Quote:

Originally Posted by Blurr

@Fisker: I'm not saying it has keyloggers now, but the client has had them before. I'd imagine most people are far less likely to use a program that has a known history of keyloggers that have gotten people hacked. It may all be in the past, but it still happened, and it still ruined a lot of people's faith in curse. They're obviously not winning any new friends with their new tactics imo.

That's exactly what i'm saying, The Curse Client didn't have keyloggers, and it's only avenue for a payload would be the addons themselves, and even those would require to use an exploit in the unpacking module, where i'm pretty sure WoWMatrix uses the same module. So if Curse Client even had keyloggers(Which i've not seen in the entire history of the client), then they would affect WoWMatrix as well.

The ads are also manually checked and added, and not taken from an ad provider, which may, or may not be compromised, of course that's not to say that a person can't make a mistake and mistakenly add a bad ad, but the client itself just haven't been compromised in the way you claim.

The only other similar incident i can think of is WoWUI's client, hackers repeatedly gained access to their servers and packed their client with keyloggers, this happened several times actually, to my knowledge i've only heard of Curse being compromised once, and that was recently, noone was effected because it was detected almost right away.

Now i'm not trying to make this into another WoWUI flame thread, but instead of investigating user claims that their software was infected they instead just started banning them, making it 100's of compromised users, rather than juts a few compromised users.

Curse.com was very well aware of what was going to hapen when they took over at least one big addon place on internet.
I'm 100% sure they already had this step planned for and they first took over very much of the addons homes before this step.
Now with very little competition they start to charge us for a working client.
No, I don't see a client where you have to download one addon at a time as working.

Surely some will pay for it but I honestly hope the majority off developers, those spending alot of hours doing the real work here, a nice new home somewhere.
Don't ever believe curse.com don't get well payed from adds on the site.

Very little competition, you say? Check my response here. And now that I remember, let's add ctmod.net to the list. Yeah, we control the universe. Really.

http://wow.curse.com/forums/t/95231.aspx

  Quote:

Originally Posted by myrroddin

Very little competition, you say? Check my response here. And now that I remember, let's add ctmod.net to the list. Yeah, we control the universe. Really.

http://wow.curse.com/forums/t/95231.aspx

When Curse.com Notices that the users that visit there website and that use there website for there addons has dropped DRAMASTICALLY, They maybe might smarten up, and realize that charging 5 bucks a month for 1 button is lawlzorz.

This thread is still going... and folks are still whinning?  If you don't like it or the price, simply don't use it.  If you can't afford it (which would strike me as odd, since you can afford WOW), then that is just the way it is, there are lots of things each of us can not afford.  If you want to be a type of "martyr" and not use it out of principle, then that's your choice.

As far as availability of AddOns, I have not seen an AddOn on Curse that I could not find somewhere else... I challenge anyone to prove me wrong.  Besides, you can still get every AddOn as a free member that a premium member can get.

What Curse is doing is no different then most of the software on your computer (including WOW).  They provided a free service for awhile as a test bed and marketing strategy, then when the time was up they charge for it.  It's a very common strategy... the whole shareware market is based on it.

As far as putting some of th e premium functionality back into the free version, how is that fair to the folks that have been paying for this convenience?

In any case, this is my last post on this issue.  I, for one, have no issue with what Curse is doing...

... now where are those Gummy Bears....

@Mikla

For me, the only functionality that needs to be re-added to the basic client is "update all", this is all I have issue with. Throttle me, fine, no automatic updates, also fine, downloading updates one by one? I just looked at my curse client, there are 15 updates waiting. I thought of having to update them one by one pisses me off. Imagining patch day with this problem is something I can hardly think about.

The irony is curse just went on a crusade against wow-matrix, but this kind of action is exactly the kind of thing that would encourage people to use their service. I am personally waiting for the free wow-interface client to come out then I will switch over, but if curse re-added the "update all" button to their basic client, and I could click on the adverts now and then I'd be happy.

As you point out, people are now paying for this functionality, so what I would say to that us make "update all" a basic feature, and add other value to a curse premium account and client. One thing I'm sure many wow users would like to see if the capacity to sync addons and settings across different accounts and machines for instance.

Please feel free to add more ideas for premium features if they pop into your mind.

@Mikla

How is it fair to intentionally inconvenience users for ad exposure? There are alternatives. Show ads on the progress bars, show ads on a completion splash screen, show ads in between queued downloads. All of those options expose free users to ads. How is that fair to paid users? Simple: Paid users are offsetting the revenue generated by ads by paying for an ad free downloader. As a bonus to convenience, you can auto update without touching the application at all.

Curse does not have a monopoly with addons. Those claims are also insane. Guilds could host their own guild addons if they wanted to, directly downloaded from the authors. It seems to me that has been done successfully at least once.

Offering a premium service is fine. It should be expected. However, the nuisance created by the current itteration is unacceptable, and one that I will not support. Hopefully, this is remedied so that I can sign up for this service again. I would much rather be using the premium service rather than manually updating my mods. (I am not supporting the free version in this state.)

Attacking free users for wanting a one click experience when a premium user has a 0 click experience, and for those calling free users lazy for it, is ill founded. There is no reasonable basis for statements like that.

@myrroddin  

This premium campaign curse is launching is being done as a business. While some posts are avoiding standard internet banter, others have carried on with it. Unprofessional posts stoop to a level which reflects poorly on a business. There are replies from curse and moderators that reflect anything but a professional buisiness being run. Such posts have their place, but probably not where clients are upset about service.

The image of curse.com is not that of a professional business being run. This only contributes to the belief that it is greed rather than actual business driving this move to premium. I understand the $10,000 cost per month for your hosting. I understand the need for a premium service. Having an unprofessinal attitude does anything but sell your case. There are appropriate ways that businesses address both legitimate and illegitimate claims. Thusfar, those professional posts are not numerous enough to balance out the unprofessional ones.

  Quote:

I will switch over, but if curse re-added the "update all" button to their basic client, and I could click on the adverts now and then I'd be happy.

Frankly, if they enable the "update all" button for free users, I'll award them by becoming a premium member.

So at last we see the greed of the curse team.  After working these past months to get the community hooked on good, free functionality in their Curse downloader, and simultaneously to help them oppose the free WoW Matrix ("we're the good guys"), they're now ready to put the screws to us.  My top objections:

1.  Pricing is way out of line, nearly 20% of that of the game itself.  So really - you think that the Curse contribution / effort as compared to the entire WoW experience is about 1/5th of everything that Blizzard provides?   Way, way, off the mark.

2.  We were bait and switched:  When the concept was originally announced around  time of wotlk coming out, the only "premium" functionality was going to be the automatic background downloading.  OK, fair enough if its a reasonable price.  Now we arrive at the time and its not only automatic downloading but its download all and download in parallel too.  Not the same thing at all.

3.  This commercial enterprise has kept hobbyists away:  Since it appeared originally that the curse motivations were as part of a community of gamers, vs. a commercial enterprise, the vast majority of gamers that would prefer to see commerce entirely separated from their addon community were content to allow Curse to develop momentum and not develop, or not patronize, competing addons or services.  If this had been the deal from the beginning a lot of the addons here would be posted elsewhere, or equivalent addons would have been written by hobbyist vs. commercial authors.  Time will eventually restore this balance but its going to be an inconvenient transition.

Here's looking forward to the return of a full set of commerce-free services provided by the enthusiast, hobby community vs. a greedy one from Curse.  Can't come soon enough.

Yea it's crap and I will not pay for that crap and I also uninstalled

Greed?  Maybe a lack of philanthropy in our unwillingness/disability to loose thousands of dollars every month in perpetuity.  

In response to your points:

1)  That of course is a personal decision, and also part of the reason we're providing an ad supported client for use as well.

2) I can understand why you feel that way, we probably could have done more to communicate clearly what would have changed, but we didn't go out to deceive anyone.  

3) We started off as a hobbyist site, however it's nearly impossible for a site to be as popular as ours and remain a non commercial hobby site.  When faced with the options of shutting down or trying to go professional our CEO decided not to throw in the towel.  All of the large addon sites are companies.  

Some of the stuff people are complaining about I can see.  I'm not happy about loosing the one-click update all button from the free client, and I wish they'd reconsider and come up with a better way of doing things, but it's not that big of a deal to me.  Curse does a great job.  The folks running it might be running a buisness, but they clearly love the games they're supporting.

Add-ons aren't supposed to be a seperate economy from WoW, and I both get and support that decision from Blizzard (although refusing to allow donation buttons in addons kinda pisses me off).  But we're not talking about addons, we're talking about distribution clients that are wholely unneeded for the use of addons.  Updating manually is kind of a pain, but it's not all that bad.  The Curse client makes it easier, and that serivce (along with the fantastic hosting services, database stuff, and developer support Curse provides) is worth paying for - to me, at least.

One complaint that frankly baffles me that I've seen several times is that a "simple script" can do what the curse client does.  I imagine that's true.  I've done a (very little) Bash scripting in my time, and making a script that downloads stuff, extracts it, and puts it where you want it isn't that hard.  Assuming you have those skills, anyway.  I don't, ouside of the Linux/FreeBSD world, but I imagine I could figure it out with a little practice and research. 

Which is fantastic for me (if I wanted to go through the effort), but not everyone has technical skills like that; we've all heard stories about people using cd-rom drives as cupholders.  I had to explain to someone where I work (in a mailroom) that you couldn't put the address in the upper right-hand corner of a postcard, because that's where the stamp goes.  Making a "simple script" is quite simply not in everyone's reach.

I'm not calling anyone stupid, here.  The person I explained the postcard to has two PhDs and knows more about Sociology than I ever will... and also plays WoW a lot better than I do.  Intelligence doesn't even come into it. 

My point is that saying that the Curse CLient should be free because it can be replaced with a simple vb/java/bash/C+ script is a non-starter because that reasoning only applies to people who can make scripts in the first place.

Also, even with the free version, a simple script can't replace the functionality anyway.  It can only replace the download functionality.  The Curse Client helped me find all my addons again after a recent hard drive wipe.  It helped me find some of the addons I use, too.  (I know this isn't the place for it, but adding a Search By Tags option to the client would be a nice touch...)

Anyway, that's all I have to say about that.  I could comment, at length, about people's assertion that Curse is somehow making a "monopoly" - if they are, they're doing a lousy job at it.  I could also comment at length about a certain alternative to the Curse Client that folks keep raving about but I won't mention by name (at least, not in this post).

But I'm done.  I just wanted to throw in my support for Curse, and mention why maybe the "simple script" arguement doesn't make much sense to me.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by myrroddin

Very little competition, you say? Check my response here. And now that I remember, let's add ctmod.net to the list. Yeah, we control the universe. Really.

http://wow.curse.com/forums/t/95231.aspx

I took the first addon in wowmatrix "!BugGrabber" and googled it.
Filefront had it but their addons are very often old so not an option.
On the first 20 hits I found one (1) spot that had two addons, one was !BugGrabber, and that is not much competition.
I also checked wowui and wowinterface that don't have a clue what !BagGrabber is.
I didn't bother to check all my other addons.

For me you sound very much like Microsoft.
They also claim to not have a monopoly.
Afaik curse.com is the only spot atm with more than 95% of the updated addons that are decently wanted and that is of latest version.
Proove me wrong please, if nothing else I get a new spot to download from. ;)

Someone think curse.com don't generate alot of money?
That it's not a company fighting to take close to total control?

http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2007/07/26/2813833.htm

oops, topo quick on the post button. :-)

My client is now gone and my trust in curse also.

@Weirdoe, yes we're equity firm funded.  And I don't think we've ever denied being a for profit company.

However having received $5m in funds doesn't mean that we generate a lot of money.  The money to run the company has to be coming from somewhere. 

And you do get alot from commercials.
I don't mind if there is one commercial spot in the client that changes decently often as far as I have an "update all" button working.
Claiming that the current client is working . . . well, I don't want to lower the discussion to that level using words to describe it.

All I want is a "Update all" button or that I can update my addons from another site.
You did a ugly change in the client about one year ago and alot I know stopped using it.
This is the second try and I'm 100% sure you keep on trying til you succeed.
So please, addon creators, move or at least copy your work to other places.

Anyone who is frustrated with the route curse has taken with their client, please read the wowinterface client faq, for the shortly to be released free client they are making:

http://www.wowinterface.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22789

Interesting bits:

3. Is there a “premium” version?

Sort of. There will be one version of it for everyone. The only difference that users will see right now is that if a user is a Premium Member on our sites, then whenever they are on one of our tabs (more about those down further) they won’t see ads on the updater. If they aren’t a Premium Member on our sites, there will be one 300x250 ad block in the lower right corner that they will see.

4. This means it isn’t “crippled” in any way?

That is correct. There will be an “Update all” button that will work for everyone, whether you are a Premium Member on our sites or not. There won’t be any throttling of download speed if you aren't a Premium Member. The only difference right now will be whether or not there are ads showing when on our tabs.

Also a picture below, which you can see in greater detail @ http://www.mmoui.com/minion/alpha2.09.png

Needless to say, there is an "update all" button which makes the biggest difference to me.

People, the best way to complain is with your feet. When the client comes out (beta expected mid may) uninstall curse and install minion, rather than complaining about curse trying to turn a penny.

I dispise the people hating Curse/WoWInterface for "forcing" them to use Curse client instead of WoWMatrix.

WoWMatrix stole Curse's bandwidth without paying or even asking. Some claim Curse to be greedy bastards but frankly it would appear that the creators of WM is the greedy ones, not even bothering to host their own files, just leeching them from other sites.

I rather pay to Curse for long and reliable services that use WoWMatrix's "stolen" services.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by Chrono

I dispise the people hating Curse/WoWInterface for "forcing" them to use Curse client instead of WoWMatrix.

 

WoWMatrix stole Curse's bandwidth without paying or even asking. Some claim Curse to be greedy bastards but frankly it would appear that the creators of WM is the greedy ones, not even bothering to host their own files, just leeching them from other sites.

I rather pay to Curse for long and reliable services that use WoWMatrix's "stolen" services.

People don't understand how expensive it is to pay for bandwidth because when they go on the internet they don't get stuck with monthly bandwidth bills the size of mexico - I quite agree that what WM was doing was tantamount to stealing.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by Blurr

Also i'd like to add, this is partially Curse's own fault.

Way back when, I had fully planned to use the Curse updater exclusively. Then it started giving everyone trojans/viruses/keyloggers. Don't think we forgot. That's why I started using WoWMatrix in the first place; because Curse had a bad client back then, too.

I even heard reports of people getting hacked that had undoubtedly happened because of the former Curse client.

I also hear reports that Curse's terms of use are none-to-friendly to authors in regard to copyright and ownership.

How can we be expected to want to pay for a service to a site that apparently has so many problems? Or one that people feel is using underhanded business practices?

You are so full of it, I have used the Curse updater from the very beginning and many of the people working on the Curse updater were basing some of it on AceUpdater.  I have never gotten a trojan or other virus.  This excuse keeps coming up but, as expected, no one can prove that it was that program that gave it to them.

At this point, even the basic WoWInterface Updater has more functionality for free.

It's just a shame that some addon authors will only offer their addons here.

You know what ?  There's a lot of whining annoying people in this world.

It's a business.  They are trying to make money.  I can accept that.  It's a good idea, at least from a business standpoint.

I will agree, however, that stripping a lot of the functionality out is kinda harsh.  Limiting the speed, sure, whynot.  It's annoying, but meh.  I grew up in a time and place where 14.4 dialup was considered the fastest and best of the best.  I learned patience there.  The automagically update ?  Meh, who cares.  I don't update unless I want to.

The one option I would like to see back in, is like everyone else, the update-all.  It doesn't have to do it automatically when I log in.  It doesn't have to do it at full speed.  I'm fine with it doing this at the slower speeds of 10k/s or whatever it is (that's just a number I pulled out of my head, not in any way an indicator of what the actual speeds are).  Set it up so it goes through your out-of-date addons, one at a time, and updates them.  At the slow, non-premium speed.  I'm sure that almost everyone could live with that.  It's a basic request from almost everyone so far.

Otherwise, you're going to have people who write up scripts to deal with it, or else have someone who's bored reverse-engineer it and figure out a way to do it anyway, and then you'll have a mock-client out there.  And I'm sure that's the LAST thing anyone at Curse wants.

That's just my $0.02.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by mwratclif

I'm with Blurr on this issue.  Everyone HAS to use Curse now (well done there) because they have virtually shut everyone else down.  While I'm here, when are all the 'find a friend' and links to favorites and the other features that appear in the user setting/area going to be working?  Why aren't all the 'bugs' ironed out before going live?  I'm not attacking you guys (at Curse).  I was happy with the updater I had is all.  Now it is virtually defunct and I have to use Curse - so, I would like the same or better service that I had with my previous installer.

BTW:  Flippant comments like "best of luck finding another updater your happy with (or words to that effect)" - In my opinion, is counter productive, insensitive and unprofessional.  I've seen several examples of these sorts of responses in the Curse forums (not in this threat) by moderators.  Obviously something is wrong and Curse "Clients" aren't happy.  I'm no business entrepreneur or marketing guru - but even I know that this service should not be paid for on a "user pays" subscription basis (unless you have something other than BETA keys to offer).  People had something that worked better, faster and they were happy with it.  Now they don't.  Something is needed to attract the 'new customers' besides the old "Press Gang" approach.  I thought about not using Curse.  The logic being that if I stayed with my previous update manager (even though I couldn't get my updates) that Curse would die a slow death.  Then I thought "give it a go".  So, how 'bout giving US users a go.  Redesign your business model (if you had/have one) and source your income from the REAL money on the internet...

Amen.

Aside the fanbase. Curse.com is an excellent source for easy addon management, but slapping this in the face of the fans and users is in no way a good promotion, nor does it appeal to the average user.
I personally have, and will keep donating to authors of mods that I use and like, but there's just no way i'm subscribing to curse.com, who just recently shut all competition down by blocking and after doing so slaps a tier subscription based client in the fanbase's face.

.[/end].

Oh, I forgot. Thanks for the past people at curse.com

Have a great time playing monopoly.

re: WoW Matrix stealing Curse's bandwidth - definitely poor form if true.  However, I thought I had read that WM was proxying the addons and therefore mostly using their own bandwidth.  I can't confirm either way though.

More important - most of the justification I'm seeing here is over need to get the bandwidth paid for.  Yes, this has to happen.  But it doesn't seem like Curse has tried very hard to reduce bandwidth so far.  How about any/all of these ideas:

1.  Build in P2P distribution for the cases where it makes sense (ie, updates for popular addons).  Some users won't like it but everybody already has to put up with it for Blizz's updater anyway.

2.  Use an incremental patching mechanism for updated addons vs. redistributing the whole thing

3.  Enable auto updating for everybody, in order to spread update bandwidth out evenly throughout the day/week (volume bandwidth is priced by peak usage, not total bits moved)

4.  Encourage addon authors to host the files on the free hosting service provided by their ISP. or on other free hosting services.  This is probably all that's needed for the "long tail".  Meanwhile the most popular are the ones that would work best for P2P.  Encourage other community members to donate their otherwise unused hosting space as well.

If this was really about the bandwidth, there's more that could have been done before turning against the community.  But my bet is it's really about desire for profit vs. desire to get some necessary costs paid for, which is why we're seeing the current approach (exorbitant pricing) vs. other options that didn't involve charging users.

if you don't like it, just uninstall the client, that's what I did.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by brucek2

1.  Build in P2P distribution for the cases where it makes sense (ie, updates for popular addons).  Some users won't like it but everybody already has to put up with it for Blizz's updater anyway.

AFAIK, P2P distribution was prototyped, but was ultimately decided against, and i don't think P2P is the right way to go, using the Coral CDN might have been a better solution

  Quote:

Originally Posted by brucek2

2.  Use an incremental patching mechanism for updated addons vs. redistributing the whole thing

A bit irrelevant, the only place it makes really sense is with art, or huge localization files, not redownloading art, especially with a game like Peggle, would actually be pretty nice, but in terms of implementation i don't really know.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by brucek2

3.  Enable auto updating for everybody, in order to spread update bandwidth out evenly throughout the day/week (volume bandwidth is priced by peak usage, not total bits moved)

Personally i thought about just making us get a free "Update all", every day, that way you could, for example, update all addons before playing, and then not update before the next day, and in case there were significant updates you could always update manually.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by brucek2

4.  Encourage addon authors to host the files on the free hosting service provided by their ISP. or on other free hosting services.  This is probably all that's needed for the "long tail".  Meanwhile the most popular are the ones that would work best for P2P.  Encourage other community members to donate their otherwise unused hosting space as well.

If this was really about the bandwidth, there's more that could have been done before turning against the community.  But my bet is it's really about desire for profit vs. desire to get some necessary costs paid for, which is why we're seeing the current approach (exorbitant pricing) vs. other options that didn't involve charging users.

Not a good idea in my opinion, i think it's crucial that these files are kept within Curse's servers, the more you spread out the files, the harder it becomes to fix possible compromises, the same is kinda true for P2P, though, Bittorrent in particular, does handle bad data very well, in which case it would be very hard to spoof an addon to include a keylogger.

But i'm guessing that the WoWInterface client will loosen that socalled monopoly other users are blabbing on about.

  Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaelten

@Weirdoe, yes we're equity firm funded.  And I don't think we've ever denied being a for profit company.

However having received $5m in funds doesn't mean that we generate a lot of money.  The money to run the company has to be coming from somewhere. 

Y'know, Bank of America said something very similar.  Two weeks later every customer had their APRs adjusted up by double or triple.  And yet they received $45 billion in bailout money.  Go figure.

@snake, I'm sorry, but comparing us to a multi-billion dollar company that received many billions in government aid isn't exactly a good comparison.  

I already have and plan to continue to do so.

My guess is 5-10% and the rest is looking for alternatives and hopefully wowi's new upcoming client will be our new solution.
Then all I hope for is that developers realize what happened and move their home also.
Finally curse.com get what they deserve.

Thx for the nice hint about the wowi client. :D

am i unsubscribed from the thread yet

To all the whiners that complain about "Update All" gone: How long does it take for you to check the date on each addon, download each zip separately and install it to your addon folder?  Clicking update for all addons still saves you time so hush now.

To Curse:  Lower the premium fee to $15/year and you have my cash.

This is funny! Am I posting something you guys don't like? Maybe the truth?

If you kill my posts I can post them again:

The Facts of my killed posting:
- The Curse-Website don't have an Impressum
- The Curse-Guys don't have a name or a face because they are hiding behind nicknames
- They want us to pay a lot of money for just 1 little button
- The price an the service is not in balance

All that seams to be VERY THRUSTWORTHY to me ;-)

I'm sorry but this is usury and cause of that I won't pay although I like the curse-client!

No we don't have an Impressum, we're an english website, Impressums are primarily a German convention/requirement

My real name and identity is very well known.  I'm not hiding at all.

The price vs value of premium is a personal decision that is made by each user.  No one can govern that decision for everyone.

I have no problem with constructive, civil discussion, in fact I love it.  However, I am getting tired of people posting tirades, nonsensical, or otherwise inflammatory messages.  

So please keep it civil and constructive and we can talk all day. 

I must admit, at first i was a bit upset due to the fact that the "Update All"-Button took me to an external link (which was my fault i didn't recognize in the first place) and i'm not a great fan of giving users something for free and then make it a billed service. But anyways, it's first of all a decision the people running curse may make and they're not taking away the "manage your AddOns and Update"-Option away from non-Premium-Users, they're just taking a bit of luxury away.

Everyone who's not agreeing with this may ask himself a few questions.

- is there another Client like the Curse Client available that helps me manage and update my AddOns?
- does it provide the same AddOns and base functionality?

If that's the case and you're no longer happy with the Curse Client - you're welcome to leave. If not, you should consider to stay with Curse.

What some people tend to forget is: live's not for free and even though much content in the internet is provided for free, even those things come at the cost of something. May it be ADs or something else. The least expenses for the "makers" (is it right to say it that way?) is their time, time the consumers mostly are not willing to invest to provide such a service.

And what is our loss anyways? Some spare time as the Client updates all your AddOns automatically, which you are now forced to do by hand in... erm... 60 seconds? Whew, if you're not willing to pay for luxury and can't spent 60 seconds a day for updating your AddOns, maybe you should rethink if playing WoW is the right thing for you to do.

If 10-15% of the Curse Client Users (not the WoW Users, i think that was a misunderstanding) switch to the Premium Account, it will support the AddOn Authors as well as the people running this website. I'd appreciate transparency in such a process, like : what portion of the income is transferred to the authors (if it's not already answered, maybe i missed it).

And for those that can afford a few minutes in reading:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000056.html
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000032.html

Read these articles from Joel Spolsky, Author of the Weblog Joel on Software, in which he - among other things - describes the lock-in effects of business models. The Curse Client may apply to the first or the second article you read, it's your decision to make and it's your decision if you spend a few dollars for a "Update-All"-or a "do it yourself (but still easier than looking for those Updates by hand)"-Version.

I agree alot with what is said here, but one thing failed to be mentioned, at least as far as I could tell, the "FREE" bandwith is simillar to having thousands of people on one dial up internet, think old aol here, where a load screen takes forever. I have found a work around. So curse isn't just throwing us freebies away, just making things not so easy. All you have to do is open your curse, click on the file you want updated, click on view at curse.com, click on update using curse. Rinse and repeat. It's that flipping hard.