World Anvil Reviews 255

Disclaimer: I am not an employee or sponsored by the World Anvil Team. I am a regular guy who runs RPG games, and landed on getting into World Anvil desember 2023, after a long time considering what to use as a forum when getting deep into world building. I wanted the best, and after a long period of investigation I ended up with World Anvil. No regrets there. And the software just keep impressing me of how much you can do, but yet how little you "have" to do to world build, write articles, or upload maps and pictures.

You decide how much work and effort you want to pour into your world building. World Anvil is perfect for regular authors and creators, and excellent for perfectionists with all of the tools at your disposal.

World Anvil has existed for several years now, and they´ve grown a lot as a software provider since 2017.

What I like about World Anvil is what seems like an unlimited number of ways and tools to create your world. Be it as an author to write books, or to utilize as a forum to provide for yourself as a GM (articles, wikis to search, and ways to organize your work and world, maps, images, family trees, diplomacy trees, organisation trees) or as a Virtual Tabletop manager for your games supported by Foundry. WA and Foundry has gone into a collaboration and teamwork, so anything you have made in WA will be fully syncronisable in Foundry Virtual Tabletop (virtual map software like Roll20). Great for running combat or to showcase anything from World Anvil like pictures, articles or the manipulatable world maps etc.

So far they have about 1,5 million subscribers and a living and breathing community on Discord who are happy to help new comers and old veterans with any questions they may have. Even the Devs and owners of World Anvil are suddenly in direct contact with you when for instance reporting a bug or a problem. I got help from Dimitri (the man himself) directly with an issue I had with, where we found out I had just done a mistype. But he helped me nonetheless.

They even run streams quite often, to talk and listen to us users and the community. Providing forums to discuss topics for world building, provide people who teach us watching how to create fictional main characters, a villian, how geography functions, how to make more realistic maps, plus much much more. They even arrange competitions and grant rewards for the worlds that are voted as top products etc.

The best part is that the Devs at WA listen to us users, and they even have a request function where we can suggest changes, upgrades or new futures we want. People can see these threads and vote them up. If enough users vote yes for this or Dimitri thinks the suggestions are good, World Anvil will implement the change or create whatever was requested.

There are some other types of software products out there for world building or authoring, but you will not be disappointed by World Anvil. It takes some time to learn ALL the ropes (which is not required to start to effectively world build), but youtube is overflowing with video tutorials to guide you the whole way, and like I wrote earlier; full of users happy to answer your questions on discord or to even help you directly over chat, video chat, voice chat and guide you through whatever you needed help with.

Immediate responses that helped navigate a confusing situation from a very kind, helpful, understanding person named Ioanna! This is a very detailed world-building platform that requires a lot of time to learn the in's and out's, but once you do, it's one of the best world-building sites out there! Very happy with my service :)

World anvil has saved me as a DM and a writer! This awesome platform will help you manage your world building and connections between characters, places, timelines, maps and more. Not only that but the World Anvil team are incredibly supportive, with countless resources to support you as a creative, and will also help you with any problems quickly and easily. In every experience I’ve had with the team, they are just great people that go above and beyond. Not only that but they’re also building a great community of lovely people through the world anvil discord. If you haven’t given WA a go yet, I encourage you to try it, stick with it, ask questions, and before you know it, you’ll be worldbuilding better than ever before!

I was having some trouble using the site, completely my fault, and the team reached out to help walk me through exactly what I needed to be doing. They were very patient, included numerous screenshots with links to what I needed to be doing, made it clear what was going on. Very much appreciated!

An excellent browser-based suite of worldbuilding tools, whether for novel writing or tabletop campaign design, for a private project or a group endeavor (Dungeon Masters rejoice)!

The site offers numerous tools for drafting and organizing character profiles, story plots, place descriptions, timelines, and more, using primarily a proprietary word processor to write articles that one may then organize according to custom labeled categories. External media can be introduced as well, such a location maps and character profile images.

While the site's word processor is unsophisticated (and honestly should strive to simply recreate all the functions of Google Docs and Microsoft Word), World Anvil consistently strives to improve its features and add new ones––a dedication that cannot be said of many enterprises, independent or otherwise.

Notably, many of the site's more advanced usability and customizability features are locked behind the paywall of an annual subscription or a hefty one-time-payment lifetime subscription. Still, most of the site's default features are accessible with a free account.

Whatever your worldbuilding ambitions, World Anvil is worth a shot!

World Anvil is one of the best world-building websites, nay the best world-building website that I've ever come across. It has everything you'd ever need and is so easy to use. I adore it and their staff so much I keep coming back every year.

The service was useful And exactly what I needed when I needed it. And after A Medical emergency, they helped me resolve a failed cancelation.
They went above and beyond, and I would highly recommend them.

World Anvil is the perfect worldbuilding tool. I’ve been creating a universe for a while outside of world anvil, and world anvil has been invaluable to organize everything. I can’t imagine ever worldbuilding without world anvil again. It’s so helpful. Plus, their customer service is friendly, speedy, and will do everything they can to help you.

World Anvil is great for Indie Authors. Amazing character, setting, and general worldbuilding. I have found tons of inspiration here. The customer service is always helpful.

World Anvil is a great site for creating, curating, and maintaining worlds (see a lot of other reviews). I especially like the ability to link articles.

I also like the events with prompts, like Summer Camp, which make me think about my world in new ways, and help me flesh out parts of my world I never would have thought to build.

The World Anvil team is responsive to inquiries (and quick to respond as well), and very kind.

I use World Anvil to improve my writing, get to know people, and learn from their experiences. It has helped me more easily access my imagination and inspiration, share my ideas and get my name out there. As a first-time published author, all of this is very important, and surprisingly difficult to do, and World Anvil makes it easier. A great thanks to the World Anvil team!

World anvil proved to be an amazing plataform. I could find all the functionalities I needed to create my own world. The team provides a large amount of tutorials, both to use the website and to create your world.

Wonderful site for authors, roleplayers and gamers alike. I use it for my writing. I actually found it while searching for a site to make family trees for my characters (it is hard to keep all of that straight in your head for large families, especially when immortals are involved :-))). Most of the sites I found were not suitable for fictional characters, hard to use and/or expensive. With World Anvil it is very easy (family trees are actually auto-created from character profiles). And there are so many more amazing features for authors available. I am so excited that I found this site. Now I have all my research and plotting in one place and can use features I never even thought about (like whiteboards, searchable tables, timelines, linking places on a map to articles with information, ...). It is also possible to publish character profiles and info about book (or game) worlds in a homepage/blog style for others to read. And everything together is still cheaper than most other sites I found that only offered family trees. There also is a limited, free plan that can be used to try the site out, which I did before upgrading for more features (an upgrade is not required though, you can stick with the free plan). The support is great, too. I got and answer to my questions in less than 24 hours each time, and the support member actually read my e-mail and answered all of my questions (no standard-reply that did not fit, like many use). An all around great experience so far.

WorldAnvil is a really great ressource if you want to learn how to create believable worlds. The team is extremely helpful and takes the wishes of their fans and customers seriously.
Not only do they provide a whole ecosystem of intertwined services for nearly everything you could wish for, they also provide their users with useful tricks and pure knowledge.
If you look at what they provide (and at which pace), you wouldn't think that they're only a relatively small team. Seriously guys, great work!

I just love how easy it is to get in touch on the various channels and how much they care about the community.

I needed to change my subscription and they helped me out pretty fast. Good service.

World Anvil has proved time and time again to listen to their users, by always implementing new features most desired by the users.

High level of support also made me want to write this review as I was reached by one of the staff members (Ioanna, the Agent of Order) after having to cancel my subscription due to personal financial issues (2023 was a horrible year). She offered me sympathies and a coupon for when I decided to rejoin. Couple of days ago I've rejoined the guild and was pleasantly surprised by the newest feature; updated UI.

I immediately went back to working on my project.

Keep up the good work World Anvil and thank you for always listening to us!

World Anvil is a broad, community-driven web site for world builders and writers. There are excellent tools that writers can use to draft their stories, and worldbuilders, to create campaigns or campaign settings, modules... the possibilities are quite expansive! If you are proficient in computer languages and syntax (specifically, CSS) then it is fantastic! If not, there is a steep learning curve for getting the most out of the site. However, if you're patient with yourself and the site, you'll find it's an extraordinary experience. Join now and I hope you make a new friend or explore new worlds! Find some campaigns or games to get into! Or write the manuscript you've always wanted! World Anvil has an awesome staff; very helpful and informative! As for World Anvil and my personal use, I'm using it to develop my own platform; best of good luck! : D

Have not been on it long but like it so far. They seem to be improving the software vs leaving it stagnant and racking in money like others. I think I will renew my subscription if they keep bringing new features and improvements in the gui.

I've been using WA for a while now and have always had a pleasant experience with the team when running into trouble where it exists. Nothing is perfect, but WA does what it sets out to do well. Considering how much is free and how flexible their payment plan is, I can't think off a better website based service for online worldbuilding.

I ran into an issue, message discord who referred me to an email address. After a couple of back and forth mails in the span of two days the problem was fixed. Since it's a problem I caused, they didn't really have to fix it to begin with. I am thankful they did.

World Anvil is a fantastic platform for writing and world-building. It's full of features that inspire new ideas and ways to expand your stories. The tools are very versatile and, although for some tools the learning curve might be a little steep, they really bring your content to life. Everything interconnects smoothly, and using CSS you are highly versatile in customizing your worlds looks. The team behind World Anvil listens to the community, letting users suggest and vote on new roadmap features. Their support is incredibly friendly and helpful. Personally, I've found a lot of joy in using World Anvil. It's become a major hobby for me to write and design on this platform, watching my worlds grow into something truly beautiful and memorable.