I have a six month subscription to World Anvil and it was very difficult for me to use it. I tested the software I wanted to use for my next D&D campaign to create a corner of a fantasy world. But in practice, it seems like the world-building tool isn't all that useful; It is customary to say that the sad reality of fantasy worlds is only a small part of each of them.
Experience a famous fantasy world like Westeros in Game of Thrones. If you've watched every episode of the entire season, you might think you know the world well. You've seen a lot on the show, from the icy north wall, the seven kingdoms, winter to King's Territory, to Esteros and the desert city-states. How? If so, then Game of Thrones is a gimmick with a lot of characters, and you've seen the world of Westeros through the eyes of each one of them. Now do a meditative experiment: choose a character from Game of Thrones and imagine that you only saw the scenes in the program in which this character is involved. Even if you choose the "main" character, you will see less of Westeros. Some little characters are always together. And the truth is, there are parts of Westeros that you can't see.
This is the problem of building the old D&D world. Will your team actually see all the places you've created? If you come up with a story for your party, how important is it to the adventure you're playing? Yes, World Anvil allows you to create a complete wiki encyclopedia of the world you've created, consisting of hundreds of articles. But if you don't want to expose your players for hours, you can play the campaign for a year and touch on some of these articles. Your imaginary world is the city of Potemkin, and everything you do behind the facades will be in vain.
Instead of working on all the details in your world, you can find those details as soon as you need them. He does not need the name of the village blacksmith until the players decide to visit him. A random fantasy name generator will help you find it quickly, and then if the players ever come back, all you have to do is enter that name. This method is much more efficient than pre-determining all the names of all the inhabitants, have your players decide not to visit the city at all. In fact, no one cared about the lineage of the king.
Of course, you can use World Anvil to record the most important information about your world and then add notes based on the information gathered during your game session. But does it really need a subscription service? Generations of Dungeon Masters have managed to keep their fantasy worlds in one folder, in fact if you have more than one folder of information you are already overusing it. I like World Anvil as a concept, but I don't need it for my campaign.
