I hope I will never have to go back to any of the tools I used before Realm Works. The only competitor here for me is Fantasy Grounds - the modules and the perpetual license.

Me too, Valyar.

Well, it's hard to beat free.

I appreciate this sentiment, but I don't share it. Obviously, this is a personal choice and to each their own, but I think there are a lot of us here willing to pay a sub. I started out with a free Roll 20 sub and have slowing added to it. Now I pay the full $10 sub. I have also dropped a chunk of dough into D&D Beyond. While neither of these products fill exactly the same niche as RW, my overall experience with both as been way better. The point is that I am willing to pay for a quality product and a quality experience.

It is not a sentiment, but personal position, in which I am not alone. With my second gaming group we also use roll20. Moved to Plus for the dynamic light and probably we will renew it until FG Ultimate is out. I don’t wanna debate on the bad side of roll20, as this will go into offtopic, but one thing I don’t agree with you:

Having a subscription based model is no guarantee for quality and experience. At all. :)

Shitty software is shitty and paying someone to have something constantly in development is not. Good software on the other hand - sure. But depends on the usage and many other factors.

Without seeing the implementation the all web based model does not appeal to me. What do you do at a con when the WiFi is overwhelmed? What do you do if you game in a basement with terrible reception?

How they pay for it isn't really an issue for me. One of the big problems with RW is LWD never adequately considered how they would make revenue off RW and now they have every egg in the CM basket which frightens me since I can see that it is unlikely to ever be as successful as they need it to be.

Yeah, that is without a doubt true. There are a number of products that I did a trail run of and simply didn't have the great experience I was willing to pay for with a sub. My experiences with Roll 20 and D&D Beyond have both been very good so far and I am willing to keep paying for what is offered. When I bought realm works about 4 years ago I was very excited. For the first year and half I was waving the virtual pom-poms and shouting praise. I even convinced some of my gaming friends to buy it. Over time my experience turned sour. Some of the blame was my own. I bought a product based on what "coming soon" rather than on what is currently offered. That set me up for frustration and disappointment. However, LWD bear much of the blame. I won't rehash it all again, but LWD made me feel like they viewed me as the bad guy. Bottom line, I have money to spend on my hobby of choice and I have some options for where to spend it. At the moment RW is still unique in what it offers, but that is not going to be the case forever. LOL, I'm starting to ramble and don't even know what point I was making, so that's a good reason to stop now.

Agreed 100%.

You can stop spying and telling my life story now. :) Unfortunately this statement is too true for too many of us.

Sadly, yes. In many ways.