A word to the wise for the complainers

[Nikmal]

Originally Posted by Zinquox

Honestly no matter what people would be upset. Its the nature of the beast. If LWD had never put out any sort of date, if for instance it just said "coming soon" with no date, then people would still get upset because "soon" shouldn't mean such a long period of time or what not. If we were getting daily updates people would complain that too much time and energy was being put into keeping us up to date, that time and energy should be used to get the product into our hands. If they released it with bugs it should have spent more time in development. When it spends too much time in development, it should be released now!
"...You can never please all of the people all of the time" has never been more true, especially in this day and age when we can all voice our opinions in relative anonymity on message boards. Face we are all going to be upset. I'm going to be upset, you're going to upset, I'm sure LWD is even upset. We all know that coming onto the forums and complaining won't do us any good, or the project any good, but we do it because for a small moment maybe it makes us feel better, I say we all just need to take a deep breath and understand that no matter what we do RW is going to come when it comes, and no amount of belly aching on our side is going to induce this labor any sooner.

Very well said sir!

[Absolute84]

I've been following RW since I heard about its conception on Kickstarter and I'm as interested now as I was back then. The one disappointing aspect of RW so far is nothing to do with the actual product but instead to do with those who somehow feel they've been let down by LWD/RW slow release.

The question I find myself asking is how many of those who are unhappy with the slow release are software developers? If you are not then maybe do not understand the what goes into building something this large in scope from scratch. As it doesn't appear that LWD are a multi-million pound, multi-national corporation such as Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle, Apple, Steinberg or IBM who can leverage huge amounts financial resources to finish a product we must show a level of perspective. Regarding what LWD have been able to achieve (which in my opinion from what I can see is superb) I think they've surpassed my very very high expectations and I will be glad of its release whenever it may show its face.

And ff you are a software developer then I would hope you could understand the slow arduous process which is software development. I am not one myself but I work alongside many in my job and I see the painstaking process.

The other light hearted question I want to ask is what did we do before RW?

Instead of waiting idly by for its release maybe, just maybe we should do what we all enjoy doing which is playing our games, reading, watching films or whatever is your medicine to whittle away the time

Rant over....I hope everyone enjoyed Xmas and has a fantastic New Year

[Aleslosh]

Originally Posted by Zinquox

Honestly no matter what people would be upset. Its the nature of the beast. ... I say we all just need to take a deep breath and understand that no matter what we do RW is going to come when it comes, and no amount of belly aching on our side is going to induce this labor any sooner.

Nicely said!

[ifandbut]

Originally Posted by enrious

Cloud Syncing

This is the feature I cannot care less about. I have drop box for the cloud, it is free and has a ton of space, I dont have to pay a subscription every month to make sure I can access it.

From the outside it seems like cloud syncing is causing more issues then it is worth and is responsible for the big delays. Just give me a dam offline version.

[zarlor]

Originally Posted by ifandbut

This is the feature I cannot care less about. I have drop box for the cloud, it is free and has a ton of space, I dont have to pay a subscription every month to make sure I can access it.

From the outside it seems like cloud syncing is causing more issues then it is worth and is responsible for the big delays. Just give me a dam offline version.

What do you think clod syncing is supposed to do? It's not about storing files like dropbox, you know. And I can say with some certainty that I'm pretty sure it isn't just cloud syncing. There have been some other issues and features that are still being finished up, I believe.

[ShadowChemosh]

Originally Posted by zarlor

What do you think clod syncing is supposed to do? It's not about storing files like dropbox, you know. And I can say with some certainty that I'm pretty sure it isn't just cloud syncing. There have been some other issues and features that are still being finished up, I believe.

Yea this is nothing like dropbox in what it does. Its backup, its easy sync to multiple DM computers, its the easy community sharing of data (APs, Modules, NPCs), its 3PP selling realms, its DM sharing realms with himself, and the big one for me is sharing data with players. Then the ability to maybe allow players to add notes to NPCs and stuff. OMG that is sweet!

For myself the ability to easily share data with my players is my big want. That is one thing I have not found easy to do with any of my existing DM tools.

Also if Dropbox was to suddenly go away, which happens with many free services, all that capability and stuff is gone. I feel safer paying a company money to make sure my data remains safe and available. Just had this with a note taking app called NoteSpark on iOS. It was not a pay per month and they eventually after 5 years could not keep up the cost of the servers. So in two days the service is gone and all my notes with it.

[ifandbut]

I guess what I was referring to was that everything dealing with the cloud is low on my list for "must have" features. It would be nice for the future (assuming my online games stop never happening) but nothing I want at release.

The big reason I have been looking at Realm Works is the organization and world building because, honestly, I have no fucking clue how you veteran DMs keep everything strait.

[zarlor]

It is helpful for that, in it's current state, but there are still a few crash bugs, likely unrelated to the cloud sync side (although possibly related) so cloud sync alone isn't necessarily the hold up. However it is an integral part of really being able to fully utilize RW at the table, so at least having the back-end capability in and tested is going to need to be there, whether we necessarily need it now or not, just because if they had to implement it after release there could be a HUGE impact on existing datasets out there. So having it in place before release is probably a pretty core aspect. Again, though, I don't think it's the only, or even necessarily the main, reason for the delays right now. I can say from testing with it that it looks to me, and I've done a LOT of beta testing before, like the software is very, very close to release ready. Heck for some companies it would have been out the door but then you'd have another Star Wars Online on your hands (i.e. software that was buggy and not at all ready to be released when it was and where release actually prevented or greatly slowed down progress on the software being able to even do many of the things it was supposed to from the beginning.)

[Knightblde]

As a DM for over 25 years, I can tell you that building a world is nothing more then putting pen to paper with all your ideas. Realm Works handles that well, but so does Word and OneNote.

The hard part of being a DM isn't remembering what you wrote, but what you shared, when you shared it and how you shared it. That is where Real Works is going to change how DMs do things at the table. That is what it is going to keep track of.

[Chemlak]

Originally Posted by ifandbut

I guess what I was referring to was that everything dealing with the cloud is low on my list for "must have" features. It would be nice for the future (assuming my online games stop never happening) but nothing I want at release.

The big reason I have been looking at Realm Works is the organization and world building because, honestly, I have no fucking clue how you veteran DMs keep everything strait.

Lots, and lots, and LOTS of paper. My house is crammed with it. Every now and then I open a file and find encounter notes from 1992. I have literally reams of adventure notes, settlement information, maps, plot ideas, monster stats, and characters. It's hugely disorganised (except for the stuff I'm working with right now) and a fair chunk of it pertains to the adventure I'm running right now. RW is letting me get it down in a coherent whole, and that is why I'm such a huge fan of it.

Speaking of problems with RW, though, a few updates ago, my current plotline got corrupted in an update. Every single plot connection vanished. I had something like 150 plot nodes that were previously in a beautiful web of connections, and suddenly all of those connections were gone. I had a choice: reconnect the plot, or lose everything (roughly 25 brand new, complete almanac entries) I'd done since I'd got that plot finished by restoring a backup. I decided to suck up restoring the plot because it was less work. All my other plots were fine, just that one screwed up. I make no pretence that RW is perfect: it's just better than anything else.