RW software without cloud service?

[Mmurphy]

Originally Posted by The One

Is the above actually true? That without internet access, you can't use the product? Being able to create a new realm is a pretty fundamental step to make reliant on internet access and should be entirely unnecessary.

I made my Realm right after I downloaded the product (which I was on-line to download the product). Once you create the Realm you do not have to be on-line. Actually I created 2x realms right after I downloaded the product, one each for the 2x game systems I play. I will say that I downloaded the product during the early access period but once I created the 'realm' I could just choose 'work off-line' option.

[LordEntropy]

So is there any capability to backup what you have worked on if you decide not to use the cloud service?

I ask because with all respect to my players, 2 of the 3 of them don’t know one end of a PC from another so I cannot imagine for 1 minute they would use the player features of this system. So I would solely be looking to use it to organise my campaign notes and am therefore only really interested in backing data up not sharing it.

[davidp]

Originally Posted by The One

That without internet access, you can't use the product? Being able to create a new realm is a pretty fundamental step to make reliant on internet access and should be entirely unnecessary.

You can use Realm Works offline. There are very specific cases where you need to be online but the majority can be done offline. The specific cases include initially setting up Realm Works by creating an account, creating any realm. We may have a few other cases where communication to the server is required in the future, but the software will show you when it needs that access.

Originally Posted by The One

It should be a simple enough task to have had the realms generate a unique ID, from a combination of the user licence and a standard guid to allow the servers to be notified at any time of a new realm wanting to be uploaded to the cloud.

The server generates the realm unique ID as it needs to make sure appropriate structure is in place before you use it. Once it is created, you can create whatever content in the realm you desire, all offline.

[jerrycnh]

Originally Posted by The One

Is the above actually true? That without internet access, you can't use the product? Being able to create a new realm is a pretty fundamental step to make reliant on internet access and should be entirely unnecessary.

If it is true, it smacks of the same high-handed thinking that EA got itself into trouble with over the latest copy of SimCity, that in wanting to offer an online service, it was made mandatory for all participants to be online to make use of the software.

I can see where you're coming from with this, and I do wonder if the RW development team can't somehow modify the program in the future to allow creation of a realm offline and then make it do a "identifier sync up" the next time it finds an internet connection, using a different primary key for just that purpose so it doesn't get in the way. That would certainly be preferable and /should/ be easy.

That said, I think we've reached the point that nabbing an internet connection for a moment to "tag" a realm should be no more than a minor inconvenience. Even in a worst-case scenario - non-portable desktop, internet shut off for nonpayment because you're going through a really rough patch, no friends with internet access within 100 miles, no wireless signals to hijack in the neighborhood - you're probably only looking at dragging your rig for a few minutes to the nearest free wifi library, restaurant or other public venue, plugging in and tagging the realm. Half an hour, tops.

Not to mention probably 75+% of users will have made their first and only custom realm file within 10 minutes of downloading the program anyway.

[Enturk]

Thanks for your prompt replies, both here and on Reddit. They're much appreciated, and a big factor in making me want to purchase Realm Works.

[monsterfurby]

From my discussion with my (highly skeptical) tabletop group, it's the "25$ value" tag that puts people off, because they immediately think "But I don't want cloud service, why can't I just buy the software for 25$ then?" I know it's not what the ad copy says, strictly, but it's what at least some people in my group understood.

[rob]

Originally Posted by Roadie

Dropbox doesn't match to the specific sort of implementation you're using, but it does supply the functionality that's most important to me with existing apps - (a) syncing my own content across my computers, and (b) web-based sharing with GMs/players.

It probably doesn't do so in as convenient a way as Realm Works does... but "set up some symlinks, export to HTML and share public links" is convenient enough that I'm not sure how interested I am in paying almost half again as much as I already am for cloud storage to get from 90% to 100% (or possibly more, since the language seems to suggest relatively limited capacity for the "Standard Tier").

For syncing content across computers, Realm Works only syncs the records that are new or have changed instead of having to sync everything. More importantly, the cloud will allow you to share ONLY the material you've revealed with your players. That's not something you can ever accomplish using Dropbox or another similar tool. The list is much longer, and we've attempted to outline it on the page I linked to, but I guess we didn't do a good enough job explaining it to have it make sense. Sorry for that, but I don't know how else to try and explain it.

Originally Posted by Roadie

It also doesn't help that much that the bit that I can't easily duplicate that interests me the most, the ability to purchase publisher content, seems to be framed in a "pay to get access to things you can pay more for" sort of way. That may be unintended, though.

Realm Works is incredibly useful without purchasing any content. Think of an iPhone. You buy it and have an extremely useful tool. Many people have no need for any apps, while others purchases dozens of apps. That doesn't mean the iPhone should be free. It's the same basic thing with Realm Works. Many users will leverage the tool extensively without buying any content. Others will happily pay for that content. Every user gets to make up their own mind based on their own desires.

[rob]

Originally Posted by The One

I'm not a fan of cloud based services, as it effectively requires that you give up both control over the files, and often surrender the intellectual rights to the file content, and additionally makes you entirely dependant on having an active internet connection any time you wish to make use of your product.

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

No intellectual rights are surrendered at all. Our Terms of Use explicitly states that fact. You own your creations.

There is NO dependency on an internet connection to use the product, with a couple exceptions. The big one is realm creation. In our FAQ, we recommend that users who think they might at some point want to create a realm when they don't have an internet connection should simply pre-create multiple realms. That way, there's always an extra one (or many) already created that can be put into use without any need to contact our server.

Originally Posted by The One

It should be a simple enough task to have had the realms generate a unique ID, from a combination of the user licence and a standard guid to allow the servers to be notified at any time of a new realm wanting to be uploaded to the cloud.

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.

[rob]

Originally Posted by LordEntropy

So is there any capability to backup what you have worked on if you decide not to use the cloud service?

Absolutely. There's an explicit Backup option and a Restore option. They are both available via the Manage ribbon bar. You have complete control over where the backup file is stored, and there is no need for the cloud in any way to accomplish this.

[LordEntropy]

Originally Posted by rob

Absolutely. There's an explicit Backup option and a Restore option. They are both available via the Manage ribbon bar. You have complete control over where the backup file is stored, and there is no need for the cloud in any way to accomplish this.

You sir may just have yourself a sale then, when I get paid that is