Absolutely. But none of that is recent, is it? Even Pathfinder's elves are supposed to be creepy with their weird eyes and technically are space aliens in the setting of the game(even though I don't believe it ever actually comes up). But for everything you named, there's 50 more than are just aping Tolkien. And it's not as if taking inspiration from something is a bad thing... but when almost everything is taking damn near the same inspiration, and you're not the biggest fan of that inspiration(hell, even if you are a fan of the source material sometimes), it just gets tiresome.
But that's not Tolkien's fault; that's the fault of writers who don't want to make something different. And something like Skyrim is not that old; not to mention Witchers 1-3, both series had Elves being really bad guys as opposed to Tolkien's elves who were rather angelic. The Thalmor and the Wild Hunt break the stereotype of Elves being good guys as per Tolkien lore.
You're forgetting that there is more than just people eating up what GW is selling them. GW is notorious for using artificial scarcity as a means for them to sell shit. That scarcity plays right into the FOMO that a lot of things have been experiencing since the covid lockdowns started. With more people coming into the hobby you'll see more people scrambling to get products that will never see a meaningful increase in units produced. Then you have scalpers which GW will happily let them continue their practices as GW sells units whether or not the scalpers actually make money off of idiots willing to buy shit at incredible mark up.
Again, these tactics by GW only work because there's a long que of people wanting to get more of their plastic crack. Tactics like using artificial scarcity only work if there's a huge demand for the product. And the fact that there's more people coming into the hobby means that all calls for boycotting have failed; the opposite has happened, people are going in instead of out. And of course, scalpers are making bank on this because people will do anything just to get their hands on this stuff. Scalpers wouldn't be buying this stuff and selling it for a profit if the demand isn't there.
I’ve been eyeballing some alternative sites for Krieg models lately as an army, but yeah so far not going to buy from GW ever again. Insane there’s people willing to put up with abuse like that still. Some people are way too addicted to that plastic crack.
My thoughts exactly. But hey, some people are obviously suckers for punishment, so no matter how far they break the lore or raise the prices, these people would still buy. Just like I said they would.
I'm not talking about the politics, I'm talking about how coomsumerish it is. For example if one knows that he could get a 3d printer and print a entire ass army instead of a few plastic models and bits if they're feeling generous most of the time they'll prefer the former. Those that prefer the latter are either ignorant, couldn't be able do it, or are devoted to GW. Hell buying second hand will make things little cheap in this hobby but you got these whales and scalpers buying shit.
It is consoomerish; Warhammer fans have been the model consoomer for decades. GW has been raising prices for decades, yet they banked on the consumers coming back for more-and guess what, they came back for more. Also, buying second hand will still profit GW because the product was already bought from them, so they still made bank on the purchase. That, and they can always release new models with better meta to discourage buying second-hand so that you'd buy directly from them. The Primaris are one such change; they broke the Space Marine lore because they didn't like people passing around used Space Marine armies instead of buying new ones, so they made new Space Marines with better meta who are also the new faces of the Space Marine faction, so while the fans bitched and moaned and whined that it breaks the lore, they bought it anyways, making GW's suits happy that their stock price rose.
I remember watching Arch complain about the Primaris Marines, talking about how it breaks the lore, how it shouldn't be canon, calls for boycotts were already happening back then, and yet nothing happened. GW's stock price rose, the Primaris were bought in large quantities, all's well that ends well for GW, and now, history repeated once more, even after this whole Fem-Custodes debacle and a dozen videos of Henry Cavill supposedly threatening to quit.
