Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaliteak

There was no visible proactive work done by Curse to forwarn us of this switch which is the primary reason for the outbursts I believe.  Not to mention, $2.50 a month for the cheapest plan is way over priced... That's 17% of what I pay for WoW a month and I dont use Curse near 17% of the time. 

Thanks for the Surprise... Thanks for not letting us know prior to going live! 

Thanks for nothing :D cuz thats all we got left.

There was a popup alert saying you were using a Premium preview.  At any rate, we're already focused on finding solutions so that Premium encourages you to upgrade due to cool features and added value on the network, not because the base client sucks.  That's certainly not the intent.

      "There was a popup alert saying you were using a Premium preview.  At any rate, we're already focused on finding solutions so that Premium encourages you to upgrade due to cool features and added value on the network, not because the base client sucks.  That's certainly not the intent."

I am sure it wasnt the intent... but like I said I logged into the client 4 times a week and never knew this was coming... Yes I prolly didnt read the popup if I got one and that software companies are fond of their popups that communicate their legal stuff lol but.... what I was trying to communicate of proactive PR work would have been a popup or something that said " Hey!  Curse Premium is going Live Tomorrow!!!!!  Not sure what that is?  Click here for more info!"   Probably would have lead to more subscriptions and less "surprises". You cant make everyone happy all the time ... but there is nothing worthy of payment at this point in my opinion.  If asked to donate .. I probably would have done so..  So until you have those "cool features" whatever they could possibly be, I will go back to the old fashioned bookmark my addons webpages and update them all once a week routine.  I have been downgraded! :D

I will thank you for your time saving solution and allowing me to take part in your open beta :D

Honestly, are all you users really this suprised? How many companies offer truely free service, without any ads or payments? Why shouldn't they charge? I for one don't have a problem with it, I'm not going to pay for it, and like many, I disable ads (on almost every site I go to, not just this one) and flash player so I don't have to deal with the annoying crap from other sites. I'm only suprised that they held out this long.

Seriously, people, living costs money, time costs money. If you guys out there want to start your own site like Curse, and not have ads or pay for services, go right ahead. Maybe someone out there is independently wealthy and could care less about a few million dollars for hosting and bandwidth over the next few years. No one is stopping you from creating your own Curse clone (other then Intellectual Property rights, of course)

  Quote:

Originally Posted by BigBuddyWill

Well you guys should have left the stuff that was free and called it "premium upgrade" and added more stuff to it that way instead of taking away stuff that was free to the user and charging for it.

What "Premium upgrade" should have been for Authors and people wanting to pay for extra stuff.

give an option to support the authors award program, not just making them do it, if they don't want to, they shouldn't have to and it should be something that is offer and paid by curse.com first.

Add the Beta Key give aways to the "upgrade"

Have the Upgrade have "ad-free", and even faster downloads on addons, not your BS about faster addon downloads...

Give us more than what is already given to us for free.

Not take away what was free and then offer to pay for it to get it back.

That is the main reason why so many people is upset.

You guys went the wrong way by doing this and now you losing alot of people.

Exactly - Taking away the "Update all" addons, basically just makes all of us have to sit around and waste time clicking update once.

You're premium service adds absolutly nothing to me which is why I don't subscribe, when you subscibe to any server you have to offer benefits, as he said above taking away benefits then saying "Oh those nice benefits you had, can't have them anymore"

I don't want to say it's "false advertising" but i wasn't even aware that the "update all" addon was a premium feature. I don't know how making us waste our time by clicking each addon invidicually validates me paying you money so I can clikc it once and it updates them all, if anything it makes me want to not use your client whatsoever.

Again, as the post above said, we are all very upsed becuase the service we had (specificaly update all) doesn't warrant in the least amount to pay to get it, it's obvious that it SHOULD be a free service, becuase it's conveinemnt to everyone who does join your website, if you want people to go away that's your call, but at least think through your ideas before putting them into implimentation, if you want to buy "a company" like you said, you really need to think of the external impacts of what you do on your customer base.

Hopefully you revert the change, becuaes basically you're making thousands and thousands of people who use the curse client waste their time.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by Phelgon

Honestly, are all you users really this suprised? How many companies offer truely free service, without any ads or payments? Why shouldn't they charge? I for one don't have a problem with it, I'm not going to pay for it, and like many, I disable ads (on almost every site I go to, not just this one) and flash player so I don't have to deal with the annoying crap from other sites. I'm only suprised that they held out this long.

Seriously, people, living costs money, time costs money. If you guys out there want to start your own site like Curse, and not have ads or pay for services, go right ahead. Maybe someone out there is independently wealthy and could care less about a few million dollars for hosting and bandwidth over the next few years. No one is stopping you from creating your own Curse clone (other then Intellectual Property rights, of course)

I agree, it's not suprising, it's just the demanor on how it was implimenented basicaly.  I think payiing for a service is fine, I was a EJ benefactor for the longest time, however paying for this service JUST SO I can update all my addons at once isn't worth it do you think?

Honestly doesn't bother me one bit.  Not surprised the decline in advertising has come and I would imagine as time goes on it may continue to decline as a revenue base for Internet services.  More and more people ignore the ads to begin with, so marketing companies have less reason to use advertising to get out their message, especially if it is not targetted to a specific audience.  Hence the reason for having a team to go out and get contracts with marketing agencies related to your web content.  Despite all that effort, out of all the impressions an ad may generate, only about 2% at best turns into potential business.  And of that 2% only 75% results in actual business in the best of circumstances.  That is simple economics and you can probably find more accurate statistics using Google, but I suspect what you may find will be lower as those are best case estimates.

To operate a large network like Curse, all the bandwidth and software development costs have to get paid for somehow.  Being that I am a project manager and web/software developer by trade, I know that stuff isn't cheap.  Web hosting and Internet bandwidth providers are in the business to make money.

So is it worth $29.40/year for the premium service?  Mind you I am not defining what a "premium service" is just what is being offered.  Well, it comes down to what you feel $29.40/year is worth (or $2.45/mo or ~61 cents per week or ~8 cents per day).  And if you calculate minimum wage of $6.55/hr, that is ~11 cents per minute, accounting for taxes you pay for that in about 2 minutes of work.  So, now that we see the math, is it worth 2 minutes of work to pay for the service?  For me, yes, I got better things to do, like playing games! :)

And for a side note, nowadays, you can't buy a gallon of gas for $2.45. :)

LOL...depends on where you live I suppose.  It fluctuates here, but its been between $2.00 and $2.50 for a while now.  It will shoot up in a few weeks with summer coming.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by farlin

LOL...depends on where you live I suppose.  It fluctuates here, but its been between $2.00 and $2.50 for a while now.  It will shoot up in a few weeks with summer coming.

Well all this talk about the Premium stuff doesn't apply to you cause you getting for free...Which is unfair, I think Authors should have to pay for the Premium.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by BigBuddyWill

Well all this talk about the Premium stuff doesn't apply to you cause you getting for free...Which is unfair, I think Authors should have to pay for the Premium.

Sure, valid point, but I did not make that determination nor did I base my opinion on that.  I would pay for it is the point. :)

Let's face facts NOTHING you can say will change the mind set of this now money driven concern. They adnit that 80% of the income derived from a premium subscription will stay with Curse. They have also stated that non premium is still viable and useful, all you are paying for is convenience. That Curse will collapse without charging for a premium service; which was the service they used to give us for free anyway just without ads - ooohhh, ahhhhh. They also tell us ad revenue is down and now they are not making as much money as they used to *insert sad violin music*.

I am not against a premium service or a charge for that service but it has to offer something that your previous free service didn't and that the previous free service should remain as it always was or at the very most diminished over a long period of time. This act shows a lack of thought and insight, a lack of skill and a lack of imagination on Curse's behalf.

So what options do you now have? Pay Up or Shut Up! Perhaps you will leave the service and if you know a hacker or have some ability, attck the site for being money grubbers but will that really help?

There has been no thought towards the poorer people who use Curse - they will argue don't buy premium but slow filtered d/l's is that really the only option? Now with spiraling debt, cost of WoW subscription, Internet usage costs, Corrupt buisness practices *whistle and look away innocently* and sheer money hungryness we have to pay for our curse convenience. Poor show Curse.

Well at this point from seeing the curse post and the mods that post....They really don't give a crap about the cummunity of people that use this site and that put this site to where it is today.

They are having a tons of people that use this site upset at them and they don't even care.

And then there is this from there curseforge.com " All authors will have complimentary premium."

Why???Just cause they are authors doesn't make them any special.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by ritual64

Let's face facts NOTHING you can say will change the mind set of this now money driven concern. They adnit that 80% of the income derived from a premium subscription will stay with Curse. They have also stated that non premium is still viable and useful, all you are paying for is convenience. That Curse will collapse without charging for a premium service; which was the service they used to give us for free anyway just without ads - ooohhh, ahhhhh. They also tell us ad revenue is down and now they are not making as much money as they used to *insert sad violin music*.

I am not against a premium service or a charge for that service but it has to offer something that your previous free service didn't and that the previous free service should remain as it always was or at the very most diminished over a long period of time. This act shows a lack of thought and insight, a lack of skill and a lack of imagination on Curse's behalf.

So what options do you now have? Pay Up or Shut Up! Perhaps you will leave the service and if you know a hacker or have some ability, attck the site for being money grubbers but will that really help?

There has been no thought towards the poorer people who use Curse - they will argue don't buy premium but slow filtered d/l's is that really the only option? Now with spiraling debt, cost of WoW subscription, Internet usage costs, Corrupt buisness practices *whistle and look away innocently* and sheer money hungryness we have to pay for our curse convenience. Poor show Curse.

Funny thing is people a curse wouldn't know what to say about a post like this cause they know it is the truth.

Just look at what happen to my post about it, which is now up cause I called them on it and crap.

http://www.curse.com/forums/t/94146.aspx

Which all I said it should be kept free and they deleted it right away.

Now, They been locking and most likely deleted all the negtive post about the subject just to stop people from talking about it and to stop the community from showing what they did was stupid and how they went about it.

Im sorry, but I hate it when this happens, when people do things for free, get really popular and then start to charge people, I mean it sucks when this happens.

I love Curse.com, and Curse Client, the ads are a bit much and can lag my browser sometimes (Yeah, not the greatest computer in the world) but none the less it is a great way to manage my addons, especially now that addons get updated quite often it updates for me which is great, however if this is going to become a pay to use thing, I myself am going to go back to the "Update if it's broked" method, because paying for something that is leaning towards the rapids*** scam is not worth paying, especially when it is advertising free-use addons, I donate to people who make my favorite mods whenever I have extra money laying around, but if I -have- to pay for "Donations" I rather just get the mods individually and give kudo-pocketchange to addon creators who I myself, feel deserve it.

i guess what will become of curse when it loses his popularity due to this "milking people" programme the less respected site teh less popular site... the abandoned site?

What the hell. Having to pay to use an updater to update all that doesn't even come close to most of the updaters out there? I have many addons and doing this manually to update just 1 addon at a time on this thing just takes the piss. I will NOT be using this client anymore due to this so back to WUU/WoWMatrix and many people in my situation will probably be doing the same. It's not even the best updater out there yet we have to pay to update FREE addons. I'm totally disgusted. Curse are just leeches. The site isn't even perfect either. WowInterface.com over this site anyday!

Ya sorry but instead of you guys gaining support you will most likley lose it. You guys went from a free awsom service to a People needing to pay stuff. Sorry but noit only is that not fair. Its not nice. And because of Curses new attitude about money first, i will never use this service again. and i will encurage people to do the same. You Curse needs to learn that although there is a side to making money, turning something that was once free to having people need to pay is absolutly absurd. Not only did you guys only think of your selves. There are kids 10 14 years old. who dont have credit cards, or money for that fact. They need to ask from their parents for that. How would you think this convorsation with a mom would go. "Hey mom could i use your credit card to download something that will HELP me on WoW. I know your paying for WoW already but this is EXTRA and it will help me more." i dont know about you guys but my mom will say no way. And not only is this a dumb idea, you guys decided to to this during a RECESSION! do you understand what Recession means? Were BROKE! So not only is that poor marketing on your marketing managers part. You guys will lose profit. With the end result of you guys making Nothing except upset customers that stop using you service. So the next time you want to put prices on something, how about doing it on something that isnt free to begin with.

Someone in my family run a website with a similar number of user reach, and running in a specialized niche of highly target custumer (not related to gaming).

Is revenu got halved over the Q3 and Q4 2008, and it's got lowered as well this year, even if is user reach get bigger.

Ads revenu is really getting impacted by the current economic crisis, and alot of website will have to either slim down, lay off people, close or accept to be sold to a competitor or get merged into a bigger network relying on alternative income.

I'm happy to see that Curse finally got to the point they announced last year with the premium feature, getting us more features, goodies and ensuring a long term survivavibility

Honestly what causes the "stink" in my nose over this is:

1.  Taking away features that have been free for months, then offering them back to us if we now choose to pay you for them.  (Hey, you've been sleeping in that bed for months now, now I'm gonna charge you extra if you want your pillows back)

2.  You and other sites dissed WowMatrix repeatedly for "stealing" from you and making it hard for you to pay for your bandwidth.  So you shut down WowMatrix...leading us to believe, through repeated posts in various forums across the web, that this would solve your financial crisis allowing you to continue to run the CurseClient free.

3. Blizz makes new policy making one of the absolute BEST addons have to go free or face legal action (YAY GO CARBONITE!!)...yet you feel like it is ok for you to charge for a premium version, for features that used to be free, for a (basically) addon that pops up in game to remind us to "download the premium version"...I'm pretty sure THAT makes it a violation of Blizz's new TOC right there.

Also....

Why can Curse Client NOT understand the mechanics of a simple addon like Skinner?  The addon is written so you have to move skins from one folder to another if you want them to work in game, yet if you do this then you are stuck with CC constantly telling you your addon no longer matches and prompting you to constantly reinstall it.

By the way, have your mods ever considered a job in politics?  You should, because you're very good at deleting, editing and brushing under the carpet anything that is said that does not agree with your mindset and pretending it never happened and that every thing is rosy and good and full of rainbows and gumdrops and...