GothmogtheWerewolf wrote:
They want you to think that but GW do not care about LOTR, they care about getting more people but it is even easier to do that with WFB and 40k. We can only wait, hope and dream.
Bud, I think you're being a little too dramatic--no offense
It is much easier to bring new customers into the "Games Workshop Hobby" through the license of major, recognizable franchises such as Lord of the Rings than it is with Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000. LotR is one of the most beloved and recognizable epics of all time, and that's no exaggeration; on the other hand, I had never heard of Games Workshop, Warhammer, or Warhammer 40K before seeing an advertisement for the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game in the back of my friends Return of the King video game manual. I got in through LotR; I would never, ever, ever have purchased 40K or WHFB miniatures without getting to them through LotR. Besides being an excellent marketing strategy and valuable resource, I think, on some level, its quite obvious that GW "cares" about The Lord of the Rings. They've had a lot of opportunities to just drop the range completely; they could have easily stopped after the first few supplements for SBG, and then waited to renew it when, say, a Hobbit film was released. Instead, they stuck with it, made a Warmaster adaptation, made a large amount of miniatures not seen in the films, and created a mass combat system. We could assume that this was all to scrape as much money out of the license as they could, but there came a point and time where it likely would have been more profitable to discontinue LotR. I think that Games Workshop actually
likes their Lord of the Rings range too much to let it go. They "care" about it, but right now, it's not the biggest money-maker. It's profitable enough to maintain, but not so profitable at present that they should push it or support it as much as we would like.
I'm guessing individuals within GW probably favor LotR as well. Games, rules, and miniature ranges aside, Warhammer is decent fantasy, and 40K is pretty good science fiction, but c'mon, its
Lord of the Rings for crying out loud!