A change for the better -- Don't panic 'til you read it all
It is with no small amount of trepidation that I post this message.
I don't think I'm pushing any envelopes when I say that I spend a lot of time on RPoL, thinking about it, coding it, administering it, and, every now and then, a dash of playing in it. Over the past five years it's dominated my life in one form or another, starting as a hobby and growing from there. The number of registered users and the sheer fanaticism from some is humbling.
I've always harboured the desire to get more of a RP community going, and not an RPoL-centric one, though it'd be nice for RPoL to be considered the "hub". Examples range from the IRC chat channel being #RolePlay not #RPoL and my offering of the chat code to another site (not that they ever used it), to the upcoming RP news site -- a user submission and moderated based page.
Whilst I opted out of coding as a profession so many years ago, I do enjoy molding the site into what the users (hopefully) want. I always enjoyed coding -- I used to write silly programs just for kicks -- but I got lazy. I was put off by the claim that I'd only code for a few years and then I'd go onto something like lecturing, but ultimately I decided I didn't want to sit in a room all day and code (misconception or not).
But RPoL's such a beast now, and some of the coding decisions I made as a novice five years ago have come back to haunt me plus I think the server has reached its performance limits without some serious disk caching and technology changes. As it really does make my life much easier, I'm slowly trying to migrate to a mySQL database. Work on the next upgrade for the site has taken over a year to get to where it is now, but it's still not finished. There have been lots of outside influences but ultimately RPoL has grown into a very big beast indeed, and the changes are large ones, necessary to release the performance bottlenecks and make the site easier to administer and maintain.
Administering, coding, and generally maintaining RPoL combined with my "build a community" plan is just getting too big, and it's taking up far too much of my time.
Now I'll pause at this point and recognise that there are probably two main trains of thought out there right now, those going "uh-oh" and the intrigued, wondering what's coming next.
Let me try to allay the fears of the worried: This isn't some precursor to a message of doom. I'm not about to close RPoL or change it in some earth-shattering way. I am going to try and improve it, dramatically, and I hope you'll agree. I will state for the first time, and not for the last, this is not bad news: RPoL is not going to change for the casual user. The doors will still be wide open. Come one, come all. Free.
But I digress.
When asked, I've always maintained that my ambition for RPoL was never to make money off the place but rather to make it a great website. It was a dream to get paid for doing what I (generally) enjoyed doing, but my driving motivation was just to create something people would be grateful for, not to earn money; after all, I paid for the hosting for the first few years until some very kind users insisted on making FoRPoL.
Let me repeat: RPoL is not going to change for the casual user. What you can see and do now you will be able to see and do next week and the week after (excluding general code improvements, etc.).
There is one exception to this rule; there will be one (1) thing that will be getting taken away, in a fashion.
To be blunt, I feel like this one area is a draw for the worst elements of RPoL -- people who can't obey rules, who've come to RPoL just for easy access to minors, or who have no actual interest in roleplaying. This area is, of course, is the adult games forums. Originally created as a place to put games that had some adult content so that people who should not, or did not, want to see them did not accidentally stumble upon them. But since its creation the adult section has degraded into a cesspool of what I would call, if I were being super-sickeningly nice, morally questionable.
I repeat myself, with this one caveat: what you have access to now you will have access to tomorrow.
So where is all this leading?
I need to earn a living, spend quality time with friends and family, and just go outside and get some sunlight and fresh air. With so much time needing to be committed to the site, and me wanting to commit more, I've realised I just cannot physically and mentally do it any more. The crux of the problem is that I'm trying to run a technical consulting business, but I spend very little time doing that and more coding RPoL; my bank balance is going backwards at an alarming rate.
With that in mind I realised there were only two real options for me: ease up on the RPoL side of things and concentrate more on developing my business, or change my business -- change it to RPoL. I hope it is fills you with relief when I tell you I have opted to try for the latter.
Now, let me repeat. The fundamental premise of RPoL -- a free, user-friendly site -- is not changing.
I am not changing RPoL to a pay-to-play site. I am not littering the site with popup or advert banners.
How is it going to work?
There are many features that I've thought about implementing on the site but I have not for one of two reasons. Firstly there is the fact that the RPoL server has finite resources, whether it be disk space, processing power or something else. I do not implement certain features or allow unlimited file sizes due to resource constraints. Secondly there is the fact that my time is finite, especially considering I do this in my spare time. Features don't get added because it's just too much work.
These features will soon start to be implemented.
Here's the crux of it all; access to these enhanced features will be subscription (donation) based.
This is the point where I really need to repeat myself. Every feature you currently see and have will not be subscription based. But, for example, if you want to be able to upload larger maps to your game -- well that can be arranged.
This is not the end of improvements to the public aspects of RPoL either. To illustrate my point, the upcoming version of RPoL increases the allowed map size from 30kb to 50kb. That will cause an increase in traffic of about 3gb. rMail (user to user messaging) is a new feature that I've been finishing in the last few days; a brand new feature that will be available to everyone. I've worked very hard over the past five years to make RPoL the free site it is today and I'm not about to destroy all that work.
There will be those who will take this as a sign of impending doom, and I'm sure some will go elsewhere for their roleplay needs. This, of course, saddens me; I feel that every departing user is leaving due to some failing on my behalf. I will mourn our loss and their lack of vision, because I have a vision.
What about the adult games I mentioned earlier? Well this change also allows me to better control the adult section of the site, and thus this game category will eventually become available to subscribers only, non-subscribers will have to phase out their adult games. Subscription applications will have to explicitly request such access. I hope this will solve the problem we currently have with users completely ignoring the RPoL Terms of Use. It's also worthy to note that the next version of RPoL has a "mature content" flag so those who want to be liberal with their language or graphic in their descriptions can now do so without feeling they need to plonk their game in the adult section.
So where does this leave the general user who opts not to subscribe? You will see an RPoL and RP community that will develop and mature faster than if things had been left as they were (not that the status quo could have been maintained). The more subscribers there are, even if you are not one, the more time I can dedicate and the more the RPoL code will improve. Thus even non-subscribers will reap some of the benefits; every single user will be better off.
What about past donators? A timeframe for all this? Previous donations will be carried over, pro rata. My current timeline aims to have version 1.5 finished within a month and subscriptions active within a month after that. Real life and the necessity to earn a living will, of course, affect this.
For one last time: the basics of RPoL are not changing. If you do nothing then you will still have access to everything available to you now (except adult games) and you will continue to see the site grow and improve. I will, however, implement extra functions, things I normally would not have implemented, and these will have limited availability.
Will it work? I don't know, but with you all, I look forward to finding out.