RW software without cloud service?

[The One]

Originally Posted by rob

Users retain full access to all their content on their computers. The cloud is an OPTIONAL place to store your data.

That conclusion is dead wrong. It's not simple at all, as there are some extremely complicated issues involved. Yes, we could have spent an extensive amount of time to solve those issues. We opted not to, allowing us to instead focus our efforts on additional features and capabilities. Since users can easily pre-create however many realms they want, users can easily avoid ever having to be inconvenienced by the need to connect to the server when they don't have a connection handy.

I appreciate that you took the time to reply, having worked for a software development company, I am aware that design decisions get made which force limitations into the software.

I do feel that you are overlooking the biggest cause for concern though, what happens if something happens to Lone Wolf? If you go out of business? If you have a disaster such as a fire, or on the less drastic scale, what happens if the software stops making enough money to justify the server costs.

Effectively, Realmworks comes with a limited lifespan, beyond which you can't create new entries, only manipulate existing ones. It also raises the question what happens when you start selling licences for new content alongside Realmworks (such as Pathfinder Adventure Paths), will that too be tied into using "the cloud", without which your purchased content is useless?