Considering purchasing a license - some questions

[SIGILL]

Hello World Machine community, as the title states I’m thinking about purchasing a WM license. Before I do I have some questions and even pretty thorough search on these forums and online in general did not provide me with the answers. I’m hoping someone here would be able and willing to help me out?

1. A license comes with a year of updates. It seems that there hasn’t been any information on development for a while and the developer has not communicated in general either (aside from ‘implicit’ communication in reponse to support tickets). Assuming this silence is still not something to worry about, I am wondering about the year of updates that comes with a paid license; if no update releases within that year, does it just go to waste? Has a similar situation occurred before and how was that handled?
2. What is the actual price of renewing a license to get updates again? The FAQ mentioned 30% and 40% of the purchase price. I would like to know some actual prices, particularly if the website mentions inconsistent values on pages that were updated 2 and 4 years ago.
3. There is an option to upgrade a Standard license to a Professional one. Has this always been possible and is this part of the normal options, or is there reason to consider it a temporary option that I should take into consideration?

I realize these aren’t the most interesting questions, especially not for community members, but I’m currently in a situation where the price for a license is a significant amount of money so it’s a matter of ‘due diligence’.

[WFab]

As a long time user of World Machine (decade+), I’ll try to answer these questions to the best of my ability.

Re#1: Yes, it’s about to be full 2 years in July, since there has been any official sign of life from the developer. The last time this happened, the developer extended updates for those people who paid for updates during that period. I assume that’s going to happen during this time too. If you bought and paid for World Machine during this time, the money will PROBABLY not going to be wasted (stress on the word “Probably”).

Re#2: The maintenance subscription costs $99 (US) right now, for one year of maintenance and feature updates. (Edit: I just checked after @Tomatiy mentioned it, it’s $45 for Standard, and $115 for the pro edition)

Re#3: Yes there is an option to update from Standard to Professional edition. But I won’t recommend Standard for professional use. If you want to try the full version before buying, you can request a fully featured 30 day trial of the Professional version (again, “probably”). 30 days should be enough for you to make a decision. This approach makes more sense for temporary use. You can also use a feature and resolution limited “World Machine Basic”, downloaded for free from the official website. That one is not limited by time, so you can learn at your own pace. I’ll attach links for everything I mentioned.

1. The last time it happened: State of the World (Machine) 2017 – World Machine Development Blog
2. The details about update from Standard to Pro (bottom of the page): Purchase World Machine
3. Free Basic version download: Download World Machine Basic - Free Terrain Creation

Hope this helps, good luck!

[WFab]

That said…
I would recommend waiting for some sign of life from the company before committing to a purchase. Just my personal view.

[Tomatiy]

I’m not english speaker, so sorry if you will find mistakes or reading of my text gives you bad emotions

Re#2: The maintenance subscription costs $99 (US) right now, for one year of maintenance and feature updates.

Aaaa, maybe i do not understand correctly? Why you have 99 USD as price?

I have two licenses - One is Standart and one is Pro

For updating of Standart i need to pay 45 USD

For updating of Pro i need to pay 115 USD

Re#3: Yes there is an option to update from Standard to Professional edition. But I won’t recommend Standard for professional use.

Also i’m not fully agree with you that Standart Edition is not a good variant for professional use. Why? -

• It have some benifits that probably worth to mention:

The most useful for me, is that you could receive 2 WM licenses by paying same amount of price as just for purchasing of one Pro license. So generaly you receive 4 machines to activate your licenses.

Maybe it is a bug, or build-in idea that not mentioned on the site, but i figured out this on my own experience. By paying 300 USD, i received 2 activations of Standart, and 2 activations of Pro, and generally pretty happy with it. Some of my friends that did use WM, was pretty sad, when i did explain this “trick”, because they just did pay ones 300 USD for Pro and lost ability to receive 4 licence activations by not paying 300+180=480 (~500 USD)

Lol, i will be sad if after that developer will delete my additional Standart licenses, AHAHAHHAHAHAH

Ye, i need to mention that those 2 additional license activations is restricted to features of Standart edition. It is not 4 Pro activations. Just 2 Standart and 2 Pro for amount of money that 2 Pro`s costs.

[WFab]

@Tomatiy

1. Damn, the price must have changed during past year. You’re correct, it’s $115 for me too, on pro. Used to be $99 for pro, $45 for standard, till 2022 at least (last time I checked).
2. Pro edition also has that “2 seat” freedom. So you can technically get two pro licenses for 4 seats too. That logic is flawed as hell. But if it works for you, great! I don’t have 4 PC’s, but would have tried that trick if I did lol!
3. The reason I say standard is too limited for professional use, is because it’s limited to “4 cpu threads”. That’s like a dual core core processor speed for all devices.

[SIGILL]

Thank you for the thorough answer, that’s very helpful and all I wanted to know! During my ‘research’ I noticed you were one of the few consistently active community members that went way back so I was hoping you were still around.

I have indeed been using the Basic version while comparing different software options. WM is not as flashy as the newer options (Gaea, GeoGen, the impression I get of World Creator) but I like it best to work with. The ‘business side’ does make me a bit wary though, and it also makes it difficult to decide whether I want to wait for some news that may or may not appear anytime soon, or go for a different tool. Of course that’s up to me and I suppose I’m rambling, but I think it’s just such a shame potential customers are put in this position. Because not only the software but also the developer and community seem to be gems that are rarely seen nowadays and I wish for them to flourish.

[SIGILL]

Thank you for your information as well! I doubt it’s intentional that you keep the Standard licenses after upgrading and it sounds like a flaw in the system, so I’m not going to make that part of my consideration, but it’s good to know and could be a nice bonus! I hope you will not be ‘punished’ (by getting the older licenses revoked) for sharing this with a potential customer if this is indeed some unintended effect!

[Tomatiy]

THIS IS JUST A GUESS

Considering the previously mentioned imperfection of the system, I have an assumption that the Standard license can be updated endlessly. That is, you need to have a friend who has Standard, give him money to buy an upgrade to Pro, and he will receive a new activation key - that’s 180 dollars. If you were just buying a license, you would have to give 300 USD. Theoretically if it is work - you could save 120 USD by this method. So total price of Pro for you would be not 300 usd, but just 180. Wow.

I am not hinting at anything and I am not advocating to bypass the system. These are just my guesses. Perhaps I should write a bug report about this rather than discuss it here. LOL, dammmn

[lanason]

It sounds like you are close to making a decision on purchasing a World Machine license. From my point if view, it is a great investment if you plan on doing serious training. The Standard Edition offers a good balance of features and affordability, while the Professional Edition is worth it if you need advanced capabilities and higher resolution support. Have you decided which version suits your needs best?

[SIGILL]

Professional would definitely best suit my needs, but with the way things currently are if I end up actually buying a license I might start out with Standard and upgrade to Professional when its features really become essential. For now I’m first going to wait until the new Gaea release (of which the data has been announced a few days ago) to see if there are any changes that make it a more interesting option. Or of course any public communication on World Machine, whatever comes first.

[lanason]

I hope, It comes with more intresting changes.
I am curious to know about it.