NezziR answered pretty well, but I'll add mine too.

FFG did not tell anyone that they were making a new game

It was a Marketing strategy to shorten the time between the excitement of unveiling and release, to try to capitalize on the initial buzz about the game and prevent the excitement from petering out (which can happen with a long time before release). This is completely valid and reasonable strategy (even if, in this case, it didn't necessarily work as well as they hoped. They underestimated the reaction of a vocal portion of their fan base).

FFG did not ask the existing fans for ideas for the new edition.

How do you know? Perhaps they did not create an open forum for it, but perhaps they did some various polling. Or perhaps they just lurked various boards and picked ideas up on what to fix or implement. Or perhaps they had a private mailing list? Some of them are WFRPv2 fans, so they provided input too.

FFG have not conducted any playtesting outside of their own employees.

Again, how do you know? Any playtesters are probably under an NDA to not say anything about it until release. You have no idea how many playtesters they used, and how many of those played WFRP v2.

FFG have chosen to completely change the system.

Yes, they are *mostly* changing the system. (You can't say completely, because they kept many of the stats, the careers and career system, etc). It has already been stated they are trying to bring in new people into the game. As I pointed out, if they made v3 as an update to v2, what new players would they gain? Anyone not-interested in v2 wouldn't buy it, and anyone interested interested in v2 would have already bought v2 (and therefore not a 'new' player). So, they change the game to make it different enough from v2 to entice new players to try the new version of the game. This has nothing to do with them hating the v2 players, or not caring about v2 players. They hope the v2 players will try and like v3. I'll quote back to you:

Are you really insane enough to argue that FFG doesn't want any v2 players to play v3?

You only have to look at the reaction from the majority of the existing fans to realise that this game was not aimed at them at all.

Umm.. what majority? Looks pretty even to me, for and against, on these boards. Your statement here is obviously incorrect and false. There is no "reaction from the majority of existing fans..." and patently no substance supporting your conclusion. I agree, v3 is more focused on trying to get new players into WFRP, than appeasing v2 players that wanted v3 to be an upgrade of v2. I'll even suggest it's possible FFG is more concerned about getting new players, than losing v2 players that don't like v3. Neither of those means, however, that they have no regard or desire to try to keep as many v2 players as possible (while also adding new players to the fan base).

Well of course they intend to "sell a game to a group of players that are all happy to use an existing system". They also want to sell it to the D&D 4th edition crowd. They also want to sell it to new players. If they had their way, they would sell two copies to every man, woman, and child on earth. It's a company - a business. They evaluated the current system, one that has tons of material on it, and decided to make the setting more appealing to a broader range of people and that it would allow them to expand it (to their and our benefit) in more directions. That broad range doesn't exclude current players, but there will always be a EXTREMELY VOCAL group that hates change. If you know gaming history, you'll know this happens every time a system is updated.

You say that it's unusual for companies to create new systems, but it's been done many many times. In fact, your next sentence gives an example of it. I know a lot of people that swore off D&D when 4th edition was released (I was one of them). Every one of those people are playing campaigns now (again, I'm one of them). In fact, a lot of people that quit when 3.x was announced have come back to 4th (a full group of 9 players that I taught to play decades ago in another town).

You say you're not attacking FFG and WFRP3, but questions like 'Do any of you really think that FFG looked at the first two editions of WFRP, looked at the fans and then designed WFRPv3 for the existing fanbase?' imply that:

• They didn't look at previous editions when they designed the game. I can't see how that's even possible.
• They ignored the fans and designed the new system while thumbing their noses at the grognards.

Not only is that unfair, I think it's unrealistic. All the background stuff is there - even some new stuff - which I appreciate very much, and It would be stupid to the extreme to design a game and totally blow off your client base. That's not what's happening here.

If you plan on buying the game like you say, I would think you'd want to see it survive. Even if it fails, I doubt v2 is coming back. So our choices are, support it and hope like hell it does well, or make do with the materials we have and dream of days gone by when Warhammer still had new material being published.

So, we can keep crying about details, or start being creative and working with what we have. We can keep driving off potential buyers and end up like AH minis, or we can be adults and figure out how to use this game to its maximum potential. Gamers are the most intelligent and creative group of people you'll ever find. That's the stereotype I would like to see perpetuated.

Edit: Man, the formatting got messed up somewhere...

Must say it: The users of rpg forums do not even come close to represent roleplayers as a majority. We who use rpg forums frequently, and post the most are a minority. Otherwise there would never have been new editions of anything (since the birth of forums on the internet that is) and most rpg's would fade and die.

A good posting conduct is only represent him or herself in a discussion when regarding viewpoints

Getting back on topic. FFG was able to cancel the minis because it was in prototype stage from the looks of it. The rules for the core set of Warhammer 3rd are written and done, most likely at the printers for the November pre-release date. It is too late to stop 3rd edition now. China printers are already paid and the arrangements for all the pieces are most likely finalized. That is the only reason.

Jay planned to have the Gen Con reveal be a huge deal. The core rules were done by then you just had to look at the display and the amount of info he revealed. I honestly do not think Jay or any FFG member expected the negative reviews. Jay and the others saw the crowds that they thought would love the concept. It is Decent and storytelling RPG combined with the Warhammer universe.Seriously what more could you want? At least that was what they thought.

I personally can not speak for FFG. I was not there when they made the product. I have a feeling this came down to FFG not wanting to risk messing up the Warhammer 2nd edition system that worked and hurting sales more with the releases like The Tomb Kings adventure. Maybe FFG did not know how to handle the continuation of the successful product and so they decided to make a 3rd edition. FFG is not known for RPGs. The redo of Grimm was amazing though.

I won't have the money to get this for myself. Even though I am not religious I tend to use Christmas as a day to thank everyone in my family for being there for me when times are rough and don't ask for anything in return. So for me winter is a time for saving and not a time for person purchases. I will be getting many copies for my store including the $40 box so that I can look through the game.

For the record:

I was not a happy person and was attacking DnD 4.0 mainly due to the WoW similarities but in the end I bought the pre release adventure set and actually loved the combat focus on it. Still prefered Exalted to it, but it was fun and I took back the things I said and convinced my customers to get it. Hopefully Warhammer 3rd will be the same.