• Please note: In an effort to ensure that all of our users feel welcome on our forums, we’ve updated our forum rules. You can review the updated rules here: http://forums.wolflair.com/showthread.php?t=5528.

    If a fellow Community member is not following the forum rules, please report the post by clicking the Report button (the red yield sign on the left) located on every post. This will notify the moderators directly. If you have any questions about these new rules, please contact support@wolflair.com.

    - The Lone Wolf Development Team

Fishing for Rumors

R

Raistlindantilus

Well-known member
Any hint, even a small one, that LW might reverse their position on RW and resume development?

Edit: I mean with YARPS seriously considering and seemingly working toward an RW import tool, really LW? You really gonna just let these upstarts take away your customers? That's kinda not smart....

Edit2: Yeah the world has moved to a subscription pay-as-you-go service model for pretty much everything and Realm Works was a buy and its yours model which crippled income. They attempted a pay as you go service model with server sync but for people who only use one PC server sync was obviously not the cash cow they had imagined, and the marketplace flopped for various yet unclear reasons.

It seems an additional feature, that people actually want and are willing to pay a subscription cost for, could revive the software and make it worth developing from a monetary standpoint.

Nevermind its worth developing from the altruistic standpoint of actually providing something to the world that makes people's lives better....no one cares about that kinda stuff anyway I'm sure. It's all about that money.
 
Last edited:
Farling said:
YARPS is a web app, so it won't take everybody away...
Click to expand...

If it takes me it would be VERY reluctantly.

I'm not a fan of the web-app idea....however if the web-app had all or almost all of the functionality RW offers, was still under active development, AND had an RW import function...well....I don't think anyone in their right mind could say no to that.

Edit: But I mean from a purely logical standpoint if a competitor is willing to create an import tool for YOUR product that means you still have a recognizable market share. I can't for the life of me fathom why any company would not capitalize on that market share and just stand idly by while someone else attempts to take it over.
 
Raistlindantilus said:
If it takes me it would be VERY reluctantly.

Edit: But I mean from a purely logical standpoint if a competitor is willing to create an import tool for YOUR product that means you still have a recognizable market share. I can't for the life of me fathom why any company would not capitalize on that market share and just stand idly by while someone else attempts to take it over.
Click to expand...

Personally I do not think the market is big enough to support this kind of product. Yarps kickstarter had 230 people.. That's not much of a market.
 
I would pay full price for a nice update like "RW 2020" edition. Fixing stuff and improving performance. But all of that will not come I think, if they plan to re-use parts of RW in their other tools.

I hope they will come back to senses and will continue with RW. :)
 
Acenoid said:
I would pay full price for a nice update like "RW 2020" edition. Fixing stuff and improving performance. But all of that will not come I think, if they plan to re-use parts of RW in their other tools.

I hope they will come back to senses and will continue with RW. :)
Click to expand...

I'm with you. They could take RW full-blown Software-As-A-Service and I would pay.

Never have I seen someone have the best product and just abandon it to the vultures like this. It's really shocking.
 
Raistlindantilus said:
I'm with you. They could take RW full-blown Software-As-A-Service and I would pay.

Never have I seen someone have the best product and just abandon it to the vultures like this. It's really shocking.
Click to expand...

As KBS possibly hinted, the number of active users in RW might be insufficient to make the product worthwhile - especially when the cost of IP sharing and PDF verification is added into the bundle.
 
Farling said:
As KBS possibly hinted, the number of active users in RW might be insufficient to make the product worthwhile - especially when the cost of IP sharing and PDF verification is added into the bundle.
Click to expand...
What I was saying was there are not now and likely will never be enough GM's who find value in a product like RW to support it.

Further I never thought selling content, particularly modules, was going to be a big profit center. The user base is small, uses many different rules sets in different genres and are primarily DIY world builders. They might have made some income offering small items like individual buildings/locations or even villages/towns. Stuff a GM might be able to fit into a homebrew world with minor modifications. But despite them saying repeatedly that they intended to do so none ever became available.
 
I believe the stated reasons were based on being spread too thin. While I am severely disappointed that Real Works is no currently being developed, I'd much rather that than see LWD implode completely.
 
kbs666 said:
What I was saying was there are not now and likely will never be enough GM's who find value in a product like RW to support it.

Further I never thought selling content, particularly modules, was going to be a big profit center. The user base is small, uses many different rules sets in different genres and are primarily DIY world builders. They might have made some income offering small items like individual buildings/locations or even villages/towns. Stuff a GM might be able to fit into a homebrew world with minor modifications. But despite them saying repeatedly that they intended to do so none ever became available.
Click to expand...

I can't fathom a GM who wouldn't find value in this tool.

Is everyone flying by the seat of their pants with pre-written material these days? Sad sad times.
 
Raistlindantilus said:
I can't fathom a GM who wouldn't find value in this tool.

Is everyone flying by the seat of their pants with pre-written material these days? Sad sad times.
Click to expand...

Some people have more time than others, also some people are not as creative as others. I put myself a bit in both those camps. I was planning on using the content market for RW.
 
I've noticed that every time I hit these forums the Realm Works Discussion board has more people viewing than the HLO board (which is the focus of LW's attention).

And the Pathfinder Hero Lab board has more people viewing than the Pathfinder 2e HLO board.

Just something I wonder if LW even notices or cares about. They seem to be quite literally leaving their customers behind and forging ahead into territory that very few people seem interested in following.

I've also searched for alternatives to Realm Works quite extensively and nothing holds up.

I'm holding out hope that one day LW will return to develop Realm Works or perhaps even another developer will purchase it from them and take over.

It would be acceptable to me if it were a software as a service that you had to subscribe to even log in.

Worst case if the developer went out of business we could just continue using the software in offline mode and backup manually ourselves.
 
Raistlindantilus said:
I've noticed that every time I hit these forums the Realm Works Discussion board has more people viewing than the HLO board (which is the focus of LW's attention).

And the Pathfinder Hero Lab board has more people viewing than the Pathfinder 2e HLO board.
Click to expand...

The Pathfinder forum is mostly busy with people writing their own extensions; so until HLO provides this ability its forum will be fairly quiet.

The RW forum is probably being watched by only the same few people all the time...
 
Farling said:
The Pathfinder forum is mostly busy with people writing their own extensions; so until HLO provides this ability its forum will be fairly quiet.

The RW forum is probably being watched by only the same few people all the time...
Click to expand...

Generally it seems like its about 50-75 people viewing the Realm Works forums almost constantly.

Considering I used realm works for a couple years without even visiting the forums I would bet its a more valued product than LW realizes. They just failed to properly monetize it.

Edit: especially since they have no real competition. There is not another piece of standalone client-side software that can do what this product does. If anyone is aware of one please point me at it. Scrivener, Onenote, Googledocs, all these things fall terribly short. World Anvil, YARPS and others are all web-based. What happens if you put years of work into a web based campaign manager and the website shuts down? I don't really understand why web-based seems to be the go-to model when its a terrible idea long-term and campaigns tend to be very long term endeavors.
 
Last edited:
At any rate, I've pretty much come to the conclusion my only path forward at the present is to continue using Realm Works even though development has ended, pray to the gods above it doesn't become too buggy or too corrupted and ruin all my work, and maybe years down the road leadership at LW will turn around and decide to bring the project back under development.

Here's to hoping.

Or some other developer buys the product off of LW, resumes development, or a totally third party application launches with functional RW import.

Lots of long shots all lined up here.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top