My First Time Learning about the Warhammer Fantasy End Times

[@Zectorman]

as an old hammer fan....the end times really made me upset for a variety of reasons, some people had their cool moments but so many story lines were totally dropped or sidelined and caharacters unceremoniously killed off in droves.

[@texasfuneral4787]

I just got into this awesome world only to watch end times and be sorely disappointed. I didn't even finish it. The way the characters reacted were like their total war AI counterparts on easy mode while Chaos had four pro players.

[@TheGoodLuc]

At least we got wonderful Total War games, so we can change the history. But still, but still...

[@mp5284]

Skaven do follow chaos and are creatures of chaos. It’s just that the great horned rat isn’t one of the four big chaos gods. He is a separate chaos god who only uses the Skaven whereas the other big 4 gods all will try and get anyone to follow them. So they have an antagonistic relationship with the normal chaos followers as the horned rat wants to eat the world and doesn’t want to share that experience with the big four

[@atpsoldat6108]

The Great Horned Rat did replace Slaanesh as one of the Chaos God in age of Sigmar but that's another story.

[@orben-amos6172]

​@@atpsoldat6108he is more of a part timer for slannesh until GW will bring them from that prison they are in. Since we have cults of plesure in AOS.

[@TheMaxCloud]

@@atpsoldat6108 WAIT! WAT?!?!?!?!?!?? THE HORNED RAT IS THAT BIG IN THE SIGMAR STUFF?!?!?!? TELL ME THAT MEANS SLANEESH FOLLOWERS DONT EXIST ANYMORE; I HATE THOSE FUCKERS SO MUCH.

[@TheMaxCloud]

@@orben-amos6172 PART TIMER!?!? Goddamnit.

[@coryszabo3843]

Man he didn't even talk about the stuff they did to Bretonnia. King Louen Leoncoeur got killed by the Black Knight Mallobaude (Who had made a deal with Arkhan to become a vampire). The Green Knight was revealed to be be Giles, the first king of Bretonnia. Giles slapped his ass. Louen was magically found alive and jsut gave his crown to Giles. Arlhan kidnapped the Fey Enhantress Morgana... and she was sacrificed for the revival of Nagash. It was then later revealed that the Lady of the Lake, was the Elven Godess of Prophecy and she had seen the end times coming. So she made Bretonnia and the Grail Knights (basically fantasy space marines) to stop the vicious cycle of Chaos destroying the world, it reforming, and then them destroying again. OH BUT THAT PLAN DIDN'T WORK. So she went with plan B. As the old world crumbled, she evacuated all of Bretonnia, her daughter and her boyfriend into a realm that CHAOS COULD NOT TOUCH. To await there until the new world came, so that they can help the survivors rebuild. Oh whats this Mannfred got captured by Bel'akor? In order to save his slimey ass... he told Bel'akor about Bretonnia's hidey hole. Bretonnia survivors and the angel army of super soldier Grail Knights where then killed off screen... ZERO SURVIVORS... not a even a mention of them YET in Age of Sigmar. Sorry, as a Bretonnia fan... still butt hurt over this.

[@TheLegitWeebs]

Yikes. Any character getting killed off screen is bummer, let alone an entire faction.

[@lich109]

Yeah, not to mention Chaos knowing that realm existed shouldn't have made a difference since they shouldn't know where it is or how to get into it.

[@gamerman782]

Would be cool if AOS had a Bretonnia/Wood Elf mixed models, like Wood Elves dressed like knights riding armored stags and human archers dressed like rangers (Could even base their look and lore on the Dunedain from Lord of the Rings), and so on.

[@theamazingjack1168]

He probably didn’t mention them because pancreasnowork is not a fan of bretonnia don’t know why tho

[@Dartonus]

So the big thing with Fantasy's decline and death is that it was the result of consistent mismanagement over an extended period of time, paired with a CEO who did not understand the market realities. Fantasy was, at one point, the big earner for GW (I saw someone citing one of Games Workshop's financial reports from... I want to say it was 2003/2004 or so? that listed the WHFB starter box at the time as outselling the entire Space Marine range. If we apply the "Space Marines outsold all of Fantasy" logic to this, then GW should have killed 40k at that point. But they didn't, because that would have been *incredibly stupid*). Fantasy was generally doing solidly up until the end of 6th edition (which is quite well regarded among oldhammer fans, in my experience). It had a couple weird Games Workshop quirks, but those were the case for 40k as well at the time - notably, not every army was guaranteed updates each edition. You could potentially go through an entire rules update for the tabletop without receiving any new models or rules for your army. Because GW would prioritize updates for popular armies, this potentially left less-popular armies in the dust - Dogs of War, for instance, did not get a 6th edition army book (and in fact would never receive another army book, with the 5th edition book being their final one), and Bretonnia only got a 6th edition book (no 7th or 8th). This is a *slight* issue from a financial point of view because it means that some players may possibly sit entire editions out in terms of purchasing. If you're a Bretonnia player with a complete army, you don't have anything new to purchase. However, overall, things were fairly good at this point. Enter 7th Edition. 7th Edition brought along with it a new army book (that is, updated rules and new minis) for the Daemons of Chaos, which was wildly, horrendously overpowered. This warped the meta to an obscene degree, as the competitive scene rapidly became dominated by three armies: Daemons of Chaos, Dark Elves (who were able to run a list that was tailor-made to kill the dominant Daemon list at the cost of having some glaring weaknesses that non-Daemon armies could potentially target), and the occasional dark horse running a list made to counter the Dark Elf list. On the casual side of things, the absolute overwhelming supremacy of Daemons was simply not enjoyable to play against, and people started to play the game less and the dominant advice for prospective newbies became "wait out this edition, next edition should fix things". (At this point, in the context of the horrendously unbalanced rules directly hindering players from picking up or continuing to play Warhammer Fantasy, I feel I should quote the CEO at the time, who infamously said in one investor report that "we are not a game company, we deal in the jewel-like objects of wonder that some call Citadel Miniatures", and proudly stated that Games Workshop did no market research or marketing because such things are "otiose in a niche") 8th edition came along remarkably fast (3 years after 7th, as opposed to 7th edition coming 6 years after 6th), and is generally believed to have been rushed out the door in a response to the absolute game-warping dominance of Daemons. It does technically fix the problem with Daemons, but it brings along another, much bigger problem: the ruleset overwhelmingly favors and incentivizes large blocks of troops. If you're looking at starting a new army at this point, and trying to do a competitive or strong army, you'll want huge amounts of basic infantry, massive sizes like 100 Skaven Clanrats in a single unit. This means picking up 5(!) boxes of infantry to make a single block of troops in your army when you could be running 4 or more such blocks. This is where Fantasy's reputation for having an absurdly high buy-in comes from, primarily. Unsurprisingly, this does very little to help new players get into the game, as they're now looking at dauntingly massive purchase requirements to pick up the game. At the same time, the ruleset still being pretty unfun means that existing players continue to sit things out. So, along comes the End Times, and while I had checked out of the game by that point it apparently had a decent amount of positive buzz to it at first - stuff for the event reportedly sold out quickly and players were generally optimistic about the new minis they were getting, the rules for the special campaign, and the huge lore changes. Speculation abounded as to what everything would mean for 9th edition - with Nagash conquering Nehekhara, were they rolling Vampire Counts and Tomb Kings back into being a single Undead faction, stuff like that - at least until it suddenly became horrifyingly clear this was Games Workshop making one last cash grab for Fantasy before they torched the setting and ran for the hills. In the aftermath, 1st edition Age of Sigmar came out, and it was *atrocious*. It had egregiously bad rules - it no longer used a points system and instead balanced armies via the extremely effective method of "talk it out with your opponent and come to an agreement on what's fair to bring". For a one-two punch with this disaster of a rollout, they provided rules for the now-discontinued armies of Tomb Kings and Bretonnia, nominally as an olive branch of "we don't sell your stuff any more but you can use these rules at least", which had incredibly dumb joke rules (if you were playing Bretonnia, you could get a bonus to your Charge rolls by pretending to ride an invisible horse and making horse noises) that just rubbed salt in the wound. Sales did not improve. Then, the old CEO got booted from the position and was replaced with the current CEO (the old guy stayed on as an advisor for a year, I believe). Suddenly things start massively changing for the better - they roll out "Start Collecting" boxes that offer a full, albeit small, playable army for a decent discount, they change policies so that every army gets updated rules and new minis each edition so nobody gets left too far in the dust, they start releasing PDFs to update rules and points so they can fix broken stuff without needing to wait *three years* for the next core ruleset update. 40k flourishes, Age of Sigmar starts to take off as it gets a 2nd edition that adds important stuff like "Points Values for units so the players don't have to eyeball/gut feeling balance". Could these changes, if implemented sooner, have saved Fantasy? I don't know - maybe not by the time of 8th, but early into 7th I think there's a real shot. However, we'll never know. At least with the release of The Old World I can write up this gigantic, way-too-long (I apologize for that) effortpost while I wait for glue to dry on this Ushabti. TL;DR: A consistent series of bad rules that made the game unfun and required new players to spend unreasonable amounts of money to get a usable army killed the flow of new players while steadily driving off older players, because the CEO at the time didn't believe in good rules and viewed the game aspect of GW's products as secondary to the miniature figurines.

[@TheLegitWeebs]

No need to apologize! This was a fascinating read... that I feel like I've already read before when it comes to companies making decisions based on profit rather than making a better product for their audience. Unfortunately a common story nowadays in the game industry (rip Bioware, a shell of what you once were). As you said, we'd never know for sure, but I do think that things would have turned out much differently had the direction of the company shifted much earlier. Maybe End Times would have happened at some point anyways, but it would actually be a cool event that created a multiverse or whatever if they really wanted to sell new factions and what not. Regardless, I'm glad that things seem to be looking up for now. Warhammer is cool, and I want to see more people get into it.

[@edim108]

@@TheLegitWeebs Bad management seems to be the most common thread in the entertainment industry failures nowadays. The reason Cyberpunk 2077 release was such a dumpsterfire was due to bad management on multiple levels, with the higher ups lying to stakeholders about the state of the game, to which the stakeholders replied with pressure to release the game by Christmass bc "it only needed some minor details". It's how we end up with Hazbro sending the fucking Pinkertons (the bad guys from RDR2) to raid the guy that accidentally got a box of then yet unreleased Magic the Gathering cards. It's how Tripple A games became a synonym for overpriced garbage filled with microtransactions, lootboxes, premium currencies, tons of bugs and general sense of "why am I even playing this, I'm not even having fun, this is a chore not entertainment" and it took Baldur's Gate 3 to remind so many people that gaming can be so much more! Corporations are a tumor that drains life out of everything it touches. Happened with music, with movies, with games, everything!

[@Venomousse]

Yeah, the context for the financial troubles is important. It felt like towards the end Fantasy was being treated as the red-headed step child at GW. It was not well cared for so it wasn't selling, and because it wasn't selling it was not well cared for. It's obvious to me that there's always been a lot of interest in the setting and the game itself, they just needed to do something cool with it again. I remember when Warhammer: Age of Reckoning (the MMORPG) came out and there was a bunch of interest from new people but 7th was the edition at the time and it simply wasn't great. Then came the problems with 8th as well. Coinciding with the limping wargame, the roleplaying game also had its weakest edition (that being 3rd). Despite that, several great video games released in the years to follow and the 4th edition of the RPG turned out very popular too. But getting into the wargame was simply not feasible for most people for quite a few years even before they blew it up. I refuse to believe it was inevitable.

[@Dartonus]

@@TheLegitWeebs Your mention of "Maybe End Times would have happened at some point anyways" reminds me of one of the more baffling aspects of the whole debacle: namely, the death of Fantasy seemed to come out of nowhere within the company, with certain teams being completely blindsided by the end of the product line. Specifically, GW's premium miniature division, Forge World (they specialized in more elaborate resin miniatures that generally have higher quality and more detail but need more prep work to assemble), was working on a series of expansion books for Fantasy at the time. There was one planned for each of the four Chaos Gods, and only the first one ended up coming out - Tamurkhan: the Throne of Chaos, a book focusing on Nurgle, which added several units and characters for both Chaos Warriors and the Empire, and also added a new list for Chaos Dwarfs (the Legion of Azgorh), marking the first new list they had gotten in several editions. If you recall the Chaos Dwarf DLC trailer for Total Warhammer, about half of the units in their roster come from this supplement book, and the upcoming Throne of Decay DLC that will be adding content for Nurgle, The Empire, and Dwarfs is widely expected to be adding Tamurkhan to the game along with his rival Elspeth von Draken (a Death Wizard with the Empire who rode a dragon). With the abrupt death of Fantasy, this halted all plans for these expansion books, and the remaining three books in the series were never released (this is also partly because Alan Bligh, the writer at Forge World who was the brains behind many of Forge World's expansion books, passed away around this time).

[@gamerman782]

Dogs of War did get a 6th Edition update, although it mainly just added it so that you could make a Dogs of War army without the named units.

[@Nightmare_52]

end times ended in 2015 when the last book released same year blood bowl 2 and vermintide released, some of the most beloved games out there for warhammer fantasy and a year later total war warhammer 1 released and you know how that blew up funny how that works huh?

[@TheLegitWeebs]

Fantasy has a lot of potential, but I guess GW didn't realize it at the time.

[@Nightmare_52]

This is true, but the fact they decided to do the worst possible ending to the fantasy world is almost criminal, almost every character was done dirty even the supposed bad guys, mannfred backstabbing SUPREME and thorgrim leaving the door open for snickers is barely a drop in the ocean of salt I have for these books

[@TheLegitWeebs]

@@Nightmare_52 I'm scared to learn about what other ridiculous situations happened then, if SUPREME getting backstabbed is just a drop in the ocean.

[@Nightmare_52]

Think of it like a teenager making their first story with lots of characters, finishing it with their favourite characters (chaos) stomping everyone else super easily because they are the main characters and they always win, combined with like 50 plot twists to try and make sense of it all which just makes none of it make sense

[@edim108]

@@Nightmare_52 And then in AoS they realized the mistakes they made and desperately tried fixing them years after the fact... At least Malekith being the one true phoenix king got retconed and Nagash is a more active presence. I'm not coping, you're coping! AoS is cool but the taint of how it got to be will forever linger and drag it down despite its quality which sucks on multiple levels.

[@DmitrijDubinskij]

Don't know if anyone mention or explained "why skaven joined chaos?". The reason is as sudden and stupid, to say the least. The Horned Rat (yes THE BIG BOSS of all skaven) came to Skavenblight (skaven capital) and sat on his rightful throne (their god actually manifested before them) and just said "hey little ones, there's this dude named Archaon, he's really chill and knows what he's doing, you must join forces with him and help him with everything he needs to be done". And every skaven gladly started working with Archaon. So yea..."big claps"...

[@TheLegitWeebs]

That's... a reason I guess...

[@sherlocksmuuug6692]

"Yo rat dudes, the Four Ruinous Powers are pretty chill, maybe you should like...join them or something." Truly one of the plots of all time.

[@vardiganxpl1698]

Archaon be like: "Why are you all....helping me?" Every Skaven on the planet: "Because you truly are, the Warhammer Fantasy: End Times"

[@moonrock115]

The end times was full of insane events - all of them mental. Balthasar Gelt just took up Necromancy because Manfred told him to and it got him exiled from the Empire despite him trying to use Necromancy to help strengthen the wall of light he made. The Skaven LITERALLY bring the moon down to destroy everyone, so other Skaven blow up the moon which causes meteors of pure Warpstone to begin raining down. The Slaan nearly kill themselves by using all thier power to redirect most of the falling debris to land in Lustria, which weakens the Lizardmen enough for Clan Pestilens to wipe the floor with them…until they too are crushed by the Warpstone meteors, so silver lining lol You’ll be pleased to know that at least Gor-Rok went down fighting atop a literal mountain of Skaven corpses, back to back with N’kai the Wanderer as the jungle around them burned.

[@boodstain]

The thing with the end times too is that it was originally going to be up to the community who won, people played and voted on who should win and the GREENSKINS of all people won, but GW wanted Chaos to win they just took it back and gave Chaos the W. All so they could destroy the setting and replace it with a 40K look-alike contest. (Even those who like Age of Sigmar recognize it was created solely because of the popularity of 40K over Fantasy.)

[@TheLegitWeebs]

That's wack. Why even ask the community in the first place then?!

[@ildiran]

If I remember right there was a GW writer who was actively bragging on twitter that he was getting to kill the fantasy universe to 'stick it to the fans' like a real asshole

[@texasfuneral4787]

That's pathetic

[@barraki97]

My boy is laughing during this video but i can still hear the pain in his voice, still great vid Doctor PS: The Lizardmen aren't dead they just used their spaceship temples to go to the stars and ate them

[@Brightmoon01]

One of WFB's biggest issues, from a commercial standpoint, was the cost of entry. This has always been something of a problem for Games Workshop games, but it was especially the case in Fantasy. Where in 40k you could get by easily enough -to begin with - with one of the 'Start playing' boxes and two or three other boxes of model(s), Fantasy struggled with not providing enough models in a single box for what the game intended for you to play with - where 40k often expected you to use smaller squads as one unit, Fantasy expected full regiments. Extreme examples I can comment on (UK-based) include Dark Elf Witch Elves, which came in 10 per box for £35 each, and were best used in blocks of 30 to a single unit. Even on the less extreme end: Lizardmen came in ~20 models per box for £25 each, but were likewise best used in blocks of 30+, with multiple of such blocks on the field. Even with the spike in interest that games like Vermintide and WH:TW would bring in, I sadly doubt the IP would have sold that much better in the tabletop space unless there was a major overhaul in either their pricing, or the rules, to bring it back under control. They chose the latter. For as much as I dislike the End Times and AoS, they were needed.

[@SerLoinSteak]

I got into Warhammer Fantasy through TW:WH, specifically WH2. I thought "hey this is a cool setting based on a lot of established lore, I wonder what the deal is with this setting." So I hunted for lore and went down a similar rabbit hole that you're going down now and it pissed me off so much. I was still in high school when End Times happened so I never got the chance to get into Fantasy before they pulled the plug. This was back in 2015. Not long after that, Vermintide 2 and TWWH were released to some pretty massive success, so much so that TWWH made two more games with WH3 having come out just a couple years ago. I love the setting and I do think that GW just needed to hold off for just a little longer and then they'd have gotten a rush of new fans that could have saved WH Fantaxy, but End Times happened. Settra and a few others got cool plot points and everyone else got weird retcons or did things because suddenly the plot didn't care about whether their character would do something like that

[@TheLegitWeebs]

Companies being companies unfortunately. The setting is awesome, so thank goodness they're bringing it back.

[@greeny3637]

I had to learn this Now you have been passed the cursed knowledge of the end times I am sorry for your loss of brain cells

[@TheLegitWeebs]

I appreciate the sentiment.

[@johannesreus5154]

As someone who joined during the era of total war warhammer its really hard to believe this setting lost money. I simply wasn't aware it existed at all and that's probably the issue. They didn't market the damn thing outside of their own bubble

[@TheLegitWeebs]

Agreed. There were better ways they could have handled this, but what's done is done.

[@chill-lady-brook]

The video on Thorgrim Grudgebearer is good too, but also painful since pancreas goes into more details about his assassination.

[@liambridgeman4529]

Best think now , the old world is back and it’s great , brets and tk are fully recovered

[@hoshi314]

the way Skaven destroyed Lustria (forcing the lizardmen to fuck off into space) is actually really cool. Grey seers want more warpstone, so they dragged the green magical moon morslieb near the "earth". Clan Skryre, wanting more warpstone AND not to get upstaged by the Grey Seers NUKED THE MOON! and if the Slann (Lord Kroak IIRC) did nothing about it the world would end a lot quicker.

[@nicholassulfaro1727]

Pre-watch comment: Oh no, oh no sweet bean. There’s a reason we don’t talk about the end times.

[@wintersking4290]

Yes, WHO WROTE THIS?!?? is the entire feeling of reading it.

[@haydennoble9253]

“I want you to feel hope, so I can crush it.”

[@MantismanTM]

Neferata & Khalid 1st Battle - We fight to kill each other. 2nd Battle - We fight to kill each other. 3rd Battle - We fight to kill each other. Sylvania World is Ending - We kiss and hold each other.

[@Kroq-gar]

Lizardmen got shafted *hard* during the end times

[@TheLegitWeebs]

Not my scaly boys!

[@Venomousse]

You think that's bad? My favourite character is Skarsnik and they forgot he existed!

[@draconomega]

I mean, at least they saved 3/4 of the world from a moon and *ACTUALLY* *SURVIVED* to AoS. They didnt had their lore butchered to hard, and while they did get a tad bulshitted with the plagues, Krokgar did kick skrolk on the snoot before he got bailed out.

[@LordGarryk]

11:08 maybe if it was any of the other character but by the time skarsnik was literally an archon of one of the Orcs gods

[@brotquel1592]

On the positive, the models released for End Times were incredible (seriously, check Archaon, the Glottkins, the verminlord, the stormvermins, NAGASH...) , on the negative... literally everything else.

[@TheLegitWeebs]

oof I have to agree though that those models look amazing.

[@ForTheEmperorOfMankindo7]

Yeah the ogres did absolutely nothing grimgor yeeted their leader the ogre tyrant greasus goldtooth and the remaining ogres just deciced to join grimgors waagh and thats it....very anti climactic.😅

[@TriNguyen-mu9ok]

When even a newbie who just started learning about Warhammer Fantasy; heard about End Time; got pissed off by it immediately. You know GW shat the bed on that one.

[@ForTheEmperorOfMankindo7]

The dwarves got violated by the greenskins and skaven so bad. GW did not even give thorgrim a honorable death, he just got stab by a rat john wick but to be fair its deathmaster snikch that did the killing but still he deserve a warriors death like the slayer king Ungrim 😢

[@ulfgard4734]

5:33 So there was a certain viewpoint that was broadly expressed at the time that this was largely the result of short-sighted profit chasing setting company policy for far too long. I can't claim any sort of insider knowledge, and others are certain to disagree, but from my perspective: As 40k came into its own and started muscling Fantasy out of the flagship position, GW decided the best approach would be to double down and spotlight 40k, as well as throwing more and more of the company's resources at it. This created a feedback loop where Fantasy was consistently given more and more of a back seat, got lesser returns, and so on ad infinitum. GW's efforts whenever they made overtures of course correcting amounted to the Willy Wonka meme "No, don't" as the lack of promotion and focus strangled the life out of the Fantasy franchise. I've commented before that I will never find it anything more than maddeningly ironic that Fantasy's greatest success in making a comeback and reaching its largest audience came with the Total Warhammer games after it had already been done away with.

[@TheMaxCloud]

I can tell you Fantasy had extreme potential but they didnt capitalize on it, because after learning OG fantasy lore from TW:WH I was hooked, Until I saw the entire Endtimes and Age of Sigmar Stuff...

[@punpundit5590]

I may not have time for stream today, but a quick half hour, I got. I jumped off WH Fantasy before the End Times came, so I know little more than what's presented in this video, but here's my armchair analysis: Warhammer writing is based on power creep. Each famous character starts powerful and only grows in power. Each faction's technology and capabilities only advances. This is true despite all the talk of limited supply of archeotech for 40K, btw, because they keep finding new stashes of the stuff. WH fans - in general - love to talk about how powerful their characters are, how devastating the factions' weapons are, because that's what's being written. When I think of other fantasy franchises, I often think about who the characters are, as people, what has influenced them... not how many giants they can kill single-handedly or whatever. This style of writing - power creep - leads to an inevitable conclusion. When the skaven blow up the moon, how do you one-up that? Well, you blow up the whole planet - or setting. Once you've decided you need to blow up the setting, nothing is going to stop you from doing that. Chaos needs to win for this to happen, because they're the destructive faction. I guess you could write the Skaven going to the planet core and doing shenanigans with it, but that would actually feel worse. Chaos has to win, and that's the directive you give to your writers. Their motivation to destroy their setting may not have been the greatest, which is why you get clumsy plot points like this. Oh, also there's my central question about the end times here; why did Chaos organize? Isn't Chaos and the organization necessary to conquer the entire world kind of inherently at odds with one another? WH40K is safe from this power creep for a while still because they have a whole galaxy of planets to destroy, by the 10s I think we're up to at this point, but we still have like 5 orders of magnitude before we have to start counting how many are left.

[@Shadowcam00]

The way i would wipe the board would be to have the order factions (and neutral or evil but not necessarily chaos, like the Dark Elves and Vlad) fail, but protect a portion of each of their lands from chaos using magically-powered barriers(or hiding underground in the case of skaven, and skedaddling off to space for a while like the lizardmen), and have those barriers last for centuries before the factions emerge to retake the global chaos wastelands. The new setting would be decades after the barriers fell, when societies were starting to reclaim and inhabit former chaos wastelands and reestablish contact with each other. New conflicts would arise between them all, while they continue to fight against reinvigorated chaos factions. The end result would be every faction gaining new heroes and armies, as well as new or revamped factions being introduced: everything from chaos-skaven(who would embrace chaos while the classic-skaven hide), to corrupted lizardmen, to even angrier trees, or religious cultists surviving outside the barriers through devotion. This would let GW have their cake and eat it too; the board gets cleared, and the world is remade, but in a way that's more familiar than Age of Sigmar's realm-shenanigans, and keeps more of the original factions' lineage in-tact even if they're gaining new armies and characters.

[@Nyghtking]

Oh something fun I heard, in order for Chaos to win they had to break through one of the most heavily fortified fortresses in the world, how did they do it? no one knows, the writers literally off screen the whole thing. Not to mention the Skaven were going to win the setting what with the radioactive moon they were dropping on it, but somehow Chaos turns that to their advantage to steal the win as well. Basically the end times was a demonstration that Chaos is GW's favorite faction and is also the reason 40k fans fear an end times event happening in 40k due to how badly it was handled in fantasy.

[@necroplayer97]

There's a podcast I have to recommend you watch called lorebeards, they discuss warhammer lore and have an episode on the end times, one of the members is a former writer for GW for their roleplay game and followed the editions since first

[@necroplayer97]

Wait correction the podcast is called lorebeards not lorehammer

[@MelonArmy]

Thorgrims death Happend Because Of Snikch if i recall but from the lore i think because Thorgrim Fought Queek Who Wields Dwarf Gouger A weapon made to kill dwarfs that not only was he tired but Because of dwarf gouger his runes got damaged or something [ i dont know how dawi runes work] and either because of that didnt notice snikch or Knew Snikch Was There but knew he also didnt have the strength to fight him so just accepted wat was to come and just wrote 1 last grudge

[@wintersking4290]

A big part of the issues with Warhammer fantasy is that GW hadn't updated some armies in ages. They Only really gave the Empire, and Chaos reliable support, which led to massive power creep issues and left players who liked other factions a bit high and dry. Or so I've been told by Certain old timers.

[@TheLegitWeebs]

That does seem to be the case based off of the comments from those old timers under this video. It wasn't that Fantasy wasn't good, it's just the company didn't see it's worth.

[@MasterIceyy]

Warhammer Fantasy didn't really sell many figures because it had been around for so long and was so popular that people already had multiple massive armies to the point where it was pointless buying a new one. By 2012, my Dad had a Skaven, Greenskin, Empire, Chaos, Tomb King, High Elf, Dark Elf, Wood Elf and Lizardmen army that were about 7000 points each. Half of the living room was dedicated to storing just his Fantasy collection. It was a waste of money and space even buying a new army and that was the same for a lot of my dad's friends. GW just did more to keep 40k fresher than they did with Fantasy sadly

[@texasfuneral4787]

Im assuming the skaven got more intelligent somehow just like the trolls that took out katerin. I think its the "somehow, Palpatine returned" kind of thing.

[@bthsr7113]

If you want an example of one of the better handled "burn it all away for something new in a giant throwdown with EVERYONE," examples, look to DC's very first Crisis event.

[@Beriorn]

Depending on what you believe, Warhammer Fantasy as a whole was being outsold by either certain 40k armies, paint, or the Space Marine Tactical Squad box.

[@Brutalyte616]

Yeah, so let me clarify. The End Times officially began with its first major novel in 2014, and officially ended with its fifth major novel in 2015, with Age of Sigmar starting up that year. Blood Bowl 2 and Vermintide released in 2015, with Total War: Warhammer following suit in 2016. The Old World was announced in 2023. It took GW *EIGHT FUCKING YEARS* to admit that people still wanted Warhammer Fantasy, even while they were promoting and selling the Warhammer Fantasy IP year after year. This is partly why people are so bitter about the End Times; GW couldn't even commit to getting rid of Warhammer Fantasy the year they were supposed to kill it off.

[@ShinigamiSamaH]

If there is one thing consistent about GW, it is their consistency to make bad decisions times after times. Not just Fantasy, but 40k, the tabletops, their fans, the content creators, etc...

[@jefrosiers8880]

2:04 from what I’ve heard there had been a lot of mismanagement though I could be wrong about that

[@TwojaStaraIFrytki]

AoS is on higher power level. In Age od Chaos 4 powers literally conquered almost everything, until Sigmar stomped (and still stomping) them out of Realms

[@karljohan2300]

think they shouldve done the rats with chaos thing but then in th emiddle have the good guys send in assassins to execute the super leaders of the rats and soon th eword spread and it just becomes massive free for all among the rats with chaos getting smashed in th emiddle trying to get some semblance of organized army causing massive losses as all clans tries to gain power and chaos getting badly hurt in the battle

[@cbretz1217]

Great horned rat is a lesser chaos god it’s yeaaahhh…

[@ordisraru]

The only thing I have to say 'bout the End Times: "Don't, just don't. Oh ghod you did, didn't you? What the fuck is wrong with you? Did someone drop you on your head as a baby? Have you any idea how many people you have upset? No. 'Upset' is the wrong word, let me think, ah, I've got it... Betrayed. Thirty years. Thirty - fucking - years. We stood with you through thick and thin. We endured the death of army updates. We accepted rules most sane people would run from. For god's sake we bought the 8th edition. We spent millions on your figures... even finecast. We travelled to tournaments all over the world. We survived the Forgeworld queues at Gamesday. We bought the novels. We drank your beer and wore your T-shirts. Some of us even had your icons tattooed on our flesh. We loved the world you created, beyond reason. We defended you against all your critics. Then... then... ... you do this. Our world is dead, and you killed it, deliberately, knowingly. Our investment in love, time and money ignored, disdained. In compensation, you provide four pages of rules. Written by someone who thinks that they are very clever. They ain't. We are wargamers, not an amateur dramatics society. Do not write to us. Do not try to explain yourselves. Do not even attempt to apologise. Your name has been inscribed in the Book of Grudges. For we are the Longbeards. Men who marched with Priestley, Johnson and Thorpe. You shall not see our like again." Extract from an old comentary in YT by Craig Cartmell

[@TheLegitWeebs]

I wasn't even there, but I feel this.

[@KossolaxtheForesworn]

GW at least brought back the old world now 9 years later. I guess they wanna try something with it again, they certainly have lot of other games now. and both AoS and 40K seem to be doing financially okay so this misadventure might be worth it.

[@bthsr7113]

As is so often the case with companies, the biggest problems were of GW's own making. And if you want to talk about wasting potential and stories not yet told, there's tons of that in 40k. I've had a few ideas, but the one that always sticks in my craw is how little they utilize the Tau Empire's nature as a multi-species society in digital games, tabletop, and even novels.

[@TheLegitWeebs]

Good point. 40k is more popular, but it could very well experience the same problems that Fantasy had if mismanaged.

[@bthsr7113]

@@TheLegitWeebs 40K is already mismanaged. The real question is if that will actually have consequences severe enough to make GW change course before the market finally has enough.

[@cbretz1217]

Also great horned rat took slaaneshs place for alittle in age of sigmar but I don’t know much about it

[@richardduska1558]

2:05 Reason why is like 2 to 3 fold. 1. It very strong lore but also very restricting lore. Unlike 40k where you can just have your OC's be badasses, with fantasy they are much harder to include. 2. The minis suck. Not because of designe but because of age. Many of the minies and sculpts are possibly older than me. 3. You can't rely make new armies which limits profit.

[@norsehorse84]

Point 3 doesn't make much sense to me. How could they not make new armies? Many, MANY countries and regions were right there in lore that they could've used at the time but didn't. Amazons, Kingdoms of Ind, Hinterlands of Khuresh, Grand Cathay, the Birdmen of Naggaroth, Kislev, Estalia, Tilea, Araby, the Border Princes, Sky-Titans, Nippon, Albion, and I believe there is another country that is in the same region as Polynesia/Australia that I'm forgetting the name of. On top of all that, they seemingly just abandoned the Chaos Dwarfs entirely after I think 4th edition, despite Total Warhammer 3 showing how badass and marketable the industrial Mesopotamia aesthetic is. Was point 3 more about players unable to make new armies by buying more minis? Cause I feel like that's a problem with GW's products in general due to how expensive they are.

[@richardduska1558]

You have a point. I'm not the most familiar with fantasy so I tought that every nation/army as already represented.@@norsehorse84

[@LordFinai]

Essentially GW pushed 40K so hard that it stopped fantasy from being able to grow. Instead of then trying to promote fantasy to help revive it they just decided to remove so they can still push space marines, but this time in fantasy. TLDR: Rather than stop their obvious favoritism they just decided to reset everything. It was also done so they could change army names to copyrightable names

[@lachlanbold8319]

If you hate Thorgrim’s death, check out Majorkill’s video about fixing End Times for the Dwarves. In it, Thorgrim uses the Metal powers he got to blow up the entire mountain he was in after evacuating the Dwarves. He kills Queek and millions of Skaven and dies an absolute Chad.

[@mindofshadow1780]

16:00 WELL.... he still a minor chaos god so....

[@nik-nj4fq]

Majorkill made a really cool serie about fixing the end times

[@AdamJones-tu9lx]

would love to see his reaction to the lizardmen episode specifically, but it's all good

[@влад_ярославцев]

Well GW recently brought back Fantasy Battles as the Old World, so there silver lining in the stoty

[@WurrzagsMorkyMischeif]

I AM SUPRE-*STABBED*

[@acacis]

archeon the everchosen is still a total champ tho

[@charlesbecker934]

The Skaven are beings of chaos. Throughout fantasy and 40k, minor chaos gods exist. The Horned Rat being one of them in fantasy, and becoming the actual 5th Chaos God in Age of Sigmar

[@kabutoisgay]

I'm gonna be honest here, it's a hot take but honestly...if you go into the endtimes with an open mind, it's not that bad and there are a ton of super metal scenes, and while the good guys are always on the backfoot it always feels like they are fighting to survive in a satisfying way imo There are absolutely a ton of things I'd change, but honestly, for the most part, if I could see Warhammer ending, it would be pretty close to the endtimes, especially while they do say that characters were forgot or written dumbly, the sheer amount of stuff they pulled from the entirety of history of all of warhammer is it's own kind of love letter, kind of like Mortal Kombat Armageddon or Smash Bros Ultimate where they literaly brought back anyone who had ever shown up prior and gave them atleast SOMETHING to do, Tldr: I agree a LOT with what you personally had to say about, especially since it didn't erase all the cool stuff that came before and it still came back, and it never really went away through AOS and the Fantasy videogames, sure it took like ten years but hell atleast it's coming back unlike a lot of of franchises.

[@TheLegitWeebs]

I wouldn't say it's a hot take, just a more nuanced one that I'm sure most people can appreciate. If I was a writer on the series I wouldn't know where to even begin. It's manageable if the characters are in their own self contained stories, or if there are clearly defined conflicts occurring between different groups, but having EVERYTHING come together would be a nightmare. No matter what there would be things that slip through the cracks, and while in hindsight you can say that they could've done it better, it just is what it is now.

[@gregorde]

The end crimes

[@KossolaxtheForesworn]

had I been given the unfortunate task of running the end times. I think I would have at least tried to direct it properly. the meeting with the writers wouldnt have lasted a day, it would have been a week minimum with all possible things considered for all characters and events. there would have been pictures on white boards of what exactly will they think, do and whatever else during that whole shit. but I guess they just decided to give everything for the unpaid intern to figure out.

[@starkill97]

As someone who came in AFTER the end times and has only a small amount of spit at GW nuking Fantasy heres my take GW wanted to try a massive shake up to try and make fantasy profitable but once they saw Fantasy was still making less money then even poorly performing 40k armies they just gave up and nuked itto make a new setting that could do better Not justifying just my thoughts

[@TheLegitWeebs]

After reading another comment that goes into details about the 6th-8th edition for Fantasy, I think they could have made Fantasy more profitable by actually balancing the game and making it more accessible, but they instead chose to make everything more expensive and drive the player base away. Sucks, but at least it's coming back.

[@blade9727]

well ar least total war warhammer exist, it's my canon story of the End Times by far😁

[@mp5284]

End times were utter shit. They had the right overall idea (Chaos wins) world is destroyed. This was always going to be the canonical ending. Problem is that they did a really shit job of it and didn’t provide proper closure for the setting.

[@TheLegitWeebs]

Lot of different ways this could have gone better for sure.

[@beomcheolkim8543]

Majorkill has a series of videos where he 'improves' the End Times and they are actually pretty good. The Lizardmen got a lot more respect in his version. Here is a really weird thing: GW didn't have to blow up the planet. Age of Sigmar First Edition picks up after Archaon achieved a great victory and Sigmar launches a great counteroffensive to rally the various Order Forces (most of whom are carried over from Fantasy) and push Chaos back. GW could have just kept the old setting and had Sigmar lead a resistance from Helmgart or Stirland. The Eighth Edition (End Times) could have just ended with Archaon conquering Middenheim and most of the continent; then Ninth Edition would have been Sigmar, several centuries later, coming back with his Sigmarines to take back the Empire. And the geopolitical climate and main story plot lines would BE EXACTLY THE SAME. Minus the whole Mortal Realms thing. This is why I love Total Warhammer, despite its issues. It allows me to save the world from the End Times. Until Alarielle picks up the Sword of Khaine, goes from EverQueen to EverChosen, and buries a good chunk of the map in blood, dragon fire, and magical laser arrows. Still better than the canonical End Times.

[@TheLegitWeebs]

Decisions were made, and most of them not good.

[@firebeginer5694]

I’m sorry this is how you had to learn about the end times

[@TheLegitWeebs]

I'm sorry the end times even happened in the first place

[@firebeginer5694]

@@TheLegitWeebsplay warhammer 3 to rewrite the endtimes

[@Tragedous]

GW is their own worst enemy

[@codyraugh6599]

GW failed to support fantasy

[@kevinbarber2795]

They were neglecting Fantasy, so no wonder it was doing poorly. Maybe if they didn’t play favorite child with 40K they could bother to promote Fantasy. Edit: Also, GW really needed some lore nerds to review things for consistency before they release stuff.

[@orben-amos6172]

the only good things end times gaive us is new cool models, units and warhammer vermentide.

[@patrickb6124]

They weren't updating models or rules. They weren't making money because they didn't offer anything new for the whale customers.

[@willl676]

Age of Sigmar has cool aesthetics and some cool characters but as it stands the worldbuilding is very poor compared to Fantasy. That will likely change with further Editions but it's baby steps for now. Should also be mentioned that Fantasy's failure with sales lies squarely with GW. The errata for the rule books were larger than the rule books themselves for crying out loud. The game had become overly complicated, fan favorite factions were left in the dust with no updated models and rules by 7th and 8th Edition and all of that on top of expensive models just discouraged people from even wanting to touch the game.

[@YOGI-kb9tg]

Fantasy didn't die because it wasn't popular it died because GW mismanaged it which lead the game having outdated and clunky rules and building armies were way too expensive compared to the other games which lead to the game falling behind 40k because sci fi is cool and middle earth because it's LoTR.

[@williamfriedel7099]

In turn of fixing the end times i would recomend the video of majorkill: fixing the end times. He may swear a bit but i liked his narative

[@DLAlucard]

Well you kind of missed something at the start there. Yes, Warhammer Fantasy wasn't doing great... Because GW weren't doing anything good with it. If they don't make anything good. People will not buy something. Which is why after Vermintide, Total Warhammer came out Warhammer Fantasy was hotter then ever, but all those new fans found themselves fucked. Since the setting they now loved was gone. Screwing the company out of more money then ever before. Though this is GW's problem overall. Be it Fantasy or 40K. They have all this boundless potential, but have been wasting it for years. It's only in relatively recent times we've started getting good games. While the official movie/animation side has been shockingly woeful. Which it doesn't have to be. Fan made stuff outstripped their own animations to the point they shut down the fan animation scene because it was making them look bad. Just some more perspective on how bad GW is. The time between Space Marine and its sequel is 13 years. Rogue Trader is the first RPG game they've ever had. The only game involving Imperials Knights (House size mechs) is a shitty mobile game. The only Sister of Battle focused game is in VR. Eternal Crusade, a large scale 3rd person shooter similar to Cod or Battlefield featuring Orks, Eldar, Space Marines and Choas died in it crib because it was left a buggy mess. The only fantasy games before the two named above were on the PS1. Dawn of War was a fantastic 40K RTS series that people still play today. Yet no word on a new installment despite the huge demand for over 6 years. Speaking off RTSs. Did you know Starcraft was meant to be a 40K game before GW stepped away from the project? Oh and Warcraft was originally a proof of concept Blizzard presented to GW as what they'd do for a Warhammy Fantasy game and they rejected it. So Blizzard reworked the lore and launched one of their biggest IP to date. Seriously, Warhammer Fantasy/40K is one of the most missmanaged IPs in existence. It's continued success is simply a testament to how good the settings are at their core.

[@TheLegitWeebs]

One has to wonder what exactly GW's plan is with Warhammer. Do they even have a plan, or are they only going to consider it when it stops making money?

[@DLAlucard]

@@TheLegitWeebs Broadly yes, but overall they don't know what they're doing. I mean the books are good, but GW doesn't seem to proof read writers work. Meaning authors screw up time and again. Like the whole Skarsnik situation for example. Trying to turn the Emperor into a villain because they put a chaos fanboy in charge of things for a while. Imprisoning Slaanesh because they want to appeal to a 'younger audience.' So on and so forth. They stupidly launched their own streaming service and poached/forced fan animators to work for them under threats of legal action. Creating this walled garden that costs them money to run. Full of content no one wants to watch because of how it was made. Last I checked they still hadn't embraced the custom model/3d printing sector. Even though one of their biggest strengths is how customizable the armies are. Honestly they should have been at the forefront of 3D printing technology, but thats a whole other can of worms. I'm all for a company trying to make money. Nothing wrong with that. However there are right, wrong and stupid ways to go about it. Which GW always seems to choose the last option. Lol.

[@norsehorse84]

@@DLAlucard They made the Emperor into a complete moron/villain because they had a Chaos fanboy in charge of the Horus Heresy? What's the proof of that? Also, did GW actually imprison Slaanesh in Age of Sigmar purely because of trying to appeal to a younger audience? Seems like a good detail to add in the Warhammer setting where the gods themselves are explicit and key players to have one of the big four Chaos Gods be overpowered and imprisoned. If it was purely to appeal to younger audiences, why does Slaanesh have its own entire army with a bunch of new units that look even more like BDSM addicts? If that was the stated goal, they did not only a bad job, but a suspiciously bad job.

[@YTDariuS-my6dg]

I mean yeah they could have just made some really good new content for WHF. Like idk something about Nippon, the "totally not Japan even tho we're using the old spelling for the local name of the country which is in modern times pronounced Nihon". I mean what they DO have is, in fact, pretty stupid. I don't wanna say racist because people bitch too much about racism when it's less so racism and more stereotypes based on reality. But, yes, racist too. But mostly really stupid. Like apparently they had a guy called Kawasaki who was so stupidly madge that the government didn't sink some random foreign ship (tbf real life Japanese people in ye olde days would probably want it sunk what with the rampant xenophobia they're kind of known for even today) that he created a rebellion, sieged the capital, FAILED and committed ritual suicide by *standing on his head in a bucket of cold water.* So yeah. Stupid. So what I'm saying is, why didn't they try to, idk, make GOOD Nippon related content?

[@marth354]

Probably an unpopular opinion; but I actually really like the end times storyline despite it being a total mess and all over the place. It just made sense to me that the end of a world would be messy an chaotic and that not everyone would get the best moments. It is the end of a world, it shouldn't be all neat and pretty. I am happy they are going back to Old World content for those who enjoy it though. There is value there. Personally though what they have done with Age of Sigmar and how balls to the wall that version of fantasy is appeals to me more personally than the more grounded old world version of fantasy. ANd because the realms are sooo big there is still room for those smaller more grounded stories within the big epic narrative.

[@lich109]

There's a huge difference between "character doesn't get the best moments" and "Valaya gets her power eaten by Nagash because she somehow slept through the end of the world".

[@howlingbeast3x6]

Age of sigmar is too fantasy if you will. Warhammer fantasy was grounded, while AOS is not. For example, dwarves in fantasy are always linked with mining and blacksmithing, but in warhammer they had a functional society. They had weavers, scouts, rangers, farmers, etc. In AOS, there is a dwarf army that is all slayers. You cannot have a functional societey when everybody in your society is suicidal. Thats what I dislike the most from AOS

[@LynxLord1991]

No it ended because GW was stupid like pushing themselves into a corner lore wise and not having room for new stuff on top having rules that takes an eon to learn and a masters in translating the rules. They were slow to update models and rare gave us new stuff and when they did it was often broken and banned in tournaments, if GW had supported it as well as 40k is and simplifed the rules like the slowly has with 40k I would have done well, Fantasy is always in high demand shitty business practise and stupidity isnt. My beard is seething yet with GW. Dwarfs secret doors closes on their own are, bound with runic magic to stop others from using them and is invisible to anyone without the meticulous scrutiny of a craftsman with eons of knowledge.

[@TheLegitWeebs]

A tragic tale that we hear all too often nowadays when it comes to companies screwing over their fans. When will they learn that making a good product means more money for them?

[@LynxLord1991]

@@TheLegitWeebs Damh right

[@norsehorse84]

Still not sure how they didnt have room for new stuff when over half the countries in Fantasy had no tabletop representation and basically no lore representation. I mean, look at what they did with the additions of Kislev and Cathay in Total Warhammer 3. That's only 2 factions, and you could make an entire 5th edition roleplay game out of Cathay by itself. GW is just massively incompetent with their IP's.

[@NightIceWolf12]

Please quit talking when the video you are reacting to is saying something. I cannot hear either of you. The whole nord vpn segment was not good. Please pause, say your piece and then resume the video.