Ho Hum - What do you think of the new GW website?

[cultofkhaine]

The Games Workshop website use to be a daily visit for me like the DNet site. I use to check out the Flicker Pool, Latest News, New Products etc, it was quite an engaging website with lots of interesting stuff to look at.

The new update of their site has just killed it - the whole site is very product sales based. It is difficult to navigate and has no useful hobby information like it use to.
I find myself still visiting it regularly only to be disappointed with nothing to look at.

What do you think?

[Holt]

I was just thinking that a week or so ago about their website. Long gone are the days of hobby articles and public forums. When I began collecting warhammer GW had a completely separate website for hobby related articles which were great. I spent countless hours reading through there and didn't even know that they had a sales website for quite a while.

I haven't seen their new site, the lack of hobby material and in your face sales put me off going there unless I want to look up the odd product or two. Forums like this one, the ogre stronghold and the demonic legion have a lot more to offer me and so that is where I spend my time now.

[Calisson]

GW is said to have decided to concentrate on selling nice models, and providing rules to play with them.
Anything else, which we enjoyed long ago, is said to bring costs, not sales, and has been removed.

I would say that it is up so such websites as D.net to take charge of the hobby, i.e. whichever requires the time of dedicated fans without generating direct sales.

[Khaleth Blackheart]

Completely agree with you Cultofkhaine, I used to love checking in on the white dwarf daily and other things on the site.
Same with the white dwarf, the weekly version and complete push to sell their new products has killed it IMO. I used to look forward each month to all the hobby articles, short stories and story driven battle reports

[Rork]

GW have never really had a 'good' website - sometimes the content was good (the guides on how to paint Screaming Bells and Doomwheels were great), but their implementation was generally shaky.

I went and had a look at their WH iBook section and the answer as to why there is no P&M content on the website is right there - They are trying to sell people the guides on how to do it. In the age of the internet, I think they're nuts to do that, but as GW's latest CEO briefing says, they don't do market research...!

[Malys the younger]

I was actually thinking today about how you could buy specific bits in the online store. I remember about 10-12 years ago going online and building a specific model by handpicking from various models in the range. Now you have to go to ebay or other sites and hope what you have is on hand. I remember there used to be really good hobby and painting articles. I think Ty Finichio (or something like that) was heavily involved with those. Good times.

[cultofkhaine]

I used to love checking in on the white dwarf daily

Yes this was a daily read for me as well.

I also liked how they had some content local to your region. My local store announced Armies on Parade this year on Face Book and I wanted some additional info - went looking on the main website and could find nothing. I'm thinking this is just going to be run at the store level (bit disappointing)

GW is going backwards very quickly in Australia IMO. They had a couple of really great games days, followed by nothing, The Golden Demon comp was killed, They did have Armies on Parade last year which was great fun to compete in - but it was a total shambles with half the entries (mine included) being posted on their website halfway through the voting period.

Anyway I don't like to rant - my main point was that I think that there website is no longer engaging and as a result is losing my traffic - Good for DNet and other Forums like us!

It's a shame - they could have such a great site if they only listened to their customers.

[Dalamar]

I remember when they had an actual discussion forum on their website... with developers posting regularly...

[Rork]

I remember when they had an actual discussion forum on their website... with developers posting regularly...

And they still managed to use the most awful forum system they could find.