Isn't this pretty much what Carbonite got smacked down for? For making a premium version that *required* you to pay to get access to all the features? There is a difference between solicting donations and making a for pay version of the curse client. I can see this drawing Blizzard's wrath very quickly as it clearly violates their very first rule for add ons. This is clearly a "premium version" of an add-on related service.

"1) Add-ons must be free of charge.
All add-ons must be distributed free of charge. Developers may not create "premium" versions of add-ons with additional for-pay features, charge money to download an add-on, charge for services related to the add-on, or otherwise require some form of monetary compensation to download or access an add-on."

Make money through ads or other services. Attacking your product and your customers is poor form.

Was the "Update All" button really that taxing? Is it less taxing than making users click through four or five updates a day? Of course, it doesn't take that much effort to manually click through it, but in a product (supported financially through ads) that centers around convenience, you have assaulted its integrity. What reasonable response is there to the removal of "Update All?"

What incentive is there to offer this product for free when html bookmarks now offer the exact same convenience of your downloader? You should be ashamed of your basic updater package: It now operates with the efficiency of a web browser.

Please either develop a new business model, offer some reasonable advantage to using the updater, or remove it entirely from circulation. Yes: That one convenient button is enough to make your entire package worthless.

 While certainly paid services are certainly acceptable for you to offer, the execution within the downloader was abysmal.

Thank you for taking a step backwards with addon convenience. Your outstanding program has just degraded into second-rate shareware by your own hands. Hopefully, someone will come to their senses and give the users a reason to continue using your downloader.

Lastly: Respectable merchants accept credit cards, "paypal only" equates to a basement operation. Legitimizing this move as a business move is undermined by the lack of professional credit services. As is the rest of this post, this is purely subjective, but I doubt that many people reading this equate "paypal only" to a business. The image of the "business" is reflected poorly, though it does offer some insight into the amount of thought that went into this "business" decision.

I refuse to use paypal...I have been getting spam emails about my account being limited...funny thing is i've NEVER had an account. I have also heard way too many horor stories of ppl getting ripped off through paypal. No thanks not going there....and I do not have a credit card....never have never will they are evil...I pay for my wow account through the game cards.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by Caddir

Isn't this pretty much what Carbonite got smacked down for? For making a premium version that *required* you to pay to get access to all the features? There is a difference between solicting donations and making a for pay version of the curse client. I can see this drawing Blizzard's wrath very quickly as it clearly violates their very first rule for add ons. This is clearly a "premium version" of an add-on related service.

 

"1) Add-ons must be free of charge.
All add-ons must be distributed free of charge. Developers may not create "premium" versions of add-ons with additional for-pay features, charge money to download an add-on, charge for services related to the add-on, or otherwise require some form of monetary compensation to download or access an add-on."

 

 

The last I checked addons were still free, able to be downloaded via the Curse Client and installed. Addons are and will always be free.

AHHH this thread is full of the attack of the internet lawyers!! AHHHHHH PANIC!!!!

The Blizzard rules actually state that any service RELATED to the addon is against the rules now. So yes, charging for the client is against the new blizzard rules, and therefor can be punished by the blizzard rules if Blizzard deems fit to do so.

 Only time will tell if they let this go or not because obviously Curse doesn't car eas they went through with the premium service.

I'm not going to whine. But I will say that you're likely to make less money by charging than by running a donation system. I'm certainly not inclined to pay $2-5/month for something I could write a Python script to do. I'd have donated though. Not anymore. :P

  Quote:

Originally Posted by Xorlev

I'm not going to whine. But I will say that you're likely to make less money by charging than by running a donation system. I'm certainly not inclined to pay $2-5/month for something I could write a Python script to do. I'd have donated though. Not anymore. :P

Err... I sincerely hope you mean you won't be donating to Curse anymore, not the addon authors...

Also, I guess the only real complaint I have about this whole thing is the "Paypal Only" deal.  I had to shut down my PayPal Account, and I have no intention of opening it again, or ever doing buisness with Paypal again.  COuld you guys maybe get a credit service going so I can just use my card?  That would be appreciated.

bluebrutal, you can already use your card on the PayPal site without having to use PayPal funds or link it to your bank account.  After choosing your subscription plan, you are taken to PayPal where you can choose to log in or just use a card.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by shinynewac

[*quote user="Caddir"]

"1) Add-ons must be free of charge.
All add-ons must be distributed free of charge. Developers may not create "premium" versions of add-ons with additional for-pay features, charge money to download an add-on, charge for services related to the add-on, or otherwise require some form of monetary compensation to download or access an add-on."

 [*/quote]

The last I checked addons were still free, able to be downloaded via the Curse Client and installed. Addons are and will always be free.

"charge for services related to the add-on" I'm just interested what does this sentence mean to Curse?

-----

Anyway this debate got way out of hand.

Paypall is evil and people got their accounts hacked…. Lol those people should make accounts anywhere – I guess their wow account is emptied once a week?

Credit cards are evil, I will never own one! OMG why is this even here? I personally hate cash, I never carry it around it, it takes up unnecessary space compared to some credit cards. Cash is evil, if you drop it, someone else can hack you money and use it!! Omg!  If that happens to my credit cards, my bank will refund the money... try to do that with cash!

--------------

Back to the real debate… I loved curse even though a lot of people told me to change to other addon homepages like ace… and now I consider it hard.

I believe curse shot them self in the foot, when they got greedy

Share premium account among family/friends/guild, monetary aspect diminished, however the worst thing, the fuss about all this, as compared to for example quick and easy WOWMatrix still stays.

Poor move Curse.

Has anyone thought that Curse may actually have talked to a legal team prior to making the change?  Don't know personally, but every corporation or company large enough usually consults a legal team prior to releasing anything major like a charging for a service.  I'd be very surprised if they didn't.  Besides, I can still download the addons for free.  Yes, I am an author and realistically do not care one way or the other about profit, but why not encourage more people to author addons?  Nothing wrong with supporting people who support you, right? :)

yes farlin, we most certainly talked to our lawyers before going through with this

@sanktanglia

Just because it's legal, doesn't mean that it was a good idea. Your financial state of affairs was not made clear to your user community, and those that may have been willing to support you with donations are now being alienated because they are being "forced" to pay for basic functionality.

Try running a real campaign for revenue. If PBS can do it, I'm sure an internet savvy organization can make ends meet through donations and ad space. Offering an inferior product for free or at a low cost will always affect your bottom line. That's probably something that should have been discussed prior to moving forward with the premium services in their current state.

What irritates me the most out of this is that I used AceUpdater which was free and never had a "charge" to it.. and then they merged the updater with curse discontinuing the AceUpdater moving most of its fanbase over to the CurseUpdater which was free for awhile... now I have to pay for something that was a free service to begin with no thanks..

I understand everyone has to make money, that Curse.com is not cheap or easy to run... but its still a jerk move... I hope someone brings back the AceUpdater because paying for another service for a game I'm already paying for is not in my budget.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by sanktanglia

yes farlin, we most certainly talked to our lawyers before going through with this

The fact that you needed to talk to your lawyers before going through with this shows that you knew it was fishy to begin with.

Service related to the addons. How are your lawyers going to get around that?

Fact: The Curse Client is a service directly related to WoW add ons.

Fact: Making a premium version of Curse Client that people have to pay to use clearly violates Blizzard's rules. Note where it specifically mentions not charging for services related to add ons.

"Developers may not create "premium" versions of add-ons with additional for-pay features, charge money to download an add-on, charge for services related to the add-on"

Since the Curse staff seems adamant on not admitting they are violating Blizzard's new rule, I will stop wasting my time arguing with them about it and turn this over to Blizzard. Let Blizzard deal with this if they want.

I myself had a feeling that once the "competition" was gone, they would do something like this.  The updater doesn't recognize half of the stuff I use, so I have to update it manually anyway.  Not to mention, why does it run in my system tray when WoW isn't even on?  If it's not auto updating addons, why is it there?  Not hip to that jive.

This is MORE than a donate button.  It's shutting down functionality in order to charge a premium for it.  Seriously, what is next if there isn't enough support for this premium thing... charging for the search function?  A function I have to use anyway because many of the popular addons that I use aren't even on this site nor avalible via the updater? 

  Quote:

Originally Posted by obliterated

2) Does this seem to anyone else like its a work around for authors profitting from the creation of addons (which I do personally believe they absolutely should be given the oportunity for profit individually)? Seems to me its just looking for a loophole.

It is not a work-around. Blizzard stated you cannot charge for your addon or advertise in-game or ask for donations in-game. They did state that you *CAN* do it outside of the game. Rather than just slapping up a "donate" button on every addon on Curse, they have worked out an easier, better method with the authors in the form of a pay-back system.

I don't write addons but I'm pretty sure if I had one on here, and didn't want to be part of that system, I could opt out of it (but then, what sane person would opt out of being paid)

I disagree that a donate on every page is a worse solution.

Additionally, if this were about authors, I think they could have negotiated a better deal. They could email their zip files directly to users with a better personal profit margin.

Authors: Websites offering addon downloads need you more than you need them. You should not short-change yourselves. Of course, driving people away from the downloader isn't the way to convince them to donate to you either.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by Caddir

Fact: The Curse Client is a service directly related to WoW add ons.

Fact: Making a premium version of Curse Client that people have to pay to use clearly violates Blizzard's rules. Note where it specifically mentions not charging for services related to add ons.

"Developers may not create "premium" versions of add-ons with additional for-pay features, charge money to download an add-on, charge for services related to the add-on"

Wrong on that one, bud.  They're not charging you to download add-ons.  Last I checked, the non-premium accounts could still download add-ons.  You can still download add-ons manaully if you feel so inclined.  Each and every add-on will work regardless of you even having the client installed, and no features will be disabled due to not having a premium account.  All a premiun account does is modify the convenience (and speed) at which you download.  Blizzard does not and will not have any say so in that matter.

Edited.

As I said, I will let Blizzard handle this. Then we will see who is correct.

This is silly.

You try to charge us by

* locking the client up so we can only update one addon at a time. It will be very painful with 30 addons next major patch.

* Detecting and stopping javascripts (or atlest something very close) so that NICE clients like wowus and wowmatrix that are and will continue to be free don't work anymore.

Once IBM was very big on PC's but their behaviour upset both copmpanjies and private persons and they lost the throne.

Microsft is trying all they can and so do you with this silly change.

I'm not paying for updating addons that the creators don't charge for, and is not allowed to either.

The only ones getting payed is Curse and you already earn alot on crappy commercials.

I can only beg creators of addons to move to another home and all wow gamers to stop using Curses client.

Lock my account or whatever you want to, I will never ever pay for a premium and don't tell me there is a "free" version.

It's not usable like it is now.

okay so the guy here says he has 30 addons, figure at least 4 million wow subs have those same addons  how much band with in one day does that cost the site provider for curse?


I am guessing that on patch day curse uses up something in the area of 6 or more terabytes of bandwith to supply addonds to happy little players, their business model was probably working well for a while but with companies pulling advertising from "non essential sites" during the economic pressures I bet you that the money curse made last year from ads was decreased due to no fault of their own.

imagine how many people update or check updates on a daily basis, every request to their site is bandwidth in and bandwidth out. a persistent client that checks even 4 times a day is still costing them plenty bandwitdth.


I went and used a bandwidth calculator to service 6000 gb of in / out facing 19000000  requests for US and Eur on the S3 amazon network and it came up to a nice cheap 8,410.520 a month I was just spit balling, I don't know how many requests they face, I am sure they have a euro setup to service all the people there to avoid complaints about the speed for downloads.

that doesn't include any compensation to the authors in there program that participate, that doesn't cover any dev staff or any of the equipment.  Its very easy to sit in your home and tell everyone how much it costs you to play but to run a successful business nothing is free.


I downloaded 5 updates, not a single one for  wow, since I don't play wow, and I have been updating them for 4 months for free, I have no problem paying for a service that I feel I need, if I think it will be convenient for me I'll lay down the cash, 3 buck a month, for ease of use, over having to update individual. I'll have to see what I think after the next big warhammer patch hits and all my addons need updating at once.

for now free is what I'll use but I won't complain if I do decide to upgrade my service.


its funny everyone has adobe read for free but have you tried to make a pdf later, sounds like a premium service to me.

Blizzard will probably lose if they take on curse in court, Curse services more than blizzard games and no one else is crying about it blizzard that I have heard. I'd love to see Mythic's head of licensing and IP on the stand when blizzard goes after curse..

To put this in perspective again:

Curse premium is a good thing that can help generate revenue for the site.

However: free users must now sit in front of their systems, clicking one addon at a time, offering neither a benefit to curse, nor to the free user base. Even without update all, the same bandwidth is being consumed. That has not changed. What it has done, however, is waste users' time sitting there waiting for each addon to complete, which is STILL using that very same expensive bandwidth.

Please get some perspective, or offer up some explanation as to how "Update all" generates more revenue to cover bandwith than forcing free users to click one at a time.

The feature is not a "premium" feature. Removing it is a nuisance; nothing more. It changes nothing with revenue from free or premium versions, and it changes nothing with bandwidth.

Please: someone offer up one sound reason as to why this nuisance should be considered a premium feature.

ever bought a concert ticket and paid the 4.95 convienance charge, if so your arguement just failed, you pay for the convienance of faster downloads and one click download.  If you paid more for seats closer to the stage, again, your arguement is invalid. sorry friend my perspective is fine. I decided to not pay for the convienance of one click faster downloads, at this time, tomorrow it may be different and worth the 30 bucks for a year.

where does the cost of purchasing the premium outweigh the multiclick ad infested version....

no ads on the premium and one click fast downloads

No: your perspective is not fine.

You are not understanding the concept of a convenience charge in the first place.

A ticket agent brokers a transaction. A convenience charge is payment for the brokering of the service, relabeled as a "convenience" is another way of saying that a transaction has been brokered.

In the case of this client, I am standing at the ticket booth myself. There is no broker. Instead of buying a ticket for myself and my wife, I must buy one ticket, wait, and then purchase a second ticket.

To argue that curse is brokering all transactions would mean that all transactions must incur a convenience charge, which is not the case.

Yes: your perspective is skewed. My argument is not invalidated by misconceptions surrounding transaction brokering.

Edit: So as not to avoid the intial question; I have paid for convenience charges through brokered ticket purchases. Never have I paid for one that I have picked up myself. If anything, your argument strengthens the case for premium automatic downloads which are brokered by the client. Clicking one button or clicking 20 is anything but brokered.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by Zorlac666

The Blizzard rules actually state that any service RELATED to the addon is against the rules now. So yes, charging for the client is against the new blizzard rules, and therefor can be punished by the blizzard rules if Blizzard deems fit to do so.

 

 Only time will tell if they let this go or not because obviously Curse doesn't car eas they went through with the premium service.

God, I know I am behind but you are an idiot.  Addons are completely accessible and completely free and unaltered.  Curse has every right to control their bandwidth and how many addons you can download at once.  That has nothing to do with Blizzard's new policy.  This has been stated and restated.  I can't believe the number of people who think they know so much but have not been watching all this from the beginning.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by Tingtong

Why would I ever pay for something that's free?

It would be one thing if you developed a product worth buying.

It's another when your trying to distrubte GPL software and charge for it.

Bandwith is cheap, if you can't make enough money to support your site thew ad's then you better off shutting down your site and getting a real JOB.

I'll happy support other distrubitor's like WOWmatrix who theive bandwidth from thieves.

 

End of story.

Wow, the idiots come out in droves.  So, you function under the two wrongs makes a right philosophy.  To even say that WoWMatrix should win because they are morally less corrupt then Curse is a joke.  Man, I just can't believe who is being let on the internet anymore.  There really should be a license... :)

So let me get this straight people are bitching because there too lazy to manually install there own mods, i use the client myself and i find it helpful but im not paying for something i can do myself and thats manually install and lookup for updates,geez you'd think its the end of the world.

So good on you curse.

@Cal2007

Close, but you're missing the point.

Intentionally inconveniencing users is the issue that I have. Personally, I'd be glad to support an ad free curse, but I won't support a program that intentionally inconveniences free users for ad space. In several other posts, there have been alternatives listed to "making users sit there" to watch ads. The industry-wide ad recession has been cited as the reason for this nuisance, and a premium ad free experience exacerbates that.

Making users click update repeatedly may be good for marketing, but it is terrible for service.

Again, calling people lazy while using an internet forum is both futile and hypocritical, unless you typed all of that on a rowing machine. My guess is, you were seated comfortably. If you were, however, training for a marathon while responding to this thread, then I apologize for assuming you were as sedentary as the rest of us.

I would rather manually install my own addons than support a program that is intentionally inconvenient. I am hoping, however, that a premium package can be offered that I can support, or the free client otherwise restores basic functionality while still supporting an equivalent number of ads. I'll pay to remove the ads, but paying while the package is in this condition is not an option.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by pngguy

I thought I had posted this, but maybe I didn't.

What is real low class is the "lightening speed" is what the client was before Premium Membership was launched and the free version's download speed has been choked down. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

I love how peoples posts are getting deleted by mods to try to protect their premium service. Doesn't give me ANY faith in what you guys are doing at all.

And since when don't curse.com earn alot on ads on their site?
They  took over other places and was planning for this.
It reminds me very much of Microsoft.
Monopoly is king for curse.com but crap for all users having to pay way too much.
(No, the client isn't usable atm as I see it.)
Anyone believe that curse.com don't have a next step planned?

I believe Blizzard made a mistake with the "not allowed to get payed for addons etc".
There is no good reason not allowing those spending alot of time to create addons enhancing their game to earn a few $/£/SEK/whatever.
They simply have no chance of getting payed by ads for their work like curse.com do.
Still I hope they spank the butt on them since I honestly dislike companies behving like curse.com.
Not that they try to earn money but that they buy/take over other sites to be in a position to do close to whatever they like.
It's simply very bad for us users.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by Xamindar

  Quote:

Originally Posted by pngguy

I thought I had posted this, but maybe I didn't.

What is real low class is the "lightening speed" is what the client was before Premium Membership was launched and the free version's download speed has been choked down. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

 

I love how peoples posts are getting deleted by mods to try to protect their premium service. Doesn't give me ANY faith in what you guys are doing at all.

And we love how people are lying and bringing ridiculous accusations which have no basis in reality to the forums. Be upset. Convey it in an appropriate manner.

Their is a distinct difference between editing and deleting.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by Weirdoe

And since when don't curse.com earn alot on ads on their site?
They  took over other places and was planning for this.
It reminds me very much of Microsoft.
Monopoly is king for curse.com but crap for all users having to pay way too much.
(No, the client isn't usable atm as I see it.)
Anyone believe that curse.com don't have a next step planned?

I believe Blizzard made a mistake with the "not allowed to get payed for addons etc".
There is no good reason not allowing those spending alot of time to create addons enhancing their game to earn a few $/£/SEK/whatever.
They simply have no chance of getting payed by ads for their work like curse.com do.
Still I hope they spank the butt on them since I honestly dislike companies behving like curse.com.
Not that they try to earn money but that they buy/take over other sites to be in a position to do close to whatever they like.
It's simply very bad for us users.

Still being able to download addons and install them is not bad for users. Thanks for your feedback.

sadly you are now directing traffice at the source of your own AND the author's problems, wowmatrix..  whereby making your own financial problems negatively impact mod authors by directly and deliberatly increasing the popularity and saturation of wowmatrix.

**put an ad back into the curse client and stop trying to profiteer**

you really did not think this through at all did you?

@shinynewac

Here are some facts:

- The curse client in the free state is annoying to use without update all. An ad filled queued system or an ad filled completion dialog would force the same number of ads to be viewed as forcing people to click.

- I have yet to find another software that allows something to be updated or changed, but does not allow "update all" except to premium users. Please show me another. Filezilla gets all, ccleaner cleans all, and gimp lets you change images more than one pixel at a time. All of those above softwares are more robust than the curse client.

- Curse is able to, and should, offer premium service on their site. I however don't believe that it should be at the expsense of the free user base who are supporting the site with ads.

- The 80% of the subscription is meant to offset the cost that would have been generated by ads. I still believe that better ad placement and methodology would expose free users to more than their share of clicked ads, and support curse in that way. Supporting curse via premium service and supporting curse via the ad revenue does not create a separate caste. Both free and premium users are supporting curse. Any "entitlement" arguments are weak and pompous at best.

- It took me three days to get a response from curse that was anything but dismissive. Sure there are a lot of posts and users, but if premium service is going to be run as a business, customer service was very weak.

- While using the curse client to update ads, the information that curse was launching premium, and the impact of the launch, namely the "update all" feature, did not reach me. Communication was very poor as is noted in numerous posts. The fact that the service has still not been adequately explained on the premium ad page speaks volumes. How many of these arguments about EULA and throttling could have been avoided? How about even addressing the reason for the lack of an update all feature? Instead of offering that information below the ad on the premium page, it took numerous negative comments, complaints, and persistant posts to gather that info, and honestly, most of it is scattered and difficult to find. It is no wonder that there is still confusion. While there has been assurance given from curse to improve communication, I'm amazed that this issue has not been addressed.

Lastly, and this is just my personal commentary on the subject, I will be updating my mods manually until there is a premium package that I can support. The intentional nuisance incurred by forcing free users to click every addon is not a "premium" service that I will support. Please reinstate update all, or add a queued ad filled update system for free users. Hopefully you are able to do this before a competitor offers a more convenient solution. I've used curse for years, but something as simple as update all shows enough contempt for the free users supporting curse through ads, that I would rather not affiliate myself with. It also amazes me that such a production was willing to be endured over something as simple as a single keypress.

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.