I received a message as well asking to provide a review, which I'm assuming everyone in the VIP group received.
Since I am still fairly new myself, I'll be splitting the review in two parts, and putting in my two cents overall- AR as a whole, and the VIP portion of it.
AR is the perfect place if you are searching for something specific. The website is so user friendly and each section are so simplified that you hardly have to ask or look around to find what you are looking for. Though, the board categories could use a few more sections to generate more activity. Let's face it, whether you are a staff here, or a member, or even a guest, if you visit the board more than twice a day, it's hardly the content you are looking at, but other things such as who is online, recent posts, etc start to matter the more frequent you revisit AR.
From what I've observed so far from reading the chat, as well as previous posts, AR seems does not seem to need the money generated from the VIP subcriptions, or it would not turn down VIP applicants. Either the modders are doing this for charity, or for fun. As it stands now, the VIP section of the board is considerably more active than the public. Let's be honest, people did not randomly stumble to this website just for the "public" contents.
The fact that members could sign up, shell out $15-20 to gain vip access without anything else outside of the interview, renders the public section almost useless. I am a senior manager in a corporate recruiting department, and I know exactly how much coders/programmers are worth. The $15-20 monthly does not do justice for the hours and days the staff put into the releases they publish.
The interviews have recently been implemented, and so have the license. The fact of the matter is, neither one of these are "leak-proof" precautions put in place(each member at the moment are free to use licences on as many devices. Monitoring does not prevent anything if the releases are distributed in moderation. For such low membership fees, each member should only be given one license, and be required to purchase extra equivalent to VIP membership fees). If AR truly wanted worthwhile members deserving of its exclusive releases, it should require more than just the fee as a criteria. An example would be is to add additional sectional forums where members could discuss interests, general discussion, etc and impose a minimum of number posts prior to being eligible for VIP application. This method would require members constant visit to the board, reducing the chance of putting someone through who just signed up for VIP, download a release and share it back to other communities. Members who are currently in deep ties with other communities would probably be a little more reluctant with putting this much effort and time to bother with meeting the VIP criteria itself. This increases the chance of attracting quality and loyal members to AR. To put it simply, member should have to make some type of non monetary contributions in addition to the fees.
As far as VIP is concerned. I dont believe I have seen such excellent service and support elsewhere overall. The delivery times, and frequency that the releases are published are worth the title of VIP.