Question about future of Realm Works

[rob]

@AEIOU: Liz didn't repeat one of the items from the post she linked to above, so I'll repeat it here, along with a second key item that she didn't emphasize and that appears to be important:

5. We stated this during the Kickstarter and in other threads, and I'll re-state it here. If we ever abandoned Realm Works, we'll make sure everyone can continue using the product and/or get their data out before doing so. That's just the decent thing to do.

6. I'm the controlling owner of the company, so I'm not making empty promises that some faceless board of directors could overrule.

Does that adequately address the rant?

[AEIOU]

@Rob: As an alpha wolf supporter, I'm committed to the dream. I completely believe in you and your team. I also recognize that the program is still in its infancy and there are many, many updates still ahead--updates that are quite frankly more important and more useful than future-proofing. But I'm also a realist; hence my reminder that no matter how entrenched they become, most good things on the internet and in technology come to a rather unforeseen end.

You've heard that we NEED offline support for many months now. And exporting. And printing. I'll wait patiently for the promises to be fulfilled. I hope you won't mind if folks gently remind you from time to time.

[Mystic Lemur]

Why is this such a sticking point for you when the product is still in it's infancy? It's still learning to talk and walk on it's own, and you're trying to talk to them about retirement planning...

[Vargr]

Originally Posted by Mystic Lemur

Why is this such a sticking point for you when the product is still in it's infancy? It's still learning to talk and walk on it's own, and you're trying to talk to them about retirement planning...

I can understand why. The possibility for all of us to be able to salvage our data if something goes horribly wrong should be considered and planned for at the outset.

My game world, which I started 20+ years ago have been made in a number of systems (WordPerfect 4.1 and WordWorth for Amiga comes to mind), that I gradually lost access to and today have problems getting the information from.

I would hate to sit - years from now - with all my information in RW and no way to get it out. Here an option to print out would be helpful (that topic has its own thread(s), so don't start here, please).

I also understand the points Rob is making and even though I am not very keen on the whole cloud idea (in general) unless I control every physical aspect of it myself, I must say it works well in RW and the fact, that I can make a local backup alleviates some of my fears.

What I am trying to say is, that I think LW has done a good job and have made some good decisions. Yet I can also understand AEIOU concern. And yes, the "retirement plan" should be considered at the outset of your working life.

Mind you, I really hope that we will never need the "retirement plan", but it is prudent.

[Nikmal]

Originally Posted by Vargr

I can understand why. The possibility for all of us to be able to salvage our data if something goes horribly wrong should be considered and planned for at the outset.

But it was planned for at the outset as Rob and some others have said several times throughout several threads including this one. I am not understanding your confusion on that. things can go horribly wrong with any hardware. If you do not use the cloud service your hard drive or hard drives could go bad at the same time. You could back up the software to another drive and leave it and the original in the same location and there is a fire or some other catastrophe and you loose ALL data. The cloud service is just another means to keep a back-up off site. You can keep a back up on your own hard drive as well. You NOT need to just do cloud service only.

Originally Posted by Vargr

I would hate to sit - years from now - with all my information in RW and no way to get it out. Here an option to print out would be helpful (that topic has its own thread(s), so don't start here, please).

If you DO use the cloud service... there is nothing to say that you can't also back it up offline as well. Rob has said as much. Also he has said that as a company Lone Wolf WILL MAKE SURE you are able to get the data off of their servers with in plenty off time before they shut them down if ever. They would warn people that it is about to happen and that they will need to plan to do so... and then proceed to give everyone as much notice as possible to make sure they are able to pull it off.

Originally Posted by Vargr

I also understand the points Rob is making and even though I am not very keen on the whole cloud idea (in general) unless I control every physical aspect of it myself, I must say it works well in RW and the fact, that I can make a local backup alleviates some of my fears.

I am glad that helps.. but just keep it in mind that it was planned that you can do both a local back up and one on their cloud service too if you chose to use it that is. Also it is always a good idea to keep a back-up away from your original location.

Originally Posted by Vargr

What I am trying to say is, that I think LW has done a good job and have made some good decisions. Yet I can also understand AEIOU concern. And yes, the "retirement plan" should be considered at the outset of your working life.

Mind you, I really hope that we will never need the "retirement plan", but it is prudent.

I do not see this as a retirement plan, as it DOES have the offline support. You are able to do everything except create a realm offline. As Rob mentioned this will be supported for many many years even if Realm Works does not work out. They have done this with at least one of their ventures that got upgraded and they no longer produce that version. They have done so for 10+ years now and not looking to stop anytime soon. They have also given a work-around in case you do not have internet access or if it suddenly end abruptly is to create a few "blank" realms and then you will be covered for a long time. As your realm seems to be a long running one... you create ten more realms.. you should be covered for decades

[Vargr]

@Nikmal:

I don't think we disagree as such.

Yes, the cloud service is another backup option.
Yes, I can make a local back up of the database.
Yes, I can run offline as long as the realm has been created.

And all this is good. Lone Wolf has made some good solutions.

I was trying to explain to Mystic Lemur why it is relevant to look into the safety of the data in the long run (talking about a "retirement plan").

Apparently I didn't do it that well

When I write "something goes horrible wrong" I refer to the risk of Lone Wolf no longer being in business or simply RW no longer being supported.

When that happens we need to be able to run RW without the servers - we can already do that, so we can already access the existing data in case of a server fall out (temporary or permanently). I tip my hat to Lone Wolf for having made it this way and not insisting on allways-online. Thank you, LW.

This will tide us over for a couple of years.

After that RW will no longer run on the OS or the hardware available. And trust me, it goes pretty fast downhill.

When that happens we will have tons of data we can not access.

Thus we need a way to preserve the data. If it means exporting it all as PDF and print those out, so be it.

I do not expect Lone Wolf to fold anytime soon and pray it may never happen. But sometimes bad things just happen.

Luckily Lone Wolf has been very thoughtful in their design of RW (in more ways than one).


All of this just to try and explain why we should look into a fail safe if something goes horrible wrong.


Well, that was way too many letters for which I apologize.


Edit:
Oh, and I do use use the cloud server and I do backup my data to a RAID server in house and soon to a RAID server elsewhere in town.

[Acenoid]

Jup agree wholeheartedly to this. But I think this has been meantioned already in the feature request thread (printing - which seems to be on the roadmap) and (more importandly I think) exporting to other formats.

Well I suppose we can just hope and see how this will work out.

All the best to find a replacement developer.

[AEIOU]

Shhh, don't tell anyone but Simple Images have an export to PNG option.... Hadn't seen that before.