You left out how LWD blamed Paizo for the delays.
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- The Lone Wolf Development Team
An Update from Rob
- Thread starter BJ
- Start date
You left out how LWD blamed Paizo for the delays.
You still GET the content though.. it is not going to go away. So you will be able to use said content like you would any data that you enter yourself. So the value is still there. They just aren't producing more for RW is all. So I would not say that you "blew" the money.. because it is still your content that you can use.
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.
They will never sell it, because the code is such a mess that only Rob understands it, they told us more than once that they have nobody else inside LW who is able to fix bugs... imagine how is it sellable to another dev team.
He / They also said that they will not stop developing RW, in the - even recent - past.
So, what he says now has the same value: "the servers will remain up... for now". Furthermore, it seems that LW is not sailing in good water, so we have to consider the possibility that the whole company will sink in a foreseable future. And if it sinks, there will be no more servers.
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gloranphile
Well-known member
Most definitely Farling. I'm a big fan of your importer and exporter tools (see this post: http://forums.wolflair.com/showthread.php?t=63267). My problem is not having the skills to necessarily upload the html to a site...
I don't remember seeing that. I remember them (LWD) taking the blame for their own delays and the reasons behind them.. but not putting the blame on Paizo at all.
While it might sound like I am defending LWD.. I am not. I am saddened by them not furthering RW as I have been around since the beginning of the Beta and have many many years of data in my realms. I will miss the potential that RW could have had.
"So you will be able to use said content like you would any data that you enter yourself."
That statement is not true.
If I enter all the data myself, and export it, I get a full export.
If I enter part of the data myself, and import, say, the bestiary, I can't import just the monsters I want. I have to import the whole bestiary. Then if I don't want the whole bestiary, I have to delete what I don't want.
Then if I have a complete adventure, and I want a complete export, I can't get that.
The two prospects are not equivalent. I'm saying no more and no less than that.
And this was true with all content from the RW Content Catalog they released for us to purchase if we wanted to do so. We knew that going in that this was the case. That doesn't mean that you still can't use the data. As you are actually USING it even if it is full or partially doing so. It is in use.
Sad day, however the writing was on the wall when it was clear that the user interface was not a priority for the dev team.
ok, now that realmworks is dead does anyone have a suggestion for a web platform that can easily accept content exported from realmworks?
anyone?
thanks!
ok, now that realmworks is dead does anyone have a suggestion for a web platform that can easily accept content exported from realmworks?
anyone?
thanks!
I've been reluctant to say it loudly because I like to be supportive, but it's been my thinking for quite awhile that Realm Works is never going to go anywhere with Lone Wolf. They just don't have the resources to keep working on it, obviously. It also seems like they barely have the resources to work on Hero Lab Online and Hero Lab Classic. Hero Lab Online already seems to be floundering.
Honestly I think the only hope for Lone Wolf and its products is a merger with another game company, or doing something like selling Realm Works to another company to make some money that they can put into completing Hero Lab Online.
I'm curious if DriveThruRPG would be open to host user-generated Realm Works content. We're obviously never going to get it into the Content Market itself. I might experiment with that down the road myself.
Honestly I think the only hope for Lone Wolf and its products is a merger with another game company, or doing something like selling Realm Works to another company to make some money that they can put into completing Hero Lab Online.
I'm curious if DriveThruRPG would be open to host user-generated Realm Works content. We're obviously never going to get it into the Content Market itself. I might experiment with that down the road myself.
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Thank you for taking the time to write this both to your clients, and to us on the forums here. I know this cannot have been easy.
I cannot say I am surprised by this. Saddened, disappointed, and frustrated, but not surprised.
Realm Works fills a need I definitely have as a Game Master. My campaigns tend to run 3-5 years; having a source that lets me track my world and what is know, etc as well as relationship, connections, plots, etc. This is something I have worked on for myself with wikis and other tools. I had very high hopes for Realm Works.
I bought and found it... close enough to what I need to find real value in it, and had hopes it could evolve into what I really wanted. In the years since, with the minimal development that has happened, I began to suspect the evolution would not happen. I have worked a few decades in IT now; I recognized the patterns.
I will continue to use Realm Works for my current campaign for the next couple of years. I am not sure I will use it for my next one, even though I am ready to start to doing development work on that now. I want to use a tool that will get to where I need, and will support the interactions with players that I think will really add depth to the game at the table.
Having said that, I would be very interested in hear what options the community comes up with to share. I would support an open source effort. I will even watch carefully to see what features creep into HeroLabs -- I don't use that product (primarily because I do not like the output formats) but many of my friends do.
I will continue to (mostly) lurk here. I will continue to use it for several years to come. I have hopes to see something rise phoenix like from the ashes here, but I don't any high expectations. I will also be very, very interested to hear what replacement options the people here discover and pursue as well.
What I think I will miss most (next to the support from the forums for making things work) is not seeing an adventure that was written to make real use of Realm Works -- not just an import of an existing adventure, but one written with the tool in mind and its features.
Thank you Rob for a serious effort to give the Game Master the tool sets to run an in depth and vibrant campaign. I am very glad your heath has improved. I hope Lone Wolf survives the changes you have to go through now and prospers in the future. I'll be around here, with my irregular lurking habits, and hope to read about improved progress in the future.
Which concedes the point that the statement I called out was not a true statement. So we're in agreement.
Konig-Wolf
Member
So I echo all your sentiments. As replacements for Realm Works, I would recommend looking at World Anvil, or checking out the Kickstarter for GM Binder now.
I really hope Lone Wolf comes back to Realm Works, but given the way things seem to be at this time, I'm not holding my breath. It's time to focus on looking for a new tool for this purpose.
Unless it's changed since I last looked World Anvil only does manual linking. As far as I'm concerned that's a deal breaker.
BM binder? I still have no idea what that is supposed to be.
I wouldn't look at a kickstarter... The market for GM products is not that big.
YARPS looks promising, but updates seem far and few between, looking at their facebook page. So if and when it releases... unknown to me.
*Edit*
BTW I'm looking for other alternatives too. Sadly so, as I love RW. But I will continue to use it until something with at least the same features comes around. And preferably an RW-import possibility ;-)
And who knows, maybe HLO will be a huge success and carry RW one day. I only used it briefly for the PF2 playtest, but it worked nicely.
*Edit*
BTW I'm looking for other alternatives too. Sadly so, as I love RW. But I will continue to use it until something with at least the same features comes around. And preferably an RW-import possibility ;-)
And who knows, maybe HLO will be a huge success and carry RW one day. I only used it briefly for the PF2 playtest, but it worked nicely.
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Except that you are STILL using the product you bought from LWD. While you think it was a money grab, I disagree. If you bought something and weren't unable to use it now because of RW being shelved.. then I would be in agreement with you. But that is simply not the case. While yes, you can't export their product to share that particular data with someone else.. they never intended for you to be able to do so. So not sure where you are going with that... but you can manipulate, remove, change and do what ever you want to the product you purchased with the online content that they gave to use to be able to do so.
So, if you think I am in agreement with you.. this is what I agree with.
Where did I say it was a money grab? I called out one comment. When you first questioned me on it, I specified the one comment I was calling out. I pointed out how it was a false statement. And I explicitly said that that was all I was saying.
You're criticizing a statement I never made. And that's fine, except you're quoting me while doing it, which indicates you think I'm the one who made it. I'm not.
The statement I DID make, and clarified, explicitly, was one you conceded.