Cashing untold 1000s of dollars from premium memberships with no communication when the site is down for multiple days is bad form and unacceptable. A quick email or post to all membership levels wouldn't take much time and would really show that you respect the members who're emotionally invested in this site. Thanks

Untold 1000s of dollars? And this from a standard member. Have you tried to count the premium ones? 

We don't know what Toms day job is. We know he can't make a living off this site alone. Some patience and respect would be nice.

 There are certainly a number of premium members paying multiple times a year. Fact of the matter is Tom is charging people and is AWOL when the site goes down. Its amazing that it could be down for days with no update and me asking for some communication is disrespectful and impatient to you. How many other services you pay for would that be acceptable? I love playing here and have strongly been considering starting to pay but this sort of stuff makes one think twice.

 Liotes it looks like anywhere from 25-33% are premium members. lets say its 25% of the 50K+ people on here. That would be conservatively 100-500K USD per year and could be much more. If thats not day job money you must live in Monaco. If you know he can't make a living and are that close to him provide us with a update. 

I've been a premium member for 10+ years. Tom is and has been a great admin.

I'd be curious to know where you got your numbers from, WarfishDaddy.

Yes, the player ID numbers are up near the 50K mark, but if I look at the rankings, there are only 17017 players with a min of 0 games played.

By the time you go up to min 100 games played, that total is only 1618.

My guess is most premium members will be in that category.

Which puts the total number of premium members as a relatively small number.

Warfish Daddy wrote:

Cashing untold 1000s of dollars from premium memberships with no communication when the site is down for multiple days is bad form and unacceptable. A quick email or post to all membership levels wouldn't take much time and would really show that you respect the members who're emotionally invested in this site. Thanks

So someone who has made zero financial contributions to support the site is complaining about a little outage? How many games you've played here for free? Don't be a dick.

agwyvern wrote:

I'd be curious to know where you got your numbers from, WarfishDaddy.

Yes, the player ID numbers are up near the 50K mark, but if I look at the rankings, there are only 17017 players with a min of 0 games played.

By the time you go up to min 100 games played, that total is only 1618.

My guess is most premium members will be in that category.

 

Which puts the total number of premium members as a relatively small number.

Then realize that this site's been around for 10 years now. How many of those members are active?

The guy decides to troll with that name. Go figure. Talk about a site that's been mismanaged into the ground.  The irony is that's pretty much the reason why this site exists.

My god the thin skin around here. I apologize for upsetting the lot of you but guys try and keep things in perspective. A simple communication from Admin wouldve taken mere minutes and let a bunch of people know whats up. A simple gesture I'm sure we can all agree on. Furthermore the way you react like i kicked your dog or insulted your mom is fitting for Risk a game I've found gets peoples red up like none other. Again sorry you all take things to heart and that I'm not part of your fraternity yet but just know I'm really glad this exists and even though you might hate me now you'll love me eventually.

Yep, we’re a bit protective of Tom. You make a couple fair points WD, but as several point out, the income for the site is a fraction of what you might think. All in all, I think we get a pretty good bang for the buck. Anyway, here’s to future gaming for all. 🙂

>A simple communication from Admin wouldve taken mere minutes and let a bunch of people know whats up.

If I had to guess - Tom probably didn't know what was going on.  Maybe he was celebrating the 4th (although I think he's British, or at least lives in Britain?).  Anyway, it's unfortunate that he is the only one that can fix things, but because of that, expecting full time support is just unrealistic.   Sometimes he is busy with his life, and it takes a couple of days to fix things. 

Warfish Daddy - I hope you stick around, and see that despite not being a 5 9s operation, wargear is a quality site, and is amazing for what you can get for free, and is still (IMO) worth supporting financially.

hi Warfish Daddy - you make a fair point regarding lack of updates on this issue and it should have been picked up earlier. There is automatic alerting set up but it failed to catch this issue so I didn't discover it until I checked the site. I've now added automatic checks and restarts for the caching system that was at fault so it shouldn't happen again all being well.

Regarding the income from this site - $100-500k a year would be lovely but you've got a few too many zeros there, it's actually a few hundred $ a month most months; this fits into the income bracket of 'Why do you still spend time on that Risk site when you have plenty of other stuff you should really be working on' comments from my wife :) Anyway I still enjoy working on it when I have the time but unfortunately the day job keeps me busy so it's a bit limited what I can do.

Anyway thanks for the messages of support guys and I'll get back to fixing the games with issues.

cheers

Tom

Good show Tom, my bad for making any financial assumptions. I appreciate the work you do and the intangible smiles you bring to so many strangers is putting some good karma points in the bank for you that I hope translate to the Monaco dollars one of these days. To the rest I apologize for being a pain and like a junky just needed my wargear fix in a bad way!!

tom wrote:

hi Warfish Daddy - you make a fair point regarding lack of updates on this issue and it should have been picked up earlier. There is automatic alerting set up but it failed to catch this issue so I didn't discover it until I checked the site. I've now added automatic checks and restarts for the caching system that was at fault so it shouldn't happen again all being well.

Regarding the income from this site - $100-500k a year would be lovely but you've got a few too many zeros there, it's actually a few hundred $ a month most months; this fits into the income bracket of 'Why do you still spend time on that Risk site when you have plenty of other stuff you should really be working on' comments from my wife :) Anyway I still enjoy working on it when I have the time but unfortunately the day job keeps me busy so it's a bit limited what I can do.

Anyway thanks for the messages of support guys and I'll get back to fixing the games with issues.

cheers

Tom

I have a suggestion:

• Add a donate to WarGear function.

For me, WarGear is certainly worth more than the 2.5$ a month I pay for premium. Can't speak for other premium members, so have no idea how popular something like this would be, but I would certainly use it.

Not the right thread for it, but since I started here...

Another option could be to add a reduced premium membership with all features except the unlimited games. My guess is that there would be a few users who would be willing to pay for premium, either to support the site or because they want the other premium features, but want a hard limited number of games to control the amount of time they spent on WarGear. 

Pratik wrote:

Not the right thread for it, but since I started here...

 

Another option could be to add a reduced premium membership with all features except the unlimited games. My guess is that there would be a few users who would be willing to pay for premium, either to support the site or because they want the other premium features, but want a hard limited number of games to control the amount of time they spent on WarGear. 

+1

Pratik wrote:

I have a suggestion:

• Add a donate to WarGear function.

For me, WarGear is certainly worth more than the 2.5$ a month I pay for premium. Can't speak for other premium members, so have no idea how popular something like this would be, but I would certainly use it.

It is possible to donate to WarGear, in the sense that you can gift WarGear premium on your account page:

http://www.wargear.net/settings/account

A fun way to do this can be to hold a small tournament, and the winner gets 3 months (or a year) of membership. 

My feelings about the site and Premium memberships (because nobody asked!):

- Tom, I appreciate that you have worked so hard on wargear.net, it is much better than Warfish ever was!

- The fee structure for Premium is perfect.  I don't even have to question if I will keep renewing my membership.

- That being said, earlier communication with issues would be nice even if it is just a "working on it" note.  Maybe a banner on the main page, lol?

- If anyone knows a standard player who you think should have a gifted membership, I can easily be convinced to gift some!

- My overall view of paying for Premium membership is that I am very happy to renew my membership as a yearly membership.  As much as I hope to play for the next 5 years, I don't trust it enough to purchase a 5-year membership.  Tom could always cave to pressure and abandon this low-income (but beloved by many) project.