant 3,000 point O&G vs Empire report that introduced Azhag The Slaughterer as the named Warboss facing off against the venerable Empire General Otto Blutcher who took to battle with his customary Hammer Of Might (it was inconceivable that he would not!) or WD159 with Gorblum The Magnificent, The Great Devourer in WD189, Abaddon vs Thrugg in WD200, any of the Epic battle reports... plus the rules articles, background articles, painting guides that described the techniques used, bits of fiction, artwork, hobby articles (making terrain, non-cheesy tactics, how to theme lists, why big units were good in a time when 10 with full command was the norm), original Tale Of 4 Gamers.......... back then the contributors at all stages (Developers, Sculptors, 'Eavy Metal, Artists, Editorial Team) had a clear passion for what they were doing. Now? I'm amazed any of them actually buy the models or play the games!

In short, I want a magazine with something of substance I can read and some artwork to drool over. If I want a catalogue, I can get one for free from Argos.