Blizzard to GW: Well - you gonna move in on my turf eh?

[Modern Angel]

I've never found any concrete information that GW actually ever sued Blizzard for IP infringement. A lot of people on the intertubes SAY that GW did it but there doesn't seem to be one whit of proof.

[Kirth]

I've never found any concrete information that GW actually ever sued Blizzard for IP infringement. A lot of people on the intertubes SAY that GW did it but there doesn't seem to be one whit of proof.

I think the popular rumor is Blizz developed on their own, or on part of GW, warcraft and were then turned down, or GW backed out, and they renamed stuff and released it.

[Modern Angel]

Right, which I've heard as well. But there's never, to my knowledge, been a lawsuit. It probably won't happen. I'm just tossing out that on the slim chance it did I wouldn't be surprised. Company with their back against the wall financially pulls the trigger when something 90% like their stuff visually comes out and invades their core business? Just saying...

[IainC]

To my knowledge there never was a lawsuit, nor any suggestion of one.
As to the popular rumour that Warcraft was originally intended to be a Warhammer RTS and that Blizz had to remove GW's IP at the last minute, I really don't know. It is a persistent rumour and I remember asking Andy Jones about it years ago (AJ was the licencing manager for GW), I didn't get a conclusive answer though.

Unless some old time Blizzard devs want to come out of the woodwork, I doubt it will ever be proven one way or the other.

[Ratman_tf]

I can't believe no one's posted this yet.

[Kirth]

I can't believe no one's posted this yet.

One of my Favs. I want to get the t-shirt with it on it.

[DeathInABottle]

Anyone else think those things are hideously ugly?

[Righ]

The cartoons? I do, yes.

[Teleku]

Err, what?

[Surlyboi]

And now WoWtards will play with miniatures and think Blizzard invented them too. 

[Aez]

They didn't?

[Chenghiz]

It's been said before but these won't hit the same market at all. Prepainted preassembled minis for a small scale battle just aren't in the same league as unpainted multipart models for large-scale battles, and this won't affect GW any more than heroclix or battletech or DnD minis did. Also, the overall miniature quality is pretty unimpressive.

[schild]

Saying these are unimpressive and liking the graphics in WoW is a pretty lol situation to me. These look like 1:1 copies of the WoW models. Which is to say, even polygon (or lack thereof) is accounted for.

Just shows you how lowtech that shit is when it's put into a tangible form.

In fact, having looked at them again, the models look better than their in-game counterparts.

Unfortunately, still completely ugly.

[Modern Angel]

It's been said before but these won't hit the same market at all. Prepainted preassembled minis for a small scale battle just aren't in the same league as unpainted multipart models for large-scale battles, and this won't affect GW any more than heroclix or battletech or DnD minis did. Also, the overall miniature quality is pretty unimpressive.

Except that those things were and are competition? I know people firsthand who simply didn't have time to paint miniatures anymore so got their toys on a chessboard fix with the games you just mentioned. Hell, go to any GW focused messageboard and the great hope AND fear (depending on who you ask) is that GW makes a move to pre-painted

[Surlyboi]

Hell, I'm still kinda pissed they went to plastic models.

[Typhon]

I would think that GW would be happy about this - there's going to be some part of those 10 million WoW subscribers that get introduced to minature battles via WoW minatures.  Seems like GW could use a few new customers.

[tmp]

I would think that GW would be happy about this - there's going to be some part of those 10 million WoW subscribers that get introduced to minature battles via WoW minatures.  Seems like GW could use a few new customers.

Not sure if there's much to be happy about for them... i.e. how many MMOs got new subscribers out of 10 mil. WoW players, large part of which got introduced to MMOs via said WoW?

[Modern Angel]

Or how many people gave up miniatures and tabletop for the instant gratification of MMOs. I don't think it's a coincidence that GW's stock dropped and tabletop games across the board had sales drops at the same time that MMOs became the Big Entertainment Thing.

[Ratman_tf]

Hell, I'm still kinda pissed they went to plastic models.

Fuck that. Plastic is easier to assemble and mod.

[Mrbloodworth]

To my knowledge there never was a lawsuit, nor any suggestion of one.
As to the popular rumour that Warcraft was originally intended to be a Warhammer RTS and that Blizz had to remove GW's IP at the last minute, I really don't know. It is a persistent rumour and I remember asking Andy Jones about it years ago (AJ was the licencing manager for GW), I didn't get a conclusive answer though.

Unless some old time Blizzard devs want to come out of the woodwork, I doubt it will ever be proven one way or the other.

True.


But its rather easy to make the connection just by looking at the two products. Even the art style...

[Chenghiz]

Saying these are unimpressive and liking the graphics in WoW is a pretty lol situation to me. These look like 1:1 copies of the WoW models. Which is to say, even polygon (or lack thereof) is accounted for.

Just shows you how lowtech that shit is when it's put into a tangible form.

In fact, having looked at them again, the models look better than their in-game counterparts.

Unfortunately, still completely ugly.

In comparison the line of action figures based off WoW characters looks great, and while they are larger it's easy to see that just increasing the amount of detail (turning some of the texture detail into actual geometry) makes them stand out a lot better.

Except that those things were and are competition? I know people firsthand who simply didn't have time to paint miniatures anymore so got their toys on a chessboard fix with the games you just mentioned. Hell, go to any GW focused messageboard and the great hope AND fear (depending on who you ask) is that GW makes a move to pre-painted

Heroclix type stuff is great for people who are transitioning from MtG to miniatures or something like that but there's just a vast difference between the time investment and depth of gameplay between those and games like Warhammer. Also, most GW focused messageboards are full of mouthbreathing idiots, and that's really not an exaggeration at all.

[Venkman]

And besides, it's not like the WH40k set is ignoring eBay. One buddy of mine makes all his gaming cash on painting miniatures. Five other buddies spend all their gaming cash on painted miniatures.

The WoW thing is different.

[Ingmar]

This isn't really competing with GW.

The main people who have something to potentially worry about here IMO:

www.wizards.com/minis

[Rondaror]

The games market is not necessarily divided into tabletop gamers and computer gamers, as the intersection between both is quite big. It's the gamer, having a hobby, like soccer or tennis, who wants to have fun, sharing his hobby with others. A MMO has the advantage of high accessibility, as you don't need a schedule to meet others in RL. You can just go online and start playing.
A fast food table top, like the Blizzard one, can introduce players into the table top world and is going to be more for the good of GW, then to the bad. MMO in general took their share of the gamers community (market), and let the table top games suffer from that...that's were the collapse of table top games started....of course the mighty TCG shit as well took a good portion of it.