See ya, Erfworld

[Althernai]

You know, I personally wouldn't have a problem if uncoloured or uninked strips were released, particularly if it meant strips came out in a reliable schedule. Girl Genius does it now and then when something falls behind, and I've never heard of anyone really minding. Stuff happens, most people understand.

I understand, but I wouldn't say that I don't mind -- those uncolored pages are much worse than the ordinary ones. However, it happens so rarely that this doesn't matter. That particular comic has a much larger problem. There are indeed 3 rather large pages a week, but the story moves at approximately the same real-time pace as Erfworld despite the nearly tenfold difference in the number of updates.

The frustration with Erfworld comes entirely from the fact that it is not updated frequently enough. Ignoring that, it is easily my favorite comic on the web. Re-read Book 1, for which the frequency of updates is no longer relevant and you can see what I mean. Though it remains to be seen whether the ending of Book 2 is as satisfying as that of Book 1, up until now the story is approximately as good. But on the other hand, the schedule is becoming progressively more difficult to ignore. It's gone from roughly 1 page + 1 text update per week to about 1 page + 1 text update per 10 days to 1 page per 10 days and now it seems to be trending towards 1 page per two weeks. And unlike the sporadic stretches of slow updates in Book 1, this pace is very consistent. Thus, I have decided not to renew my yearly subscription. I will still follow the comic, but I can't justify paying for what appears to be headed towards 25 pages a year.

[msb]

Eh, with Girl Genius something happens three times a week. Almost every page has at least a little miniresolution. With Erfworld there are very few miniresolutions. Something happens every ten or twenty pages, though it's a hundred times as significant when it does. Apples and oranges. I think it's pretty obvious which fruit lends itself better to serial storytelling, but if I have to pick I like Erfworld better overall (at least up through book 1).

It's way past dawn, still no page.

I know what it's like to have to pull all nighters to meet the deadline, so I sympathize a tiny bit... but when it happens like this more often than not, it's really hard to take it as anything other than evidence that not much consistent work is being put in.

[TerribleDeal]

A little more mathamancy from a lurker, comparing Erfworld to its closest sibling, OOTS.

Erfworld has updated 39 times since January 1, 2011: 23 comics and 16 text updates. OOTS has updated 41 times in the same span. Further, there have been two times that an OOTS update was a "strip and a half" and six times that it was a double strip, for a total of 48 pages of free content. This is only a 9-page lead on Erfworld, which seems fine until you remember that Burlew has one of the worst update schedules in all of webcomics. The guy was AWOL for a month without explaining where he went, and he still out-produced Rob.

But it gets worse. Let's say that the start of this year, I had a little disposable income that I wanted to spend supporting a webcomic, but I didn't know which one to choose: Erfworld or OOTS. For the sake of the experiment, assume that I already owned everything both creators had put on sale in all the years before 2011, and that I'm only interested in actual story matter, not t-shirts or board games.

Had I chosen to support Erfworld and become a tool on January 1, 2011, by now I would have spent $27, and gotten nothing new. To my knowledge, there have been no subscriber-exclusive content posted this year. If I canceled now, that money could not be redeemed unless I bought some product I didn't really want.

Had I chosen to support OOTS, I would have bought a book of mostly new content that came out in August for $22, plus $5 for shipping, or $27. The same amount as 9 months of Tooldom. The book is 112 pages; 22 of those were previously published content and another 7 or 8 are non-content stuff like the title page. That makes 72 pages of original comic or text, plus the 48 pages of free content from above.

OOTS produced 120 pages of new material in 2011 for the price of $27, while Erfworld produced 39 pages for the same amount of money. One-third as much as OOTS. And again, what makes this so sad is how truly abyssmal the production schedule for OOTS really is. But it's still a better value, dollar for dollar.

Of course, the experiment above isn't really hypothetical, because I did buy the OOTS book and not the Tool subscription, based largely on the fact that I had little confidence that the update schedule would pick up enough that any new books would be out in print before I ran out of money to maintain the subscription. It was the right call. I may buy Book 2 of Erfworld when (or if) it comes out in a collected format, but I won't spend a dollar on Tooldom. It's too risky.

[balder]

Had I chosen to support Erfworld and become a tool on January 1, 2011, by now I would have spent $27, and gotten nothing new. To my knowledge, there have been no subscriber-exclusive content posted this year. If I canceled now, that money could not be redeemed unless I bought some product I didn't really want.

Yeah, and you'd have $0 in store credit, but $27 in store credit here. We're not taking money for what you get as a subscriber, we're asking you to bank money for future purchases and rewarding those who do with subscriber-only content, a badge, and ad-free surfing. And there's been a ton of Toolbox-only content posted. So, the point you created this alt to make is flat wrong.

You know, there's a lot of dickery and sock puppetry in this thread. A lot of One Rule violations. I'm closing this thread, because it's been at the top of this forum hijacking the discussion for too long.

I'll say this much:

1) We're doing the best that we can, I do solemnly testify (in the original definition of swearing on my own testicles).
2) No complaint to me or other fans can do anything to help Erfworld. You're just spreading your own misery around. The only outcome of the pissing and moaning is to detract from other people's enjoyment of what's here.
3) What's holding up the updates will not be publicly shared, but it involves some really horrendous personal shit in the lives of one or more of the creators. And if you did know what it was, you'd feel like a complete asshole.
4) If you feel another comic is more deserving of your support, leave here and go support that creator. Read Erfworld if you like it. Support our efforts if you feel we're doing good work. Make your own webcomic if you feel like showing us how it's done. But if you're out to make the comic less fun for other people, then you are worse than "no reader" and I don't want you here at all.