Lone Wolf Development Forums  

Go Back   Lone Wolf Development Forums > Realm Works Forums > Realm Works Discussion

Notices

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
EightBitz
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 2013
Posts: 1,458

Old October 1st, 2019, 03:01 PM
And for the record, I don't believe it was a money grab. I only know Rob from the forums, and from the one time I met him at a meet up. So we're not best buddies, neighbors, or long-standing friends, but the impression I have of him is that he's a stand-up guy.

I think also get the impression that BJ has a high degree of integrity, and that if she ever saw any indication that Rob was acting in bad faith, she would have either stepped in or jumped ship.

So no. I never said it was a money grab, and I don't think it was a money grab. I do think things were very badly managed, but that's not the same as a money grab, and we now know that there were extenuating circumstances for the bad management.
EightBitz is offline   #61 Reply With Quote
EightBitz
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 2013
Posts: 1,458

Old October 1st, 2019, 03:02 PM
Yeah, sorry. Stopping now.
EightBitz is offline   #62 Reply With Quote
JustinThomason
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posts: 281

Old October 1st, 2019, 04:00 PM
Well, this really is a bummer. However, I've really integrated RW into my GMing routine. I find the current iteration very useful, so I intend to continue using it for the foreseeable future. I am disappointed that the content market won't be expanding, but since my group is planning on sticking with PF1, there was honestly not much chance we'd be seeing things I'd want to purchase anyway.

My biggest concern is support completely ending, and the servers getting shut down fully. I like the cloud storage, and the lifetime access was one of the reasons I backed at the Alpha Wolf level during the Kickstarter. However, with the export function I can probably manage to back things up myself (I'm only using RW on a single machine anyway).

BUT, if the servers do eventually get turned off we won't be able to create new realms without some sort of update to sever the requirement to call home. Seems like that won't be a problem for the time being, and I hope that Rob and the LWD team wouldn't leave their customers out to dry if it came to that (at least, they've always struck me as a stand up company that way).

Perhaps I need to make a boatload of blank realms to reserve for future use...
JustinThomason is offline   #63 Reply With Quote
DarthKurt
Junior Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2015
Location: Indianapolis
Posts: 8

Old October 1st, 2019, 08:05 PM
Well I knew it was too good to last.

Realm Works is a really good product. It has been immensely helpful for me to manage my campaign.

I have put a ton of work into my Realm, it is about 3GB in size.

I just hope LW will reconsider. I am happy to pay a subscription fee to keep it alive...
DarthKurt is offline   #64 Reply With Quote
Ualaa
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2013
Location: Vancouver, Canada.
Posts: 813

Old October 1st, 2019, 08:23 PM
In it's current form, it adds to my game.
I'll continue to use it.

If our group does an adventure for which there is a product on the Content Market, I'll purchase that without hesitation.
It would be nice if additional products made it onto the Content Market, but sadly none in the foreseeable future.

Hopefully Realm Works gets some attention in the future.

If the focus is on Hero Lab, I'd love for HLC (with 3pp packages) to find their way onto HLO.
Ualaa is offline   #65 Reply With Quote
Nikmal
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: Twin Cities, MN
Posts: 677

Old October 1st, 2019, 08:24 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Exmortis View Post
Yes I get the content for what is essentially now a dead product, or at least on life support. Yes I know its just shelved, but I have been around since the VIC20 days, products shelved end up Nuked by Duke Forever.

Opening the market, with the intent of bleeding the customer then shelving the product is bad faith. This may or may not have been intended but it sure feels like it. RW has a sorted history in its short 7ish years, I defended heavily for more than 5, but at some time you sit back and realize your on a raft that is being pushed further and further from shore, when you were told it was tied to the dock.

Very lonely out there in the blue.
Bolded for emphasis as to when you mentioned it being a money grab. And just as an FYI the above statement is also why I have been so argumentative. (I am also done, but protective of friends too).

But also suddenly realized that is NOT you Eightbitz "(

Last edited by Nikmal; October 1st, 2019 at 08:28 PM.
Nikmal is offline   #66 Reply With Quote
Frunk
Junior Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2018
Location: Scotland, UK
Posts: 6

Old October 2nd, 2019, 01:04 AM
Not great news for us, but worse for the folks there. Really horrible it had to end this way for you.

However bright side is that - we have a product that works, it does 90% of what I need it for. Obviously there are things I would like it to do better, but I can live with it as part of a toolset now rather than the only tool.... PowerPoint, OneNote and a whole raft of possible VTT tools that can be used.

As long as it continues to be supported in some capacity I am happy to keep paying the subscription - I am not expecting new features, just keep it "working as is" for now.

As for the future, I do hope if you don't open source it, that you can pass on the legacy to someone else. The core concepts are sound, the interface is a little clunky. Using the current software as a base "working model" along with it's design documents perhaps another brave developer can tackle V2 and take it to market, so it continues to live on.

I don't believe there has been any deliberate bad faith on LW's behalf - shit happens! I have seen FAR worse Kickstarters... at least the folks at LW seem to care and have created a tool that more or less works as intended.

So thanks for everything so far, I truly hope this is not the end of the journey.
Frunk is offline   #67 Reply With Quote
LazarX
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Jersey City
Posts: 326

Old October 2nd, 2019, 06:26 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Maidhc O Casain View Post
Well, damn. Sadly, I have zero interest in HLO unless and until you get PF1 going. And even then, I'll need something akin to the HLC editor capabilities, adjustments, etc. for it to be truly useful.

Before you completely halt RW development, will you at least consider fixing the problem that prevents it from integrating 64 bit HLC portfolios? That functionality was there previously, after all, and I for one had come to rely heavily on it... Happy as I am to have HLC going 64 bit, I'd almost rather keep the 32 bit version if 64 bit is never going to be supported by RW.
As a workaround does opening and saving them in the 32 bit app help?
LazarX is offline   #68 Reply With Quote
Acenoid
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2013
Posts: 798

Old October 2nd, 2019, 08:30 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frunk View Post
Not great news for us, but worse for the folks there. Really horrible it had to end this way for you.

However bright side is that - we have a product that works, it does 90% of what I need it for.
....
So thanks for everything so far, I truly hope this is not the end of the journey.
+1 , amen to that! Hoping for the best.

Join the (unofficial) Realm-Works IRC Chat: #realm-works on the Rizon Network (https://wiki.rizon.net/index.php?title=Servers)
-> Browser Client: https://kiwiirc.com/client/irc.rizon.net
Acenoid is offline   #69 Reply With Quote
BJ
Senior Member
Lone Wolf Staff
 
Join Date: Jun 2016
Posts: 608

Old October 2nd, 2019, 09:18 AM
Hey everyone!

My apologies for my delayed "appearance" here on the forums. My position at LWD has been reduced to part-time and I no longer have an assistant to help with communication so please try to keep that in mind when waiting for my attention.

One item I would like to address before going further is the comments claiming Lone Wolf purposely launched the Content Market knowing we'd be ceasing development on Realm Works. I can promise you that is 100% untrue. I was one of those that pushed for the completion of the Realm Works Kickstarter as I believed it was the right thing to do and I believe in the product itself. We fully expected to be adding new content and features as normal in the months that followed and are saddened that this won't be the case.

I can certainly sympathize with everyone's upset over the current situation and I've put together a list of answers to the most commonly asked questions I've seen flying around that will hopefully make the situation at least less dire than some are imagining.

1. Will Realm Works still be available for purchase in the future?

Of course! Realm Works is still an incredibly useful tool that we’ve come to love, and we have no intention of pulling it from the market.

2. Are the servers going to be shut down?

Of course not! We have no reason to shut the servers down and have zero intention of doing so. We’ve suspended work on other products over the years and they have continued to be heavily used long after new coding work was ceased, Realm Works is no different. It’s still a highly useful tool that we expect many users will continue to enjoy for years to come

3. Will Realm Works still provide online sync capability?


Absolutely! Nothing is changing with online synching; Realm Works and all its current features will continue to work in the same manner it has been.

4. Will refunds be granted to users who recently purchased the product?

Many users still consider Realm Works to be quite useful for campaign management, but if you’re within our 60-day guarantee window of purchase we will absolutely issue you a refund. While we might not be adding any new exciting features in the future there are still plenty of things to get excited about in Realm Works and we encourage you to take it for a spin before making a decision.

5. What about the people who just recently renewed access? Will there be an option for refunds for them?


No. The servers are still running, just as before, and Realm Works is still a powerful tool. Access isn’t being lost and the program will still work as it always has, we’re simply not adding any new bells or whistles at this time.

6. Will we continue to provide support to end-users or are users effectively on their own?

We'll do our best to continue providing product support, especially as it relates to individual accounts. Support for technical issues will be limited, but we'll do what we can to answer questions, provide guidance, and solve problems where we can.

7. If something breaks the product entirely in the future, will we address it?

It depends entirely on the nature of the problem, the number of users impacted, and the complexity of identifying and fixing the problem. Realm Works has been running well for quite some time now. There have been occasional issues, but we just fixed the bugs that were being most widely reported by users. Fortunately, the likelihood of there being a bug that seriously impacts numerous users is quite low. Users should continue, as they have been, to be responsible and maintain suitable backups using the mechanisms that are already provided within the product.

8. Have you considered opening the code to the community?

We have discussed it at length but won’t be doing so at this time. Our original vision included evolving Realm Works and Hero Lab both to a point where we could more fully integrate them and blur the lines between the two products. While we don’t currently have the resources to do this, we still absolutely plan to bring some of the key capabilities from Realm Works into Hero Lab. Additionally, the commercial framework used in the Realm Works UI costs thousands of dollars and anyone wanting to work on Realm Works would need to purchase that framework to begin working with the product, making it unlikely that much good would come from it.

9. Any chance of opening up the content market to user submissions of original material?

This is something we originally intended to pursue, but we also wanted to ensure there was consistency and continuity of all the material we released. That entailed significantly more work than just putting a file into the Content Market and while we were excited to make it a reality, we never quite had the resources available to put the plan into place. It’s certainly something we might consider in the future given enough interest, but we’re currently unable to allot the time to pursue it.

10. Can publishers sell their self-made RW content on DTRPG or other marketplace platforms?

Absolutely! However, it’s important they keep in mind that we can't enforce the security aspects of content that is released outside of the Content Market itself. Just like PDFs downloaded through DTRPG and other markets can potentially be shared freely out in the wild, so could Realm Works import files.

Hopefully, that answers some of the lingering questions. I will check back here for others in the days ahead.

Last edited by BJ; October 2nd, 2019 at 11:05 AM.
BJ is offline   #70 Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -8. The time now is 03:11 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® - Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
wolflair.com copyright ©1998-2016 Lone Wolf Development, Inc. View our Privacy Policy here.