From April 2024, the World Anvil free accounts are changing. Going forward, new and existing free users will have access to features they didn’t have before, and will see restrictions to limits on others. These limits refer to the number of articles and other content a user can have in their account at one time.
What’s changing for free accounts on World Anvil?
Free users will now have access to the following features:
- Larger image uploads: Freemen now have access to 10MB image uploads, just like the guild!
- The Autolinker, letting you automatically link your articles together, and saving you time
- Advanced search, to more easily find your worldbuilding!
- The Advanced Homepage, to curate and control how your world looks to your audience
- Word Count Goals: you can now set a wordcount goal to keep track of your progress (up to 10,000 words—but you can keep writing beyond that number)!
- Color Tags, so you can color and highlight text in your world more easily
We will be introducing even more new features to free users as and when they are ready! As an example, the following two features will be introduced the moment we have made the requisite upgrades.
- Manuscripts access: 1000 words of manuscripts goodness (coming soon)
- Chronicles: 1 chronicle (1 map/10 pins/10 events) (coming soon)
We’re also changing the access Freemen have to certain features. The new list of Freeman account limitations are:
- 2 worlds
- 1 RPG campaign
- 100 MB Image space
- 42 Articles
- 5 Article drafts
- 15 Categories
- 2 Maps
- 10 Map Markers
- 2 Map Layers
- 2 Standard Timelines
- 10 Historical Events
- 20 Statblocks
The following features are no longer accessible without a World Anvil guild account:
- Access to URL embeds (which were being used to circumnavigate Freeman restrictions)
What does this mean for free World Anvil account users going forward?
Freeman accounts will continue to be available for users who wish to explore World Anvil before subscribing, or who are happy with the free account limits. After six years of serving the worldbuilding community, we’ve learned that the majority of our Free users fall below the threshold of the limits introduced. The introduction of new quality of life features to the Freeman tier, like the Autolinker, larger image uploads, and advanced search, should improve the everyday experience of our Freemen.
Those wishing to continue using only a free account can always delete unwanted content to remain below the threshold. In keeping with World Anvil’s terms of service, and to ensure that you retain full ownership of your data, any free user who currently exceeds the limits will still be able to view, export, and delete their existing content. As always, Free users will not be able to edit content until they go below the threshold of their account limits.
If you’re a Free user who finds a lot of value in World Anvil and want more than the free account offers, you might wish to consider joining the guild. A guild subscription unlocks World Anvil’s full potential, and supports its future development for millions of worldbuilders who, like you, love their craft. There are exciting plans in store for World Anvil, and we’d love for you to experience them! Unlike so many companies on the internet, we have frozen our prices since before the pandemic in order to keep our platform affordable. Choose from a variety of subscriptions designed to suit every price point, as well as gift subscriptions and one-time-pay Lifetime membership options.
What kind of work do you support when you subscribe to World Anvil?
In the past year alone, your guild support has enabled us to improve World Anvil’s core infrastructure and build innovative new features that help the whole community. Just a few examples of our recent updates include:
- New timelines
- Interactive map upgrades
- Faster, more intuitive interface
- Quicker search
Improvements like these are key to a sustainable future for World Anvil and our mission of supporting worldbuilding. They also serve as an essential foundation for even more great changes to come. It’s all made possible thanks to our guild members’ continued and dedicated support.
Want to share your thoughts with us? Email Ioanna at contact@worldanvil.com.
While it’s nice to see some new tools for the freemen, I don’t know if it makes up for reducing the freeman article limit so drastically. Really sad to see it down to only 42 articles.
Is there a specif reason for such drastic changes like is WA that strapped for cash or was there an influx of bots abusing the site? I got my second year mastership on sale and it has beyons proven its value for me with as much self drawn art as i do but i worry such sweepinc cuts might discourage people new to the community. Id like tomget a lifetime sub but not i have other financial prioritiesncurrently. Still at minimum a mastership is worth itnfor me but there might be others who dont share the sentiment. Imjust hope this doesnt discourage participation going forward and have a negative effect.
Hey Mardrena, thank you for your comment. Sadly the abuse of the site is indeed one of the factors bringing about these changes. It is also a way for us to make sure that World Anvil can have a long and bright future – we have revised our freeman offer as a necessary step forward.
I’m really glad to hear you’ve been enjoying World Anvil and that it is of great value to you <3 I too hope that these changes will be positive for the whole community as well as new members joining in! Thanks again!
I completely agree. The 42 article limit is extremely inconvenient actually, such a drastic change seems unfair to freeman (such as myself) who were really counting on the previous limit to make things work. I don’t see any of the new tools making up for this, or any of the decreased limits, as they seem to be on what I’ve found to be the most useful features.
I also agree with this. While I’m happy freemen get new features, the article limits make the least sense. Articles are the core feature of WA and it is sad to see it reduced so much, to the point where we have nothing to delete to stay within the new limit
The limit of 42 articles is very sad and seems unfair. I was counting on the previous limit of 125 articles. And I was going to use it almost to the maximum. In return, I don’t get any necessary or useful tools to compensate for the fact that I now have to collect my articles into an awkward pile.
In addition, since I illustrate everything myself, I will be working on the project for perhaps more than a year (in addition to how long I have already been working on it). And now I’m afraid of an even smaller number of articles, which is driving me crazy.