Ok folks, everyone knows what the talk of the town is today. I'm not going to get into details, but once again there has been a "Leak" onto the internet.
Lets take a look back over the past year and add some things up. GW has now seen at least its last 4 major publications leaked early onto the tubes by forces unknown.
Some interesting notes:
- Each was leaked during its "6 month window" before its formal release.
- Some were reported as "printers copies" that were very simliar to the final release product.
- Some were reported as "early development documents" that bore little visual similarity to the final release products.
~You decide?
~PS, Talk about the "trend" all you wish, but there is absolutely no posting of links to GW copyright material allowed on BoLS. Violators will have thier comments deleted and be put in a cage with a Carnifex armed only with a las-pistol and a CCW!
36 comments:
1st comment yay!
Grrr... a laspistol and a cc weapon can do wonders!... no but seriously, I was thinking about this. Personally I am syked about the new rules and cant wait to indulge in the depths of the new rulebook (rumored to be cheaper). 4th Edition I only got because someone that I knew that pre-ordered it put it online, but only for the gaming group and on a secure protected line. But lately (with codex orks) I have gotten my hands on more stuff... its just a matter of searchy, but this does lead to some dilemas... at the same time we couls argue "conspiracy theory" but at the same time what would a mole benefit from this? are other companies trying to rip off 40k? do they need rules like this?... I dunno it seems fishy. At the same time, it would be nice that they would do something like this in order to fomentj constructive opinions thqat would helf in the development of the new rules... like an open forum or brainstorming sesion.
Anyhow, I hope that 5th ed is as good as it seems, whatever the source of the leak it has shurely hyped me up...
Cheers!
What? A Carnifex with a Las Pistol and a CCW? Thats an odd way to arm a Carnifex. Too bad for him though, as I never leave home without my trusty Termi Armor and Chainfist. Gonna smoke me some BBQ Carnifex ribs tonight! Yah hoo!
Legend has it that software companies have been doing this with easily cracked betas and demos.
It would be a good way for GW to get some focus group input of sorts. Maybe I am giving them too much credit. In any case, they seem to be listening to their supporters (ya know, us) a little more. Good for them.
I wouldn't be surprised, honestly. If so: bravo, GW!
i'm not saying i have pirated documents on my computer, but i will say this:
HOLY CRAP x EDITION IS AWESOME
-samuel
At least with the most recent leak its obvious that they are still changing the rules. Unlike with earlier leaks, where the final copy was leaked and the community pointed out typos and problems with the codex (Lash of Submission for example) yet it wasn't/couldn't be changed.
With the latest all filled with its yellow boxes instead of pictures and "THIS NEEDS TO BE CHANGED SIGNS" its obvious GW can now lurk forums and the like in order to see what changes the community wants to be made.
*cough*defensiveweapons*cough*
For things like video games and movies, I can see it as a guerilla marketing tactic. But 40k players are a fairly closed group due to high initial investment; so leaking 5th Edition seems very strange. The current players are going to buy the new rules updates almost without exception. New players aren't likely to pick up the game from a leak - they're likely to pick it up due to awesome models from the store or the website.
Leaking to hear feedback seems more plausible, but still not likely.
I think it seems likely that it is really an electorate ruse by GW. I mean, all 4 releases were perfectly scanned, copied, and put out, regardless of being a 'playtest' copy or a 'printer copy.' By now, I would expect at least one leaked release that was, lets say, leaked by taking pictures of the pages instead of scans.
GW has no advertising besides its stores, and website, so it seems fairly obvious that they might explore other, cheap, alternatives to mass-advertisements to, at least within their community of players, new rumours.
Well deliberately leaking a work in progress copy makes a lot more sense than leaking finished codexes. I doubt GW would deliberately release the final Ork and Chaos codexes, they were probably leaked against their will.
But with this, it would make sense to release early. People won't be able to print it out and use it for the actual rulebook, but they will still be able to argue about rules and work out loopholes. They will also discuss which armies will be very "buffed" or "nerfed" by the new rules, and hopefully GW will listen to this and adjust the rules to make them more balanced.
My only question is, why the heck wasn't Apocalypse leaked?
Easy to say.
If in true 5ed they'll make defensive weapons S5 or S6 it'd mean they DO listen to target audience.
If they won't, it'd mean there's no point in deliberate pre-release. Then I'll believe there's a true security leak.
Jack, none of the leaks I've seen have been scanned. There are plenty of scanned 40K books floating around the internet, yes, but these leaks are just the original files, and copying one of those is a lot easier than scanning something - email it, stick it on a usb stick, bring your ipod into work, burn a cd copy... security is a bloody hard problem with modern technology.
I suppose I could print one of them out and take dodgy cameraphone pics of it if you want...
If GW was concerned about the leaks, they'd start doing things like putting "This is Jervis Johnson's copy" on each page and either the leaks would stop or someone would not have a job. Well, maybe I'm giving them too much credit. This is the same company whose 40k fluff generally involves lots of mutants/renegade IG - "evil humans" as bad guys - and doesn't have a list or models for them in the game (but have Angry Marines, Secret Marines, Viking Marines, and Crusader Marines). Fluff = rules, right?
Banana time man all i have to say....maybe they want to get a reaction to the rumors ....God i hope so
As dietrich said, it'd be so easy to simply mark playtest/internal copies with reference numbers, so any leaks would be found easily and the offender would be on the wrong side of the GW Legal Ninjas.
It does seem odd, though. The idea that it does hype people up is true, at least in my case, as the printers proof of the Ork codex certainly encouraged my purchase of the final copy and a shedload of greenskins.
I would think it's simply someone being naughty, though. As much as I like their products (Most of the time), I don't have much respect for GW managment, who couldn't find their own arses with an auspex and a squad of Space Wolf Scouts. I doubt they're terribly cunning.
Im hoping this is a response to the earlier leaked codexes. Maybe someone important noticed and noticed other guerrilla marketing and went, well why dont we give that a try.
Course from what Ive heard on TGN the new head of GW is supposed to be much better with advertising and such - maybe he got some new ideas flowing.
quote: "If GW was concerned about the leaks, they'd start doing things like putting "This is Jervis Johnson's copy" on each page and either the leaks would stop or someone would not have a job."
Thats not how it works. They way a company stops leaks is by giving different departments all copies. In the documents are typos or extra spaces and each departments would all have different errors. After they discover the department the just slowly filter down to find who leaked the info.
In this case it would make sense that GW would want to build as much anticipation for the product as they could. With rumors of a new edition coming out how many people would just stop playing until they found out what the new rule changes were. And if they stop playing, it means that they stop purchasing models, paints and all the other stuff GW puts out.
I'm pretty sure bits and pieces of apocalypse were leaked. I know I had some rough looking datasheets emailed my way... and I didn't believe what I saw until I bought Apocalypse myself. Imagine how excited I was to find out that FOC was no longer needed! Well, someone at GW did, and i'd put my money on the fact that they didn't pull it (the idea) out of thin air.
It makes complete sense for GW to leak out little pieces of info to see how gamers like use react. The recurring theme here is free advertising and opinions.
Is it beyond possibility that they've discovered this very blog, and hunt the web for ideas on a daily basis?
So why not dump ideas into the soup and strain out what is recognized by all of us as awesome?
Well, the 'leaking' of 5th ed information has brought me back to the game, indirectly. I heard from a friend that all the immature idiot kids at the local games group were threatening to quit over all their favourite tactics being nerfed. Now I'm interested in playing again. I know a few other 'veteran players' who are thinking in a similar fashion.
All GW needs to do now to cement our return is to develope a rule which bans players who spray half chewed potato chips all over the table every time they pop a new one in their mouth...
Well if it is GW doing this on purpose, then once again they're missing a grand opportunity to iron out bugs before release.
If the community finds mistakes (and they will - they always do), and reports them, GW should do something to fix them rather than adopting their typical 'Near enough is good enough' attitude and just releasing whatever crap happens to be ready when they hint the 'print' button.
But they won't. GW wants to sell models. The rules aren't even secondary. They're not even tertiary. They come last...
Is there a nefarious GW mole lurking somewhere in their organization, or are we staring straight at a Guerrilla Marketing operation put out by some very canny folks at GW to whip up enthusiasm for upcoming products?
"Yes." /kosh
The first is clearly so, and one can only hope that the second has begun, because it would imply that GW is on the verge of paying attention to actual players, and might even move up to... gasp... playtesting outside the Nottingham Bubble, with playtesters who actually try to break the system.
It would be nice to get a 5th edition that didn't have bitter-argument-inducing inconsistencies on every page. But to get that, you have to have actual playtesting and actual proofreading. No, not SpellCheck. No, not your wife, your buddy, or your child. More like a fellow I know here in town who can run his hands over a closed rulebook/rpg and immediately flip to and put his finger on the BROKEN part and show you why it's broken.
Agreeing with several others on here, if GW is doing this, and they take one more step and start using this as an extra level of playtesting/proofreading, that would make me a very happy Pete indeed.
Do we know why this trend seems to be limited to just 40k and not fantasy? As I have yet to see a whole leeked Fantasy Book? Or am i just being stupid?
i think the lack of leaks on the fantasy side is another clue into the possible fact that GW is leaking 40k stuff on purpose. from my very limited experience of WHFB (only playing for about 2 years) i dont see alot of rules problems/broken lists/crazy FAQ probs. sure the 2 treeman WE army and the 2nd gen slann is a tough list, but not quite in the same bracket as nidzilla or droptroop plasma death.
fantasy seems to run pretty smoothly, and therefore leaks of new stuff is less important. 40k has FLAWS, and GW seems to not want to fix them, only bandage them, which will work for only so long. these leaks help keep the crowd going on 40k. i personally dont like alot of these rumors, but im sure alot of people do. am i gonna quit? prolly not, but thats another case altogether.
I started to suspect some sort of guerilla marketing scheme when the Chaos codex was leaked and the Ork codex confirmed it for me. I think this is a way of countering the problem with the prodcution schedule running behind the rumor schedule, and also building more solid support for newly released codices. I would also have to agree with studderingdave's assessment as to why we haven't seen the same with Fantasy material.
Secondly, we recently had a problem similar to this at the company I work for and the guy responsible has already been tracked down and fired after a couple of months. So I have a hard time believing that there is just some naughty GW employee that has been leaking releases all this time.
There are some perks to being a limey, not least of which is having friends who work in the holy of holies, both in the retail stores and in the design studio...
Thus I am pretty sure that such leaks are quite deliberate and part of ensuring that the 'GW Hobby' will not be too outraged by changes they'd like to make.
Not so much Guerilla Marketing as Market Testing, a bit like pre-screening films rather than all the expense of having community playtesters.
The better Blogs and Fora, such as BOLS, are read with interest (it appears a W30K campaign is presently being played through by some of the Scuplting/Moulding team as we speak).
At the end of the day we have to accept that GW is a company in which many people have invested their lives. They have mortgages and families and have to work hard to keep the GW Hobby fresh and keep us coming into the stores to buy the next stuff.
They are not as cynical as Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro, but they have a living to make.
Looking at this document I'm really not even convinced that it is a bonafide 'leak' or whatever. The images in it are the ones out of the 3rd ed. rulebook, even if they just put them in as placeholders, why wouldn't they use the 4th ed. ones? It just isn't anywhere close to the quality of any of the other leaked copies.All the 'place diagram here' just seem too convenient.
Frankly I think anyone with a basic knowledge of Adobe could have knocked this out quite easily...
I agree with Chris. This one just doesn't "flow" like the other 40K rule books.
Someone one another location has theorized that it just may be an early "brainstorming" version.
Or it's some kid having a laugh at everybody.
Or GW leaked a fake copy to teach us a lesson.
Or it is a true copy and we're screwed.
No, not the Carny! Anything but the Carny!
Fools!
{Eats pistol...}
I hope that it's looking for feedback before going to press, making changes, etc. It's not enough to really make up for them not having their own forums, so that rule questions can be asked there, and faq's updated much more often, but it's at least a step in the right direction.
Actually, to me it looks a lot like the Chaos Space Marine codex that leaked.
This one appears to be in the early formatting phase (with place holders for art, boxes for fluff, etc.). If you remember the Chaos codex, it had Dark Angels art to fill in the holes.
That codex proved to be pretty reliable. There were very few differences between the "early" version we got and the final version that went on the shelves.
well if this leak is to be believed you could still go ahead and arm any offenders with a laspistol and a powerfist with the same effect. they'd be long dead before they could strike back enough times; what a needless nerf! it'd be amusing if this was all fake, but whatever, there's still plenty of 4th edition games to be played in the meantime.
As Posted earlier but I'll expand on a bit, it is very easy now days for this kind of stuff to be leaked. Physical books handed to individuals are a thing of the past. Its just a PDF or some sililar type of file sent to a company or companies that work on the layouts, graphic design and finally printing. Each of these companies probably have between 5 and 15 people working on these specifically with exposor to proably 3 or 4 times that.
I suppose that GW could go all hard core secure document on it but, it would cost a lot more money to do and we've already discused how this might alctually be a boon to GW by getting hype.
I think its a real leak and I think that GW will have a sitdown with thier printer/publisher, but I don't think the leaks will be shutdown all together.
Anyone who's worked at Kinko's or something similar can back me up on this.
I think that this pdf is real there are just to many thing that go so well with the new ork codex. The biggest thing is slow and purposeful seem to have +1 attack on the charge in the new ork codex and in the pdf it also has +1 attack on the charge. There are other things that seem to benifit for the ork codex for the 5th edition that would almost seem worthless now.
I read the document, thats the fact, and it is in the internet. GW knows that and thats it. I do not know how much it costs to do such a work. If it is much, that is a sad thing. But maybe, if there is a leak and GW has a problem, they could react by investing in storys, illustrating, backround and history, more maps for example. This gives a rulebook more than a feeling of just rules hase changed. A feeling of: time has past, frontlines have changed. More like the great maps of the achievements of macharius and the devastations of the tyranids. They do the campains about armageddon for example. Lets have these events in print form. So a collector and player (years) could collect these books like a big story wich goes foreward. Then you can look back and you can say: "These monstroes/heretic/plaguelike (set here in the enemy) had go forward (RULEBOOK X) at this line and our great/green/faithfull (set here in your army) had fight them back RULEBOOK X+1."
Fun for us and money for them for the next dozen years. (I HOPE GW READ BOLS)
The leaks are leaks. No way it is GW's secret PR campain. Please...
If GW wants player input they simply has to ask - no need for elaborate plans of leaking/rumors and then lurk around listening.
Do GW even bother about the leaks? I seriuosly doubt this as the sales will not be affected in any significant way. Those downloading early versions of x:th ed will most likely also buy the x:th ed. What GW may be annoyed about is scanned versions of the final product - this kind of files *do* affect sales.
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