This Warhammer: End Times thing (novel/setting spoilers)

[Sgt_Artyom]

Here's hoping they somehow resurrect the good ol'Emprah for an Imperial sized smack down on those dirty xenos and traitors. In all seriousness though, I'd expect more of an end times "Holy crap amazing changes at an amazing pace!" kind of thing to be coming from 40k and not fantasy. It's kind of been the direction they've been going for years but with FB it's just gone far too fast, interrupting some series mid stride and just out of no where. I don't mind the "End Times" concept in FB as with 40k it's always been on the horizon, I just wish they'd have finished any current story arcs before just jumping straight into this. I also know that 40k really is moving in this direction they're just doing in at a far more understandable pace.

[Alkaloid]

Not likely, they don't really have the same commercial pressures driving them for 40k.

As far as I can tell (by interpreting the panicked guesswork of the collective internet tea leaves) the real driver for this is that years of models becoming more expensive and the points values of models decreasing means that the barrier for entry to WFB has just become to high. The initial outlay for a fairly standard 1000 pt army, plus the additional time and effort involved in assembling/painting that many figures is just too damn high.

40k has much less issue there because you can have a functional game with a few squads of SPACE MAHREENS (which are all they really want to sell anyway) so bringing new players on board is much easier. (Incidentally there are rumours of a heavily armoured, elite 'good' aligned faction being introduced for 9th ed, so fantasy space marines will become the new norm)

[Vejut]

Barriers to entry wise, the fact that you can't really get a game of fantasy at a lot of places that are more tourney focused under 2400 points for beans doesn't help, plus the near requirement for at least one huge block, and WHFB's also started to drop below the critical "its everywhere and what everybody plays" point, continuing the cycle.

The version of the fantasy space marines rumor I heard makes it sound more like super grail knight chaos warrior equivalents than actual power armor dudes though.

[Elheru Aran]

For whatever it's worth: the little hole-in-the-wall game shop down the road from my place has a little rack of GW products. It's exclusively 40K (apart from Chaos Daemons, but whatever). It's like this in half the little shops around here-- if they have GW at all, it's 40K. You can't get to WHFB without driving about a hour to the big store in Fayetteville or ordering online.

[streetad]

So, in a mildly surprising turn of events,
Spoiler

It appears that they actually followed through with it. Chaos wins, everyone dies, the world is sucked into the warp.

Fittingly, the Warhammer setting in its current iteration appears to have ended like it begun back in the '80s - by throwing as many standard fantasy/sci-fi ideas at the wall as possible to see what sticks.

Teclis's plan would have worked if it wasn't for TREACHERY and the inability of the good guys to work together/put past grievances behind them. He dies trying to hold everything together.
The Chaos Gods laugh in Nagash's face at the presumption that he could possibly challenge them and effortlessly turn him to dust.
Malekith does something self-sacrificing but the nominal 'good guys' just leave him to die anyway.
The last we see of Archeon and Karl Franz (who has now been completely subsumed by the power of Sigmar to the extent that the text just refers to him as 'Sigmar') they are wrestling over the titular Warhammer itself as they fall into a warp rift together (admittedly this is a nice image to end things on).
As a 'post-credits sting' we are basically left with a being 'that was once a man' (presumably KF/Sigmar but conceivable Archeon?) floating in space alone, then reaching out and doing something 'miraculous' involving an orb. Is time cyclical? Has he started a new world? Is he the God Emperor of Man? Your guess is as good as mine).

What this all means for people who actually play the game, I suppose time will tell...

[GuppyShark]

Very interesting to see them piss away the only asset of worth they had in fantasy wargaming (the fluff created by the likes of Jes Goodwin and William King at the dawn of the company).

It worked so well when White Wolf did this, it must be worth trying!

[Sidewinder]

They discussed this in The Bolter & Chainsword (a 'Warhammer 40,000' forum) thread "Possible Origin Story For The Emperor"

At the end of End Times Archaon, Sigmar and Archaon engage in a fist fight and tumble into a warp rift. The rest of The Warhammer Fantasy world is destroyed by The Chaos Gods. Teclis, Tyrion, Malekith, Nagash, all those people die. The Chaos Gods then go looking for another planet to mess with. But at the very end, a man covered in light is falling through the Warp/Space (it isn't really clear) until he latches onto a planet. Covered in light, born of the warp, sound an awful lot like that Emperor fellow we all know and love. Could The Emperor possibly be Sigmar, or even Archaon? (Who it is revealed was working to destroy The Chaos Gods from within). Obviously this is a stretch, but could it be true?

So, if the End Times just boil down to 'Archaon vs Valten (which is what I assume you mean by Sigmar) without a winner, then Chaos destroys the world', I have to ask. What was the point of the previous 4 [censored]ing books? Have GW really just trolled the Fantasy fanbase with £250's 'worth' of story just to end it with 'Rocks Fall, Everybody Dies'?

Short answer?

Yes.