He hit the nail on the head a few times, but one of the things that he got absolutely right is how embarrassingly bad the mail order system - 24 years ago, I ordered up 20 figures for Dark Future (a sadly discontinued game). Now, at that point there were no GW shops in Scotland, so the best I could hope for was mail order. They took six weeks to arrive. A couple of years ago I ordered figures up again. This time it took two weeks to arrive. I don't live in some remote part of the country or some distant isle. If I ordered figures from Australia or the USA, I would expect them to take two weeks at the most. Nottingham is (just) less than 300 miles away. Yet, if you try to speak to them about the problem, GW look bemused because they honestly believe that they have the greatest mail order system in the world. Despite all evidence to the contrary, they cannot (or perhaps will not) see that there's a problem.
White Dwarf? I don't even recognise it anymore. Back in the day, this was actually quite a good magazine - good articles, great humour and oddly enough, honest appraisals. There was even Critical Mass which reviewed the best of the latest sci-fi/fantasy literature. Now? It reminds me of the glossy brochures you get when you go to view a house: All about how wonderful everything is. new army being released? Why here's a Battle Report about how wonderful it is! And here's another article about how to paint them! And another one a figure and how wonderful it is. If they really want that magazine to survive, they need to change to the way that Dragon was in its day, not just a fanzine that gushes about how wonderful everything is.
But the nail that was hit the hardest in the article was the problem with the staff. A lot of the original staff have gone, including the uber-talented Rick Priestley. The man who gave them their two best sellers now works for Warlord Games. Only Jervis Johnson is left of the originals. There are one or two really talented ones like Dave Andrews and Jeremy Vetock, but that leaves that utter waste of oxygen, the one we have all come to loathe with a passion, the one man destroyer of both codexes and fluff, Matt Ward. They guy has annoyed the fans to the point that many have left, he comes out with the codex that tells everyone they have to buy Ultramarines. And should you meet him, what you get from his is the most ubelievably smug attitude. And he will continue being smug because he believes that he writes the best books for GW, he lives in the same bubble at GW where they honestly believe that they are right because the product still sells.
In short, they need to change before they become a long drawn-out suicide note in the Gaming industry.
