Any recent updates on the progress of Content Market

[Grey Mage]

Nice to hear from you BJ...!

Especially since it SEEMS that there is forward momentum starting to build.

Keep up the good work!

[EightBitz]

Originally Posted by ShadowChemosh

Came here to say pretty much this. This very thread has many posts begging for LW to give updates even if the update said nothing. Well seems like BJ is trying to do exactly what was requested.

Thirded. Thanks for the update!

[BJ]

To those who have shown support, thank you, the positives mean a lot right now.

Dark Lord, I think I do remember the conversation, though admittedly it's a vague memory given how all over the place I was last year between being a guest of the show and all my other commitments. Thank you for attending one of my panels! I'll be doing a similar panel this year with Satine Pheonix, Dr. Megan Conell, and Amy Vorphal that I think will be a lot of fun.

For everyone else, I understand your frustration, I share your frustration. I will continue to extend my apologies for the amount of time you've had to wait because I feel it's the right thing to do and respect that many of you need to vent no matter how demoralizing that may be to myself or the LWD team.

I shared a general summary of the past months yesterday elsewhere and I wanted to share a summary again here for any who have missed the bits and pieces scattered throughout this incredibly long thread. So, here is a general recap:

Regarding the Content Market, I initially pushed very hard for release back in November/December, but we discovered the API items we needed from Paizo weren’t done and we had no control over that. They were understandably busy at the time with their own technical difficulties, the new Playtest, and rebuilding their website so we had to wait.

We haven't been able to reasonably backtrack for a variety of reasons, everything was built to work with Paizo’s API that we were under the impression was done a very long time ago. Unfortunately, when we were finally ready for it, it wasn’t usable for us and adjustments needed to be made.

While it may not be visible to the outside world, I promise you we are not just sitting around. We’ve worked on what we can, had a lot of personnel changes, replaced our entire customer service staff, hired more devs etc. We’ve had 5 new devs since the CM push stalled at a company that only employs 8 devs total, one of which is the owner. As you can imagine, training new devs, reorganizing more than half the company and instituting new policies has taken time and I’ve focused on what we could accomplish while we waited so as to be prepared when Paizo finishes on their end.

I promise you if I could force the release of the CM or could have at any point in the last six months, I would have. It is and has been my top priority. I even went so far as to offer to fly our top dev to Seattle to fix the API ourselves late last year. For very understandable security reasons, they declined.

Like everyone else, I just want the product to move forward and the company to succeed. If the promised adjustments are made this month as I was assured they would be at Paizo Con, we will hopefully have the CM out by Gen Con and finally be able to move away from this depressing state. I’ve been incredibly open about our trials and probably risked my job more than once to push for what I felt was the best path forward for the company or in defense of our consumers. There really isn’t any more to it than that, no hidden secrets or planned doom for Realm Works, the quiet is just us working and waiting for what we need to move forward.

To add to that, Paizo just rolled out the initial API changes we needed today. Before anyone gets too excited, it's the first run, there will absolutely be some testing required, and very likely a few tweaks before we can make use of it entirely, but they did keep the commitment they made to me at Paizo Con. I am incredibly grateful for that and thrilled to be moving forward again in any capacity. It won't happen overnight, but I have my fingers crossed we will see the Content Market in time for Gen Con.

[kbs666]

I sincerely hope that the CM is out by GenCon.

I also hope you have a successful panel at GenCon, hopefully the rumblings from the cranks due to a certain GoH won't result in any trouble for you.

[BJ]

Thank you. One can hope!

[daplunk]

Exciting!

[Greebo]

Some (small) hope at last.

Thanks for the insightful update, BJ!

[Exmortis]

Originally Posted by BJ

Thank you. One can hope!

BJ while I do appreciate your post, and Rob's position of nothing is good enough.

It's that everything else is held up by one thing. It was stated Paizo was clearly the road block, and yet, nothing, nothing else was produced in that time frame. That's what so frustrating. Why would you hold up everything else?

There are a ton of features your customers want, need, voted for... How long ago was that now? Yet nothing has come of the time.

Surely even Rob can understand that if CM is to be delayed by outside forces, spending a little time on other customer wanted features would have been a good way to bridge the gap?

Or maybe a few bug fixes for long over due issues?

That's what is most frustrating.

[Toblakai]

Originally Posted by Exmortis

BJ while I do appreciate your post, and Rob's position of nothing is good enough.

It's that everything else is held up by one thing. It was stated Paizo was clearly the road block, and yet, nothing, nothing else was produced in that time frame. That's what so frustrating. Why would you hold up everything else?

There are a ton of features your customers want, need, voted for... How long ago was that now? Yet nothing has come of the time.

Surely even Rob can understand that if CM is to be delayed by outside forces, spending a little time on other customer wanted features would have been a good way to bridge the gap?

Or maybe a few bug fixes for long over due issues?

That's what is most frustrating.

I think you may have missed this part of BJ's post:

We’ve had 5 new devs since the CM push stalled at a company that only employs 8 devs total, one of which is the owner. As you can imagine, training new devs, reorganizing more than half the company...

This is why RW took the back seat for a while, they didn't have the devs, HL and HLO pay the bills, RW won't pay the bills until the CM is out and that is waiting on Paizo.

[Deo]

Hey BJ

any plans on we are getting D&D 5th stuff to?