Editing The End Times (section)

== Troubling issues with the End Times in conception and execution ==
There are many fundamental criticisms with the way in which End Times was written and resolved, even from the perspective of those of us who love most of GW's efforts:
*The density of character deaths actually started becoming a little absurd halfway through the first book. Shock value was expended quickly, and in a universe where characters rarely died, the sudden butchery was borderline absurdist. It felt very much as if the authors had been handed a bodycount which they had to achieve. 
**In the same vein as the above: Many characters, factions, locations and other aspects of the setting aren't even given a proper send-off. Every faction has at least one special character who fails to make a meaningful appearance, if one at all. The Ogre Kingdoms and the Orcs and Goblins are left out of the central story, appearing in the prologue and then doing nothing of value until we learn near the very end about Grimgor's Beast-Waaagh!. Seriously, one more ET book, maybe "End times: Grimgor" that detailed Grimgor becoming the Incarnate of Beasts and forming his army would have been great! Instead, we got one chapter in the main book and a tie-in novel, plus a single formation and special character.
**Major cities which have survived sieges lasting years are suddenly overrun in the course of a single battle, kingdoms that have stood for millennia are toppled overnight, and by the time the "good guys" get any kind of victory it's far too late.  Some factions got the short end of the stick more than others;
***The Bretonnians fanbase especially got assblasted over this because their entire country got levelled in a sidenote and they're just supposed to suck it up and live with the fact that Gilles le Breton just let this slide (presumably; we didn't learn what happened to him until the very end, where he was fighting alongside Abhorash). Oh, and the only army worth a damn anymore is just Jerrod's ragtag team of roughly 30 knights.
***The Tomb Kings fanbase got a raw deal as well.  Their entire nation was hit right out of the gate and didn't make it past book one, being the first to [[Squats|get the axe as they were subsumed into Nagash's Undead Legion and Nehekhara was levelled]].  Though the Tomb King fanbase can say that the destruction of Nehekhara was a major event in the End Times with a lot of attention in the book and Settra got two memorable, badass lines (he got a decent send-off, [[FAIL|but that was exclusive to a tie-in novel and never mentioned anywhere else]]).
**The only army that got any sort of measure of satisfaction in the end (aside from Chaos, that is) are the Dwarfs, who got to achieve their goal of avenging every grudge in the history of ever while Grimnir himself fought alongside his stunties and fucking [[Gotrek & Felix|Gotrek Gurnisson]] got to fight daemons for the rest of eternity with his superpowered axe. Sigmar got out semi-ok, though why he didn't reveal himself sooner is because it's a stupid retcon (after he comes back, Karl Franz's inner thoughts mention he doesn't know what's 'empowering him' which would be retarded if he was Sigmar the whole time).

*Stray plot threads: The whole series is notorious for leaving stray plot lines that never get fulfilled, get fulfilled very cheaply, or which were left hanging for several books before being wrapped up (including some very important ones). 
**Settra makes an appearance at the very end of Book 1 where the Chaos Gods put him back together to kill Nagash, but fails to appear at any point afterwards until the very end (and even then it was only in the tie in novel). 
**''Glottkin'' shows us the Imperial and Bretonnian Gods returning to strength and finally uniting to help Taal and the Empire being purged of Chaos. The next time the Empire is mentioned, things have gotten way worse off-screen, and even [[Josh Reynolds]] says the human Gods just faded away and did nothing (with the possibly forced example of Ulric, whom Teclis literally ripped out, forcing him to power up Martak). 
**The entire plot point of Lileath and her Haven is dropped with a brief, lazy "Chaos found out and ganked them offscreen" explanation.
** The Lizardmen exodus is the very first thing we are shown in the End Times prologue, yet we only find out more about it after three entire books.
** The entire Skaven story ends after Thanquol made his deal with Archaon, and after that, we learn nothing about where any of the Skaven characters (aside from Ikit Claw, who blows up the Black Pyramid) went (aside from, again, a tie-in novel explaining that Thanquol and Skreech just warped Skavenblight out of reality). 

*Questionable Justifications/GeeDubs being [[profit|GeeDubs]]: While it was true that Fantasy was in difficult times both financially and lore-wise, the justification of 'it's moving the story along' is absurd; that's akin to saying that in order to move [[Game of Thrones]] along Martin should [[TPK|kill all of the characters]], [[Exterminatus|destroy the world]] and [[Age of Sigmar|create another series entirely]] with (functionally) the same name. Some commentators have the suspicion that GW in this respect views us all as 'gamers' who will play wargames regardless of quality, but many of us were attracted by this strange, dark but hopeful fantasy world. In simple terms, the ending was a kick right to the teeth of the fans and many find it hard to take it in good grace. 
** As time has gone by after the End Times, GWs decision to overrun and replace WFB has become clearer. The theory that WFB was squatted for not bringing in the bread in the manner 40k did at the time seems to be true, as it was replaced with the now fairly popular, slowly growing Age of Sigmar. However, Warhammer Fantasy Battles lives on in several popular [[Total War: WARHAMMER|vydia]] [[The_End_Times:_Vermintide|titles]], attracting new fans who might've never wanted to sell their kidneys to create an army, but still greatly enjoy the setting... So the plan seems to have been to put WFBs setting into another media, allowing it to remain alive while [[Age of Sigmar|the new thing]] could cash in on the model's market. However, many still grumble that the execution of this (literally) was heavy-handed and rough in many places. Which leads to...

*Cynicism: When Nagash was resurrected at his most powerful and conquered all of Nehekara, we thought 'That's fucking awesome! now what next?' When hobbyists read that the elven races were combining, we thought 'Wow, how will they manage that in the long term?'. When Vlad became an Elector we thought 'What a cool hook. It's bold though, how will that go forward?'. They made so many radical changes in the full knowledge that in the end they wouldn't have to develop them because they were going to hit the 'Chaos wins, everything dies, moar nihilism' button. That's not a very nice way to set people up for disappointment and charge over £200 in hardbacks when 'Chaos kills everything' printed in 72-pt font might have sufficed. Overall, it seems less like an attempt to give WFB a good send-off and more like one last cash-grab before giving the game the Old Yeller treatment.
** TL;DR: "Why should you care about the struggles of Bretonnian knights? What about all the other gods? Whatever happened to the characters they introduced and all the old ones you cared about? Who cares! You're a dumb enough shmuck to buy it! Come on asshole, give us your money! ... Wait, why are you leaving?"

*''Chaos always wins''. The assertion that the ending was original ignores the existence of genres such as noir, but also ignores GW's own canon. Chaos is always depicted as ascendant to the point of nihilism. Good guys have not been allowed anything but the most Pyrrhic victories for about ten years now. The ending they selected was the predictable, tedious Chaos fanfiction anyone following the material could have grimly come to forecast.  By choosing to destroy the world, GW have done two things in this way: told us that all the dreaming and imagining and fighting we did for that world was utterly pointless. 
**They've also put themselves in a bind, from a writing perspective: what is the incentive to get involved when the triumph of Chaos is inevitable? Why would we care about the new world when Chaos will inevitably destroy that in the end as well? Why bother being good if you're inevitably going to hell? Perhaps more to the point, what's to stop GW from hitting the 'Chaos Wins, Everyone Dies' button again a few years after we've got used to the new canon?   In a way, GeeDubs finally got the [[Storm of Chaos]] they really wanted, now without that pesky element known as "fanbase interaction" meddling with the writers as they essentially fapped off to Chaos killing everyone because they're so awesome and - wait, why's everyone leaving?  What do you mean, 'we liked those other guys'?  
**Just to be clear: The major argument isn't that Chaos' victory is inevitable; it was hinted at in the past, though it was never laid out in detail or shown to be a certainty. Counterarguments to that idea aside, a faction having an ultimate victory, Chaos or otherwise, isn't the main point of contention. Rather, it's that the setting's lost that sort of allure of the possibility that an alleged doomsday victory could be stalled or even prevented or reversed, that other outcomes could exist and that there was some point in the never-ending struggle against armageddon between Order and Chaos.  There's nothing out there about "What if Nagash actually became the god he wanted and made everyone dead?" or another opposing end goal that can be possible, or any of the other Gods actually doing anything (GW only seems to care about Sigmar), and everything anyone ever did to oppose Chaos meant virtually nothing.  What was once a very vague and distant possible ending was made into a total nihilistic joke as the dudes in charge decided to jerk Chaos off so hard their wrists broke.  By flat-out letting Chaos win, and furthermore letting them effortlessly shaft each and every other faction, they've made it clear that all these other endings are completely impossible, which is not only poor in and of itself, but also totally contradictive to other material of the End Times as well. As talked about above there actually ''were'' several plot threads set up for potentially different outcomes, including a Chaos defeat, but at the end those all vanished inexplicably for a forced ending with more unresolved subplots than you could shake a Bretonnia at.

*The entire event is a drooling fanboy's love letter to the Skaven, who go [[Mary Sue|godmode]] and destroy or cripple a huge number of factions. More than the number of factions that exist ''total'' in most any other wargame. The Skaven single-handedly destroy the Lizardman Empire. And end the Dwarf Empire. And Kislev. And Brettonia. And Morsleib. And Tilea. And Cathay. And Nuln. And Estalia. And Valten. They stop Nagash from ascending to godhood. This feels about the same as if the Jawas from Star Wars destroyed the Rebel Alliance themselves, or WH40k's Squats brought down the Imperium, Eldar, Orks, and Necrons. The Skaven are treated as a joke even in universe, and they're arguably even more detestable than Chaos worshipers.  All those characters you know and love? Your favourite faction? Literally eaten and shat out by rats, also an excellent metaphor for The End Times as a whole.
**This is made even more stupid by inconsistent writing: for all their achievements and for all their supposed strength, they go from "Unstoppable tide devouring half of the world" to "nameless cannon-fodder in the Chaos army" in the space of one paragraph. Which, if you think about it, not only is inconsistent and doesn't make sense, but makes their achievements all the more infuriating. The race who is single-handedly responsible for wiping out 2/3 of the known world bow down to the guys who's greatest achievement is destroying Kislev.  I mean, if you have the military strength to destroy basically everyone you go against, you can easily squash that Chaos army yourself since the combined forces of the aforementioned empires are plenty enough to deal with any Chaos invasion. 
**The in-universe explanation given of "We are not strong enough to destroy Chaos-things" also doesn't make any sense because up until that point they '''were''. And if they weren't, they would've helped the other races facing the biggest foe as they always had (when Nagash was at the peak of his power they didn't bow down and ally with him, they went to the defeated hero of the now non existent empire and helped him against the bigger threat), if only out of sheer self-interest. They essentially transformed Skaven into fantasy!Tyranids; they're presented as this all-devouring, larger-than-life threat who run around [[Squat#When_suddenly...|eating other factions]], but in the end they amount to nothing when compared to Chaos.

*Chaos destroying the world: Chaos' final objective was never previously to be the destruction of the world before the End Times. In previous books it was always stated that the dark powers were just backing up the Everchosen at the moment, mainly to do what the Everchosen wanted at the time. In Storm of Chaos for example, Archaon wanted to kill Ulric and had a plan for how to do so, and if he succeeded he'd be free to move onto destroying the Empire as a secondary objective. In the old lore by backing their mortal followers it was shown they wanted to either turn the world into a place more their liking (as seen in Tamurkhan) or that they wanted to destroy entities that they particularly despised. In the End Times by making the final goal just "blow everything up" plain and simple, they indirectly shifted the Chaos Gods from unfathomable beings of great power to Saturday morning cartoon villains. ("Next time we will blow up your world Karl Franz! You'll seeeeeeee!")
**Adding to the pile of Chaos fap at the expense of old lore, apparently the mortal world wasn't actually important to them. Before, they needed to turn mortal souls willingly to their side to gain strength and use that strength to go and conquer, thereby gaining more souls, thereby getting even stronger. That was the whole point of their invasions. But now, who gives a shit about the mortal world? Just blow it all up! To add insult to injury, in the span of a paragraph Archaon conquers entire ''universes'' prior to Age of Sigmar starting up, so apparently Chaos had Palpatine levels of unlimited power and souls and the Warhammer world was just that piece of popcorn stuck down in the couch. Yeah. Great fuckin' story guys.

*The above is ''sort of'' justified with the whole "Endless Cycle of Worlds being destroyed by Chaos" retcon mentioned earlier. Basically they've gotten bored with this world and want a new world to play with and corrupt. Buuuut when one thinks hard about it, it raises more issues than it solves. First off, it's not the forces of Chaos that end up creating these new worlds, but rather Order. Meaning that in some way the Ruinous Powers need to be thwarted. If that's the case, then '''Why the hell do they go out of their way to stop them?''' Hell, Be'lakor even destroys Lileath's plans for a new world, and the only reason we even get the new setting is thanks to a [[bullshit|rather contrived accident where the winds of magic '''somehow''' form new realities on their own]] despite the fact that the [[fail|Incarnates' ritual didn't work]]. But even if we ignore this seemingly suicidal "plan" they have, how did they accomplish this in all the past realities? Did they have another Everchosen running around? If so, what happened to him, and why didn't they just bring him in earlier? And don't say they couldn't, Archaon was brought into Age of Sigmar so they ''clearly'' can bring previous world destroyers to new ones. Furthermore, if this is just some kind of endless cycle that cannot be broken, does that mean there's a greater power at work above even the Chaos Gods? Some sort of Moorcock-esque Cosmic Balance? 
#This only further amplifies point #5 as well. If Chaos could destroy the world any time they wanted, why didn't they? And at that, why try so hard to make ''literally everything'' pointless that the good guys did? Not only does this go against established lore where Chaos truly was struggling to overcome the world and getting beaten back for reals, it also establishes the same precedent of pointlessness for the successor world. Why should ''anyone'' give a Skaven's ass about Age of Sigmar's realms if Chaos is able to press a button and blow everything up on a whim? They might as well have said the whole previous world and this one were just a dream and Sigmar woke up. It'd have no less meaning than what the writers actually ended up crapping out.

* '''Ultimately, the new setting doesn't end up feeling like a victory.''' Even if we are to accept the Chaos victory as the ''only'' way this could end, the Genesis of the mortal realms really feels like a tacked on participation trophy. Compare this with ''Crisis on Infinite Earths'', the gold standard of setting reboots. While the main villain, the Anti-Monitor, was mostly successful in his attempts to destroy the multiverse, and at one point it even seems like he had achieved total victory, the heroes of the DC universe's actions allowed the birth of one unified setting. It felt like this reboot had been ''earned'', that their heroism had given them the prize of a new reality. With End Times/Age of Sigmar however? Not at all. The Incarnates' last stand ended badly, their ritual to try and stabilize the growing Warp rift failed and Chaos consumed their world. The '''only reason''' they managed to get their new universe is because the Winds of Magic pulled some contrived bullshit and drew in the scattered fragments of their old world into new reality spheres, ''completely'' independent of their actions. Note that this explanation wasn't given until a full [[retcon|'''3 years into AoS' lifespan''']] by the way. They didn't earn their new reality, it would have been born even if they just sat back and watched the universe blow up over a few mugs of beer. It might have felt a little better if their ritual had actually worked, and the birth of the Mortal Realms was the result of said ritual going off. At least then it would have felt like a Pyrrhic victory for the good guys and shows that everything they fought and died for was not for nothing. But no, GW just handed them their new setting because otherwise they'd have no Fantasy franchise. 
The good news is that not everyone has to abide by this. Fans can politely decline to accept GW's ending and write their own alternate ending or continue their own stories. It is all fiction after all, we can choose to believe whatever makes us feel happiest which is actually what GW supports, they've written in several books (fantasy and 40K) for players to change the rules or even the history of the world how they want (so long as the other player is fine with the rules changes or is at least aware of the fluff changes).

TL;DR: The writing varied from [[Skub]] to shit, and had a lot of plotlines that could have been much, much better executed.