Realm Works Release Plan & Pricing

[lifer4700]

As for the virtual desktop, I don't know if I would want to keep the Realm Works client running in Player View for a few days, until I know everyone has connected to see what I want to show them. That's why I'd just take a screen shot or make a PDF if we're allowed to print, then just post it on my PbP forum. (hosted on my own LAMP stack VM sitting on my own ESXi server).



Ultimately, I will still buy Realm Works as soon as it becomes available, just so I can start getting data into it. But until Individual Player Permissions and Web Access are available, my players won't be able to use it anyway, regardless of any cloud subscription or not.

So until then, for me and my special needs/wants, it will simply be a GM tool. A fantastic, wonderful GM tool, but a GM tool nonetheless.

 

[lifer4700]

lifer4700, I believe LWD has stated multiple times that, at least out of the gate, doing virtual tabletop style gaming is not the initial purpose/expected use for RW.

I know. That's why I'm a bit sad. I'm not mad at Lone Wolf. They make outstanding products, I love, love, love HeroLab! (just wish I still played PF, so I could use the $$$ I spent on all those datasets! lol)

I certainly see where the design of RW is heavily geared toward face-to-face gamers. But unfortunately, I don't have that luxury anymore. I'm lucky to be running a PbP game.

I still love the Realm Works product idea, and I will be waiting for certain features that will make it useable for my players, but until that day, I will likely just be buying it as a GM only organizational tool. Which is really what it is, and it looks to be the best out there.

 

[liz]

Yes, it has.
...includes 6 months of our standard tier cloud service (a $24.99 value)

$25 for 6 months = $50 per year. - And that's just the lowest tier of service.

Pricing for extended cloud service has not been announced yet. It may be twice the 6 months cost, it may not be. We'll make an announcement once additional information about cloud pricing is available.

 

[lifer4700]

Pricing for extended cloud service has not been announced yet. It may be twice the 6 months cost, it may not be. We'll make an announcement once additional information about cloud pricing is available.

Point taken - I apologize for the assumption!

 

[rob]

I've seen a few folks respond like the cloud service were like a file sharing service, but I think LWD has made it pretty clear that it is not. It's a database back-end running on their servers. To my mind it may make more sense to think of it like a MMORPG, where your client does the heavy lifting of the interface that you see, but the companies servers will host your data on their end so there is a consistent version that your players can see with only the updates you've made (and made available.) So not really anything like a file share. In other words it's nothing like Dropbox or Dumptruck or the like.

I could not have done a better job that this explanation and analogy. So thanks!

And would you mind if I use your analogy in the future when the confusion inevitably rears its ugly head again?

 

[rob]

And that's the part that I would rather have running on my server at home - but it sounds like that will not be an option.

You are the rare exception, sir. The vast majority of GMs either don't have the technical know-how or don't want to bother with all the time to set everything up. We're targeting THOSE users in addition to people like yourself.

There's two important things to consider here. First of all, how much does your company charge for their software? How much more do they charge for support contracts and the like that cover all the support costs of helping customers get everything setup properly? I think it's safe to say it's a lot more than $25 per year.

Second of all, how much is your time worth? With your technical background, I'm guessing you make a lot more than $25 per hour. So if it took you even just one hour to muck around with getting the server setup and configured properly, it would be a losing proposition for you.

Now we also have to worry about rolling out updates to everyone and dealing with users who are running different versions of the server, along with all the potential issues that arise from mismatched client versions and server versions. And users like yourself need to deal with the headaches when their players grab an update that needs a new server version to communicate with, yet you haven't had the time to update the server yet.

Put that all together and providing an option for users to host their own server simply makes no sense for anyone involved. It's a wonderful idea in concept, but it's just not practical for anyone.

Hope this makes sense!

 

[EightBitz]

What follows is simply a request for clarification. It's not any kind of a complaint, demand or accusation.

My understanding from someone in the GenCon booth was that everyone would have some level of cloud access, even if they didn't subscribe. People who subscribed would simply have more/better cloud access.

My understanding from the posts here is that people who don't subscribe will effectively have no cloud access. They'll have whatever minimal contact is needed with the cloud servers to create their own realms, and that's it.

Is the latter the true case? Also, does this mean that for people who don't subscribe, their data will only be stored locally, and they'll be responsible for their own backups?

Again, this is just a request for clarification.

 

[rob]

Question about buying...

I just read the Update (Thank you for that liz!!). Will realmworks be usable on more then one system per copy like hero lab? I do all my work on my desktop, but i would be running games using my MacBookPro.

Yes. Realm Works is NOTHING like Hero Lab. It's account-based, not device-based. So you can use your same account across multiple computers. You just can't use it across multiple computers at the same time. In this respect, it's a lot like Steam.

We impose this restriction to help safeguard users from making edits to the same content on two different machines at the same time, which results in having to abandon one version or the other. Just like with a single document, you can't make changes in two different places and then have them magically get reconciled together.

For the programmers out there, we recognize that most source control programs let you merge two text files. However, that's a complicated task that often requires user involvement. With Realm Works, we would have to reconcile potentially tens of thousands of different records that are all cross-linked between and depend upon each other. That's vastly more complicated than merely merging two text files. So we're not trying to tackle that effort - at least, not yet.

 

[rob]

I have a question regarding the Player Account with RW.
Does the GM version include also a Player Account or do we need to buy an additional Player Account?
So in case several persons take turns as GM but all use RW as a GM can they use it as a Player as well?

Short answer: Yes to the last question.

Longer answer...

Player Accounts are free. Using a player account takes two forms. There's the web-based interface that will be coming online a little while after we launch V1.0, which has no cost. Players will also be able to utilize the full standalone client to have all the same capabilities as GMs for surfing through the revealed content. For players, using the full standalone client will entail a small cost (TBD), but GMs will already have the full product and therefore have no need to purchase anything. They will simply operate as players within those particular realms.

Note: Our plan is to have a large chunk of the cost of the standalone client for players be applicable towards upgrading to the full GM version of the product. The reason for the cost in the first place is to defray the support costs and assorted other overhead that accompany lots more users of the standalone client.

 

[rob]

I was mentioning that the "Standard" level of cloud subscription is $50/year. And they are talking about having higher levels, undoubtedly with increased features/functionality that would be even more expensive.

Question: How many services do you know of that charge X for 6 months and 2x for 12 months? There's almost always a discount for a longer commitment, so it's quite likely we'll do something along those lines as well. As Liz point out above, the only thing we've announced at this point is $24.99 for 6 months of cloud. More details will be forthcoming in early 2014 as we get V1.0 officially launched.

They haven't yet announced exactly what the breakdown is, so I don't know for sure where the line that separates non-cloud vs cloud RW.

Is it as simple as ...
"Without the subscription, only the GM with the GM software can view the realm info?"
... and ...
"With the subscription, others can access the information as well, through a player client, or eventually with a web browser."

At the simplest level, that's basically accurate. The cloud provides the means to distribute the content you've revealed to your players, as well as sync material across multiple machines you use (e.g. desktop and laptop). Without the cloud, the GM has full access to the material, and the integrated Player View mechanism can be utilized during games, but there is no means of distributing content to your players for independent (potentially offline) access.

 

[rob]

Lifer you CAN host it yourself. It will limit some of the features of Realmworks of course. Like the syncing ability of the players and GM across the board. But you might be able to set that up as well.

This is incorrect. There's a crap-ton of complex logic involved on the server, and that's something that users will NOT be able to do - unless they want to rewrite everything themselves from scratch (not recommended).

 

[rob]

What follows is simply a request for clarification. It's not any kind of a complaint, demand or accusation.

My understanding from someone in the GenCon booth was that everyone would have some level of cloud access, even if they didn't subscribe. People who subscribed would simply have more/better cloud access.

My understanding from the posts here is that people who don't subscribe will effectively have no cloud access. They'll have whatever minimal contact is needed with the cloud servers to create their own realms, and that's it.

Is the latter the true case? Also, does this mean that for people who don't subscribe, their data will only be stored locally, and they'll be responsible for their own backups?

Again, this is just a request for clarification.

It's been our intent from the beginning to give users the opportunity to test drive the cloud at some basic level. That's not something we'll have in place for the V1.0 launch. The alternative solution we came up with is to simply include 6 months of cloud access with the product purchase, so everyone gets the cloud and can test drive it fully. Before next summer roles around and the 6 months have elapsed, we'll re-assess the situation and institute any changes that are appropriate.

Given the approach we're initially utilizing, users who don't subscribe will effectively have no cloud access. Their data will be stored locally, and they will be responsible for their own backups.

That being said, the only users who would fall in this group are the Pack Member tier of Kickstarter backers. We just notified them all and provided an opportunity to upgrade their backer level to obtain cloud service if they want it. So the only users who will be without cloud service are those that choose it. And everyone who purchases Realm Works at this point will have it.

Hopefully, the above explanation eliminates any uncertainty that was still lingering.

 

[Farnaby]

Just to clarify, the different tiers of the cloud service are only how much data can be stored as opposed to more functionality.

Is this correct?

Thx

 

[rob]

Just to clarify, the different tiers of the cloud service are only how much data can be stored as opposed to more functionality.

Is this correct?

Product features will not be factored into cloud service tiers. The primary factors involved will be (a) storage and (b) bandwidth utilization.

It's possible that certain cloud-centric features MIGHT be tied to certain cloud service tiers in the future. For example, some people have asked for features that would involve lots of bandwidth for "instantly" pushing visual material to players' devices. That's something that would be clearly cloud-centric, so we could potentially tie it to a minimum tier of cloud service. We haven't given these feature requests a proper assessment yet, so I have no idea how we would ultimately handle them. I'm just flagging it as something we might consider tying to the cloud.

 

[EightBitz]

Product features will not be factored into cloud service tiers. The primary factors involved will be (a) storage and (b) bandwidth utilization.

It's possible that certain cloud-centric features MIGHT be tied to certain cloud service tiers in the future. For example, some people have asked for features that would involve lots of bandwidth for "instantly" pushing visual material to players' devices. That's something that would be clearly cloud-centric, so we could potentially tie it to a minimum tier of cloud service. We haven't given these feature requests a proper assessment yet, so I have no idea how we would ultimately handle them. I'm just flagging it as something we might consider tying to the cloud.

Rob,

For all my frustration at the release delays, I have to give you props for how you relate to and respect your customers. The refund offer you mentioned was a great example of that. Your time and effort in interacting with this forum is another. Your patience for answering our incessant questions is also appreciated.

Yes, I'm still frustrated with all the delays, but thank you for everything else.

 

[lifer4700]

Rob,

For all my frustration at the release delays, I have to give you props for how you relate to and respect your customers. The refund offer you mentioned was a great example of that. Your time and effort in interacting with this forum is another. Your patience for answering our incessant questions is also appreciated.

Yes, I'm still frustrated with all the delays, but thank you for everything else.

I didn't want to simply "+1" this, but EightBitz really stole every word I was going to say.

I'm not as frustrated at the delays, I'm simply anxious to get started with it, but overall I agree 100%.

Cheers!

 

[JackOfAllGames]

And that's the part that I would rather have running on my server at home - but it sounds like that will not be an option.

You are the rare exception, sir. The vast majority of GMs either don't have the technical know-how or don't want to bother with all the time to set everything up. We're targeting THOSE users in addition to people like yourself.

Just poking my head in to say that while we may be the minority, lifer4700 definitely isn't the only one. I would gladly set up my own server for this as well - taking on that burden myself. Further, I'd probably pay something like a $50 one-time fee for the privilege of self-hosting (or perhaps pay for support during setup, as needed)...if the only benefit of the cloud service is allowing my players to access info on the go.

See, even if the time investment doesn't seem worthwhile to you, not all of us are wanting it for just the money. At least in my case, I'm a hobbyist who also happens to make money doing the same kind of work. I'd want to set up a server NOT JUST for long-term savings, but for fun...and to see what I can build on top of it (strictly my own use, and perhaps that of my gaming group).

I understand that you guys haven't built RealmWorks with that in mind, but I do wish that you had. Perhaps someday the idea can be revisited.

 

[Zinquox]

Rob,

I, too, am very impressed with all the time you are taking to clarify points, and answer questions. I am also very impressed with the entire LWD company in particular the Realm Works team in trying to please as many people as possible.

I am also impressed with all the other posters that understand that they may not be getting every feature they would desire because they know that some features are only for a small niche of people, and that they are, in fact, part of that niche. You guys are still excited about the program, and you have some dreams of what may come in the future.

I cannot imagine what it must be like on the LWD side of everything to figure out just how many cooks is enough for the broth to be just right.

Keep doing what you are doing everyone, and I look forward to giving this product a lot of work when I finally give you guys money and get it onto my computer.

 

[zarlor]

I could not have done a better job that this explanation and analogy. So thanks!

And would you mind if I use your analogy in the future when the confusion inevitably rears its ugly head again?

You're more than welcome to use it however you like, if you feel it will help.

 

[Rikski]

So just to be clear, if I was not interested in showing other people my universe and was using realm works just to design a world for myself I only have to make a one off payment?
Yes?