Kroak, I guess you can pronounce it Crow-Ack but he's a frog named "croak" A skink is named tic-tac-toe There used to be an Itzi-Bitzi That just shows me GW doesn't take their fluff seriously.
With those, yeah I totally agree. Kroak annoys me, but his backstory is amazing. I love Chakax, I mean that just sounds tough as hell! I know they have some utterly silly names for some of our characters, but whats life without whimsy :3
I was sorry when they toned down the puns. Some of them only used to make sense if you had been exposed to UK popular culture, e.g. Lotl Botl
I wouldn't mind the silly names if the special characters weren't all spectacularly terrible and 100pts too expensive (well, most of them anyway).
I would not consider the names 'fun' but more in the category of asinine! I am glad the miniatures and artwork and army books are moving away from the cartoonish, childish things written/modeled a few years ago. But then with new competition (mantic games) etc. they will have to start doing a better job. Unless your seriously into GW tournaments, why would you ever buy GW over mantic miniatures etc. unless they simply do not make the miniature. Ya, the asinine names were the perfect indication of how GW ran their company and (almost into the ground)
It'd be more acceptable in a different game setting, but the whole Warhammer storyline is fairly dark and gritty. Throwing "clever" character names and tongue-in-cheek references into the mix does nothing but interfere with the experience for me.