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Sat, Jun 6 2009 10:14 PM
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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."
[edited by: khatlin at 12:14 AM (GMT -6) on 7 Jun 2009]
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Mon, Jun 8 2009 11:05 AM
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lol yeah... funny. XD.
but on an EVEN liter note:
Testicles, that is all.
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Fri, Jun 12 2009 10:55 AM
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I'd just wanted to say: This friggin' sucks
[edited by: graafaap at 11:13 AM (GMT -6) on 12 Jun 2009]
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Sun, Jun 14 2009 3:34 PM
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 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. :)
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Tue, Jun 16 2009 5:23 AM
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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.
My email addon plan really works. 89 addons. Updating manually every week or so . 8 - 12 minutes
For More info see here : http://community.livejournal.com/worldofwarcraft/7776364.html
I am not a Curse Employee !
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Mon, Jun 22 2009 8:26 AM
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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?
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Mon, Jun 22 2009 1:12 PM
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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.
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Wed, Jul 1 2009 7:02 PM
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Good bye curse, I use to like it but now its just screwed your offering all your excellent services for money, bye.
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Thu, Jul 2 2009 9:06 AM
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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.
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Wed, Jul 15 2009 1:03 AM
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Quote: Originally Posted by pngguy
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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???
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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 ?
Why does this all matter to you ?
If you don't like the idea of the prem. membership then you don't have to part with you cash to do so !
Curse ain't holding a gun to your head , forcing you to pay for it you know.
[edited by: honem at 1:09 AM (GMT -6) on 15 Jul 2009]
My email addon plan really works. 89 addons. Updating manually every week or so . 8 - 12 minutes
For More info see here : http://community.livejournal.com/worldofwarcraft/7776364.html
I am not a Curse Employee !
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Fri, Jul 17 2009 10:38 AM
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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)
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Fri, Jul 17 2009 11:22 AM
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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.
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