Quote:

Originally Posted by obliterated

two things im CERTAIN of. i have NOT lied and i have NOT brought rediculous accusations to the 2 posts that have been deleted.

 

i believe that everything you guys have done so far with this has been shady, from the no warning on the program that im aware of that this was gonna happen, to the checking with your lawyers making sure it was legal, to the no warning that it was going to start charging before it happened. And we are all just calling u out on it. That does not make it a lie, that does not make it rediculous. i'm upset by your apparent lack of concern at your "customers" displeasure in what you are doing is all. But the bottom line is its your site, its your program, and its your call.

And judging by the lack of any real constructive explanations on these forums that i can find. i would assume this will not be changing at anytime and that this decision by you guys is final.

Actually some people are calling us on issues they have raised. It is a far cry from "everyone." And yes, it's ridiculous.

Curse Client was always trial premium, going back all the way to September. You had to accept a dialogue box accepting that fact. We have said consistantly and constantly that a premium model was in the works.

My understanding is that when we checked with our Lawyers it was to ensure we were in compliance with Blizzards's policy.

The simple fact here is that you can still download and install addons. You can choose to accept it, not accept it etc. That's a choice that is each individual's. Not all will like the changes we have implemented, however it is clear that many have.

So what happens if Blizzard comes to you tomorrow and requests you cease charging for anything related to WoW?
Would Curse fold up?

  Quote:

Originally Posted by Erzeal

So what happens if Blizzard comes to you tomorrow and requests you cease charging for anything related to WoW?
Would Curse fold up?

the bigger question is... *when* curse becomes an impotent medium, will WoWi get big in the head just like curse did and start trying to profiteer off of mod authors?

If any site ever tried profiteering off of us authors, I think said site would die a quick, unpleasant, death.

....

Wait, it did. It was called WowMatrix, and now it is dead because it tried to profiteer off Curse, WowInterface, and addon authors. Can't say they weren't warned, repeatedly, because they were.

And if Blizzard stepped in and told Curse (they would have to do the same to every addon site as well) how to host addons, then my guess is the addon community as a whole would probably collapse. Because, as I said, Blizzard would have to go after everybody, simultaneously. Good thing no site I am aware of is giving them cause.

*looks at front page*

Well my guess is the admins might cry a little.

Then on Monday morning they'll just roll over and go back to supporting all the other games they make/host stuff for.

OK, Blizzard can spout and scream all it wants, but Curse is a seperate legal entity.  Blizzard cannot makes rules to inhibit another business, period.  Technically, since addons are intellectual property of their creators and hence they are automatically copywritten by the authors, Blizz's new "rules" are moot.  Sorry, federal law overrules even mighty Blizzard.   They worst they ccan do is somehow make it so that any addon that breaks their "rules" will not work in game.  That's what the new WTB folder is to be used for.   So, in conclusion, Blizzard's "rules" are pointless and legally inactionable. 

Besides, Curse has never said you have to pay to use it.  It's still absolutely free.  People who are saying they're going back to updating manually, why?  You can only do that one addon at a time too.  Sure, it was a terrible idea to give everyone a free trial and then take it away as people got used to it and it felt like something we had a right to was taken away.  They should've just added premium without any trial and perhaps they should still find other ways to make it more appealing and return the "Update All Addons" ability to the masses. 

I, for one, am glad that Curse is doing something for us authors.  I'm obviously not making addons for money, I do it for fun, no one is forcing me to write addons, but a little appreciation is nice once in awhile.  I have been writing various addons for a couple of months now and have them on four different site, even WoWMatrix, and I have never even gotten 1 penny by donation and have only ever received 3 thank you, usually by other authors.  So, if you don't want to donate or don't feel the addon is worth a donation, at least say thanks to the author.  It means more than you may think.

"OK, Blizzard can spout and scream all it wants, but Curse is a seperate legal entity.  Blizzard cannot makes rules to inhibit another business, period.  Technically, since addons are intellectual property of their creators and hence they are automatically copywritten by the authors, Blizz's new "rules" are moot.  Sorry, federal law overrules even mighty Blizzard."

I distinctly recall Carbonite getting hammered for making a premium for pay version of their add on, which resulted in these new rules. Go read them.  And if you think Curse is doing this for "you authors", I have a bridge to sell you. If we users want to donate to the add on author, we will donate DIRECTLY to that author. Pull a bait and switch stunt like Curse and try to force people to pay for features they were already getting, and see how quickly users  turn their back on you like so many of us turned our backs on Curse. As I said before, there were numerous other ways for Curse to raise money other then resorting to this premium for pay crap. And they would not have even had to deal with this issue of whether or not it is allowed by Blizzard.

As for me, I will get my add ons from their author's own sites. I refuse to use Curse for anything.

Post

As I've stated in many threads.  We've been in contact with blizzard.  We've satisfied any concerns they have had about premium.  Please keep this thread civil (on both sides) or I'll be locking it next. 

just uninstalling.

Sadly after 3 years of using curse to dl all my addons I dont think I will be using it anymore. I think that it is very sad that curse feels the need to charge for bandwidth. Before Premium I could dl an addon in no more than 4 sec. Now it takes over a min on some of them to dl. I understand wanting to help the authors but.... I should get the same dl rate if i pay or not. How sad that it has sunk this low. Hope to see a change in the bandwidth allowed for non premium accounts. Curse could have found another way around this issue without resorting to charging for bandwidth.

I have followed with great interest this and other threads regarding the premium service Curse is now offering and I believe I finally have come to my own conclusion.  I have been a member since 12/11/2007 and have followed the forums as well as the news, and of course, I abused my fair share of the Curse bandwidth prior to even registering.  I began playing WoW in November 2005 after the great SOE/Lucas Arts fiasco with Star Wars Galaxies.  I have kept up on these, as well as the other posts regarding various business practices and models, and what may be best for Curse's future.  I am an addon junkie, and love having loads of information at my fingertips so the amount of downloads I have manually handled since approximately December 2005 is immense.  You see, while I like having the information, I usually change all of my mods at least two to three times monthly.

I laughed pretty hard when I read the posts of certain individuals with several hundred post counts stating that the opinions of those with posts of less then X number are not valid.  This statement smacks of ignorance, narrow-mindedness, and poor intelligence, and I am very sad to see that happen.  It is not the post count that generates valid opinions, but the way the message is delivered and the research that goes into creating the message.

I can honestly say I am quite disturbed at the views of certain Curse employees(?) who posted here at the beginning encouraging people not to pay for this site and to go elsewhere to download addons.  And these two reasons are why I am not going to be paying for the premium service.  I dislike immaturity and unprofessionalism in whatever ventures I choose to place my money.  I will find a way to continue to donate to the addon authors and I will be distinctly pleased to know that all of my donation is going for their benefit instead of the way that Curse is going to have it done.  A small share will go to the author, after the bills are paid, and the expenses are handled.

Good day, and good luck.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by DissoCrushridge

I can honestly say I am quite disturbed at the views of certain Curse employees(?) who posted here at the beginning encouraging people not to pay for this site and to go elsewhere to download addons.  And these two reasons are why I am not going to be paying for the premium service.  I dislike immaturity and unprofessionalism in whatever ventures I choose to place my money.  I will find a way to continue to donate to the addon authors and I will be distinctly pleased to know that all of my donation is going for their benefit instead of the way that Curse is going to have it done.  A small share will go to the author, after the bills are paid, and the expenses are handled.

Can you please point out the Curse "employees" you're referencing?  And I agree -- post count means nothing -- it's the quality of the post.

I agree. Throttling our download speeds if we don't have premium? That's pretty damn weaksauce. And no update-all? My god...guess there is no reason for the curse client anymore. I can download the addons from another site and have them installed faster than my new throttled download speed would take off this crap.

It was nice while it lasted. Oh well.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by hollyhock03

I agree. Throttling our download speeds if we don't have premium? That's pretty damn weaksauce. And no update-all? 

Every one of your addons do not update every single day. Downloading and installing updates for all your addons isn't the only thing the Curse Client does.

For me I get value in that with the free client it will still :

* Check what addons need updating

* Sort these addons up the top of the list.

So just with these 2 steps the free version of the Curse Client it's still saving time. You don't have to load up any bookmarks or look through any RSS feeds or look through any addon update emails. What's been updated is at the top of the window. In bold I believe.

From there it's just a few clicks to update.

For example :

You start it up.

It checks what needs to be updated.

It tells you 4 addons need to be updated.

With 8 clicks you're updated.

IMHO it's shorter then one game of that Peggle addon.

In fact.... WTB Peggle inside my Curse Client :D

PS Now if I knew it also let me look at the change logs then that would be perfect for me :D

OH wow. I have read this ENTIRE thread and have decided two things:

1) Curse is in fact a GREAT service.

2) Curse is trying to do all of this off of ads and they NEED other sources of income.

HOW THEY ACHIEVE THIS:

They do NOT require payments.

Payments help for bandwidth and other hosting costs.

Regular members get regular D/L speeds NOT throttled down.

And I am going to donate as soon as posible AND also directly to the developers that make these addons come to life.

People, you need to stop arguing. Understand that these people are untitled to a living. they need money just like you.

And you should be proud to live in a counrty where we have the right to get to chose what we want and are able to speak our minds freely.

Thank you.

/target koganinja89

/hug

I just want to improve the client and help users who are having problems. That includes non-premium users who pay for nothing and donate to no one.

See you in the support forums!

Honestly I know this. don't think that because I don't put hundreds of lines of bs in my post means that I am not concurrent and well aware of posible motives and requisites. Thank you for the clarification of thing I was too lazy to say and simplify. lol.

Curse should post their financial information too...but only if pngguy posts his first as a show of good faith :)

Financial records are a matter of privacy. No person or company has to release that information to any entity other than the government to which taxes are paid. Asking for that information violates all kinds of privacy laws. As Apu of Simpson's fame says: "Thank you. Please come again."

ah, I agree....I was attempting sarcasm, but I think my good mood made me too mellow for forum posting. 

What I really meant to say was, "You first, mister pngguy."  Because seriously, that post was just silly.  

On a not completely unrelated topic, I think my favorite line from Apu would be, "Please do not offer my god a peanut."  

lol yeah... funny. XD.

but on an EVEN liter note:

Testicles, that is all.

I'd just wanted to say: This friggin' sucks

  Quote:

Originally Posted by koganinja89

OH wow. I have read this ENTIRE thread and have decided two things:

 

1) Curse is in fact a GREAT service.

2) Curse is trying to do all of this off of ads and they NEED other sources of income.

 

HOW THEY ACHIEVE THIS:

They do NOT require payments.

Payments help for bandwidth and other hosting costs.

Regular members get regular D/L speeds NOT throttled down.

And I am going to donate as soon as posible AND also directly to the developers that make these addons come to life.

 

People, you need to stop arguing. Understand that these people are untitled to a living. they need money just like you.

And you should be proud to live in a counrty where we have the right to get to chose what we want and are able to speak our minds freely.

 

Thank you.

^ This.

I was using the free version of Curse for quite some time, but I realized (not too long ago) that I would be lost in WoW without some of the addons I use. I appreciate the effort that developers put in to making the addons, and I appreciate the service that Curse provides. So why not donate?  Its not as though anyone demanded my money, no one has even specifically asked for it. It is, and always has been, my choice.

So, to everyone behind the scenes, keep up the great work.  :)

  Quote:

Originally Posted by pngguy

5.8 million gone in 2 years??? Don't tell Google it goes that easily, it'd be bankrupt by tomorrow. That's more than $240,000.00 per month. If Curse is spending that much, than it's time for Chapter 11 for mismanagement of the business, or go work regular jobs and run Curse on the side, like how it started out.

Well that link doesn't work try :

http://www.siliconvalleywire.com/svw/2007/07/san-francisco-8.html

As for a response to your post - Curse Inc, do value added content for games other than World of warcraft . They also go through a ton of bandwidth. 

Bandwidth is not free. Before you say you can get a residential broadband plan that offers "unlimited bandwidth" you need to realise that you as a consumer do not go through the amounts of bandwidth that Curse does. We are talking about several hundreds of MB's worth of traffic per day. Last patch day they were doing 1.3 and 1.8 TBytes and hour worth of data. 

Since they want to offer their customers a decent response time from their servers with minimal server load they do have to go with a hosting company. It's not as simple as going through an ISP - that and when an isp says it's "unlimited bandwidth" they really its capped at a certain amount they're confident that no one single customer will get even near to using.

Given they are a free site operating off donations and ad revenue I'm personally not suprised they've gone through that amount of money. Wowace wos gobbling up a sheer amount of bandwidth with it's old not very well designed packager. That and the average consumer was dowloading from what was effectively a developer file repository.

Kaelten in his post just before closing files.wowace.com that donations & ad revenue were not enough to effectively cover costs. Way I see it this "premium" service is just another way of paying their bills.

"Mis management" - and ? So ? Why does it matter to you ? Do you have a seat on the board of directors ?  See it's alright to stand from the outside and say "I can do better than you". It's completely different when your'e in the trenchs of it dealing with these costs yourself. I don't think Curse would still be operating if it was at all in danger of going under (don't they have to answer to a corporate board of directors ?) . I've seen no word anywhere of them losing money. 

I didn't realise paying a $50 yearly membership entitled you to a seat on the board of directors and the right to a company's private account books.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by pngguy

  Quote:

Originally Posted by honem

 

  Quote:

Originally Posted by pngguy

5.8 million gone in 2 years??? Don't tell Google it goes that easily, it'd be bankrupt by tomorrow. That's more than $240,000.00 per month. If Curse is spending that much, than it's time for Chapter 11 for mismanagement of the business, or go work regular jobs and run Curse on the side, like how it started out.

 

Well that link doesn't work try :

http://www.siliconvalleywire.com/svw/2007/07/san-francisco-8.html

As for a response to your post - Curse Inc, do value added content for games other than World of warcraft . They also go through a ton of bandwidth. 

Bandwidth is not free. Before you say you can get a residential broadband plan that offers "unlimited bandwidth" you need to realise that you as a consumer do not go through the amounts of bandwidth that Curse does. We are talking about several hundreds of MB's worth of traffic per day. Last patch day they were doing 1.3 and 1.8 TBytes and hour worth of data. 

Since they want to offer their customers a decent response time from their servers with minimal server load they do have to go with a hosting company. It's not as simple as going through an ISP - that and when an isp says it's "unlimited bandwidth" they really its capped at a certain amount they're confident that no one single customer will get even near to using.

Given they are a free site operating off donations and ad revenue I'm personally not suprised they've gone through that amount of money. Wowace wos gobbling up a sheer amount of bandwidth with it's old not very well designed packager. That and the average consumer was dowloading from what was effectively a developer file repository.

Kaelten in his post just before closing files.wowace.com that donations & ad revenue were not enough to effectively cover costs. Way I see it this "premium" service is just another way of paying their bills.

"Mis management" - and ? So ? Why does it matter to you ? Do you have a seat on the board of directors ?  See it's alright to stand from the outside and say "I can do better than you". It's completely different when your'e in the trenchs of it dealing with these costs yourself. I don't think Curse would still be operating if it was at all in danger of going under (don't they have to answer to a corporate board of directors ?) . I've seen no word anywhere of them losing money. 

I didn't realise paying a $50 yearly membership entitled you to a seat on the board of directors and the right to a company's private account books.

 

 

Please don't make assumptions: I as a Business Owner (not a consumer) realize how expensive bandwidth is, and the costs of doing business. The reason I posted the above was because I am a business owner and I know how hard it is for a small business like Curse to blow $5.8 million in 2 years if they were properly managing the business.

Unless Curse is employing 100+ full time employees and renting a facility that is way, way beyond their needs, there is no way for them to blow $5.8 million in 2 years. I managed a small business that had 50+ employees, 15+ company vehicles, had to stock materials/products and commercial equipment that only cost around $2 million per year in overhead. The overhead of that business is probably 10x or more than that of Curse, yet it costs less to run it. This equals mismanagement, and Curse has to be honest about what is going on, telling us it does not need the money to support the site, but rather the over spending the management is doing. I just hate when companies lie about what is going on. The number one clue something is wrong is "it's a private company and we don't have to report our finances to anyone" expecting the government, of course. If you can't say your company grossed $150,000.00 last year, or about $35,000.00 net, then you are hiding something, which again points to mismanagement.

Not that i am entirely pleased with the direction/etc of curse and wow addons in general..

A quick glance around the web indicates that it would cost somewhere north of 200,000$ a month JUST to be able to peak out at 1TB an hour of data (thats physical connections to the interwebs not counting the actual cost of serving that kind of data continuously)

So yah even if they do have a good discount, running the rest of the company on 40,000 a month is not "mismanagement" for a startup imo..

Also the whole premium thing was also meant to revenue share with mod authors no?

I'm not going to get into the details of the finances of the company, I don't know all the facts and it's not my place either.

What I do know is that there are a lot of bills, that we're still operating in the red (although not as much as before premium), and that I don't think anyone from curse has stated we're broke.  This whole thing is to preempt issues caused by running out of money a little ways down the line.  It'd be a horrid mismanagement to wait until there was no time to fix the problem.

Good bye curse, I use to like it but now its just screwed your offering all your excellent services for money, bye.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out, people choose to leave but I don't know why they have to keep announcing it every time they do.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by pngguy

They are going to "donate" a very small percentage to some of the authors, but if any author's "donations" go over a certain amount (not disclosed as far as I found) Curse will be sending them to the tax man. That means not only does the author get to help make Curse more profitable for a pitance, the author also will have to pay taxes for his own free work so Curse can write it off on their taxes. Pretty fair deal for the authors: work for free, get a small donation from the company profitting off of the authors works and pay taxes for that company on top of it. What better deal could the authors ask for? After all Curse asked to host the addons, so why shouldn't Curse make a really nice profit while doing it???

Users dont' donate that much anyway. If you have actually talked to some addon authors you would realise this. They put thousands of free unpaid hours into their work and often don't get many donations out of it. Curse's Author Awards programs is an attempt to rectify that.

And where do you get the idea that over a certain limit Curse will have to send it to the taxman ? Have you been to the Author Awards program and seen what they give it ? It's just Gear and Amazon Gift Cards. No cash is actually exchanged. And do you honestly believe Curse Gaming would so stupid as to not consult someone about the tax implications ?

Curse isn't forcing addon authors to host here you know. The Author Awards program is not a ransom it's a gift

Mind you you still have not answer what I've asked you before. Here I'll rewrite it for you (and bold it) :

Where does it say a $50 yearly membership entitled you to a seat on the board of directors and the right to a company's private account books ?

  Quote:

Originally Posted by Bluspacecow

Users dont' donate that much anyway. If you have actually talked to some addon authors you would realise this. They put thousands of free unpaid hours into their work and often don't get many donations out of it. Curse's Author Awards programs is an attempt to rectify that.

Some users do.  I've received a $50 donation before... I was surprised.  I've also received a $1 donation.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by Bluspacecow

And where do you get the idea that over a certain limit Curse will have to send it to the taxman ? Have you been to the Author Awards program and seen what they give it ? It's just Gear and Amazon Gift Cards. No cash is actually exchanged. And do you honestly believe Curse Gaming would so stupid as to not consult someone about the tax implications ?

There's an option to get $500 in cash via Paypal.  If you receive over $600 a year through the rewards program, you have to deal with tax issues, this will affect at most 50 authors though.  This is the law in the US and complaining about Curse (not saying you are) doing this is retarded.  In Canada you're also supposed to report tips as a waitress as income, and those donations you receive for doing addons? You're also supposed to report them as income as well.
 (Addressing other peoples comments here by quoting you btw)

IRS regulations require us to report more than $600 US worth of giftcards and/or cash given to US citizens. Unrelated, I'm locking this thread, it's been necro'd for no good reason a few times now.