I can get Free BATS RealTime on FreeStockCharts.com but not on the Gold version (ver 16.0.5829.19479).

I'm a paying customer on the Gold verison.  

It sure does seem like paying customers get less functionality than free folks on freestockcharts.com.

Am I missing something?

You can still get BATS RT in all versions of TC2000 v12. It is not available in TC2000 v16 because it is not compatible with the paper trading feature.

This is really confusing.  

Did I get this right?  As of now, v12 has real time but not paper trading.   v16 has paper trading and no real time.   

One would expect v16 to be the latest and greatest version of TC2000, not one that has less features. 

Please consider changing your numbering scheme.  It's really confusing, even for long time users.  A suffix like TC2000-RT would make it more clear and prevent the confusion.  Took me a while to figure this out.  

What is more confusing is when you click on v 12.6 on the worden.com home page, it takes you to another page where it runs v16, not v12.  But the title on the page says v12.4 !  How is a busy user supposed to keep track of all this?

The paper trading on a delayed feed is designed for just using the program for the trading without any other outside sources. If you were to have another RT feed up or make decisions based on news for example then you would know what was happening before the delayed feed caught up (you'd be cheating).

A similar sort of thing would actually happen if you had BATS running while doing paper trading. The BATS trades are only about 12% of trades on average. So the bar (and any indicators upon which it is based) can and will change up until 15 minutes after the bar "closed". In this case, instead of having extra data, you are missing some data.

Now the question arises then about using BATS data for intraday trading. You can certainly do so and for active stocks the BATS data is probably going to plenty fine for making trading decisions. It would probably be nice to have a way to paper trade this, but we can't do so.

The issue with paper trading this scenario is that we would have to fill the paper orders using full streaming data from all of the exchanges. This can't be done unless the customer is licensed for a full streaming data feed. The other issue is more technical than legal in that we would have to essentially send two feeds to the customer instead of just one.

When you have just the delayed feed, then you can stream everything in one feed and fill trades based on the same 15 minute delayed feed of bid, ask and individual trades. Paper trading on the delayed feed is just like paper trading with a full RT feed except it happens fifteen minutes later. You would need to "trade" from 9:45 to 4:15 instead of 9:30 to 4:00.

If you want to trade intraday charts (as in day trade), best is to get platinium or gold with real time. 

If you want to swing by analyzing in the evenings / night, gold will do.

Please note that if you use gold without real time feed, the alerts may not work well.

If you decide to do intraday make sure you are aware of the issues / bugs in the timeframe 60 / 120 & 240. See this for  more details http://forums.worden.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=62729

I used to subscribe to Platinium for many years before but recently moved to Gold + RT as that solves most of my needs. I also subscribe to other platforms *tradingview) to deal with some issues tc2000 has.

Thanks for  your replies.   

Busterram:  Thanks for your insights.  I should try the other platform you mentioned as well.  I also used to be a platinum subscriber for a long time and just recently switched to Gold.  I found I could get by with Gold as my broker platform gave free real time charts. 

Bruce: Thanks for replying.  I think I'm starting to understand the rationale for your delayed feeds.  But in my opinion, I still think most users would prefer a near real time feed rather than paper trading.  And if it's taking away functionality that used to be there it's going to leave a few disgruntled customers.  

It might be ok f you guys were clear on what the changes are.  As per my original email, it took me quite a while to figure out what the differences were between the versions.  And when the worden.com website loads 16 when it says 12.6, it adds more confusion to the matter and leaves customers very frustrated.

Keep in mind, most frustrated and disgruntled customers do not complain.  They just leave.  

Just a reminder, all TC versions are essentially a fast charting database with pretty colors and lots of neat features.  It's an entry level service nothing more.  Given managements propensity to keep it under $500 for marketing purposes it will never be what it could be.  I use 2 other charting services

I see my previous post was heavily edited.  Failure to face reality and lack of transparency are clear signs of weakness which will eventually come to light.  

I am very upset that I can no longer get vs. 12.6 wtih BATS realtime. My computer had to be replaced and now all I can download is vs. 16 for vs.17 beta. That doesn't cut it, especially when I have been a paying customer for many years and now only "FreeStockCharts.com" people can get BATS. Ridiculous! It is evident this company has changed in many significant ways in recent years. Great thinking! Also a great way to lose customers and, eventually your entire operation. Let's have the old TeleChart back that cared about its customers!