General Ramblings

Updating Addons goes Commercial

Posted May 02, 2009 by Fron

Post your Comment (7)

If you use a lot of addons, I use around 50, updating your addons can be quite a task. It used to be almost a full time job to keep my addons up to date and it always seemed like I was missing an important update. Then came a couple of different Addon updaters, namely WoWAce updater and the Curse Client. Neither one worked particularly well and you could only update a limited number of addons. I found the Curse updater to be more trouble than updating manually.

Enter WoWMatrix... This program is free and, at its inception, updates literally any addon. You can use it to find new addons and install them or to simply update your current addons or even remove addons you don't want anymore. WowMatrix got popular enough that some of the larger addon websites (Curse and WowInterface) decided to take measures to stop WowMatrix from working. At this time it still works, but a large number of addons cannot be updated with WoWMatrix anymore, making it not as useful.

Arguements have raged on the net regarding the actions of Curse and WowInterface.com and the summary is, Curse and WowInterface don't want WowMatrix using their bandwidth, which is understandable. The counter arguement has been, if you want to stop WowMatrix, make a better addon updater. So Curse has finally attempted to do just that.

Curse just recently released their new addon updater, however, and this is a big one.... you have to PAY for it. In order to use this new client you have to update to their "Premium" service. Oh yea you get other so called "features" like no ads on the website and beta key giveaways. Um.. big deal.

One large problem is, there is no way to test this client. Listen based on the Curse previous updater, there is no way I'm going to shell out $4.95 a month for this one. The old one was awful. Put a time limited demo of the curse updater or better yet a FREE (imagine that.. free) updater that has some ads on it (that don't interfere with functionality).

Seriously, I have a lot of addons that I need to update, but I'm not going to pay to get that done. Make the updater free!

 

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  • joelgriffiths said 
    Mon, May 4 2009 9:55 AM ()

    Frankly, if it actually supported my addons, I would pay for it. My GOD Curse. Take some of your money and buy wowmatrix. You obviously can't develop a decent updater yourself. Due to your actions, I have to use two broken clients, and manual installs to update what used to be easy and free.

    Combine that with the timing of the whole thing. You did it when it would cause the most disruption possible to your would-be customers? Why? I can guarantee it wasn't for your regard for customers.

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  • PixelMuse said 
    Sun, May 3 2009 2:01 PM ()

    Imho it has been disapointing to see Curse go more and more commercial over the years. The site is filled with advertisements... background ads, banner ads, ads on the updater and sometimes when I go to wow.curse.com I am stuck viewing a full page advertisement where I have to click  'skip ad' to continue to the page I wanted to see in the first place.

    Now with all these ads I am sure that Curse is making decent revenue to provide a profit for their excellent site. Don't misunderstand I think Curse.com is an awesome resource to the gaming community and feel that they deserve something for their efforts. I feel the same way about addon developers. However where is the limit? It seems to becoming so overly commercial that frankly it is a turn-off.

    I don't use wowmatrix, never have and I disapprove strongly in what they are doing, but it seems like Curse charging for full features in their updater was the wrong route to go.

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  • nyxtyr said 
    Sat, May 2 2009 9:27 AM ()

    wowmatrix was stealing from curse and wowinterface hence the reason for blocking it

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  • dotted said 
    Sat, May 2 2009 9:22 AM ()

    Fail rant is fail

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  • Indelible said 
    Sat, May 2 2009 9:15 AM ()

    You don't have to pay for the updater. It is free. There are certain features that are disabled in the free version but it is still free.

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