MMO-Champion acquired by Curse

US Maintenance Update: 03:00PM PDT - The US Maintenance is getting long, time for hourly updates.
Originally Posted by Lylirra (Blue Tracker)
Authentication maintenance is still being performed and we're working to bring realms undergoing normal maintenance back online as soon as possible. We anticipate this process will be complete and that those realms will be live and playable by approximately 3:00 PM PDT.

Update #2 - Most of the questions of comments are concerns I already adressed in my first update of the news. I'll try to reply to all the PMs I got about that and make sure nobody is super-scared.

Ultimately, I just hope that after 3 years my readers trust me enough to know that I wouldn't do anything stupid for the site. The news format will stay the same, the people behind the site will stay the same (but we will get backup), I could probably have decided to not announce the change and nobody would have noticed before ages. The only reason why it was announced is because it's a great thing, and it was worth sharing.


Update - Added a couple of answers at the bottom of the post. If you have (serious) questions or concerns about the sale, just throw me a PM and I'll answer in public.

MMO-Champion acquired by Curse
There we go.

Press Release
San Francisco, CA – July 19, 2010 – Curse, Inc. announced today the purchase of the #1 World of Warcraft news site, MMO-Champion.com. The site was bought from Major League Gaming for an undisclosed amount.

MMO-Champion is a natural fit for Curse which already possesses the largest repository of add-ons available for MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) games such as World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online and Runes of Magic as well as extremely popular forums for Runescape, Aion and Final Fantasy XIV. The World of Warcraft news site attracts 7 million unique visitors and more than 80 million page views per month (Google Analytics WW, June 2010). The combination makes Curse the #1 MMO destination online.

“The acquisition of MMO-Champion markedly sets Curse apart from the competition,” said Hubert Thieblot, CEO and Founder. “Not only does the addition solidify Curse as the largest MMO destination on the web, but it plays a central role in delivering a complete Curse MMO solution. Curse is now the ultimate resource for MMO news, forums, databases, and add-ons.”

Gamers and advertisers alike will benefit greatly from MMO-Champion’s purchase by Curse. In the next few months, visitors can expect an updated page design and improved user experience. To insure the site’s strong content offering will not be compromised, Fabien Bonte, the site’s founder and administrator, will be joining the Curse staff as a full-time employee. Advertisers can take advantage of Curse’s extended reach into the core MMO market, making MMO gamers easier to connect with than ever. For more information about Curse and MMO-Champion, please visit www.curse.com.


Boubouille's word (That's me!)
NEW OWNERS! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!

No, seriously. This change will hardly affect the users, we will see a lot of improvements on the site over the next few months (not immediately, we still have to move to new servers) and a lot of people will be working hard to make MMO-Champion a wonderful place filled with love and gnomes. Our first goal is obviously to stabilize the current site and fix all the minor bugs you've been experiencing since the migration, then we'll work on the big stuff and eventually come up with a shiny new design and more features.

I would also like to thank Major League Gaming for the 3 years I spent with them. They're the one who gave me a chance to bring MMO-Champion to a much higher level and even if it isn't obvious to everyone, the site probably wouldn't exist today without them. MLG's management and tech teams went through a lot of efforts to keep the site alive during its ridiculously fast growth, we're here today because of them. Curse and Major League Gaming will definitely keep working together in the future and great things will come out of this partnership.

MMO-Champion has been around for 3 years, 4 months, and 19 days. Let's see how much further we can go.


Update - Let's try to address some of the concerns.

0. Me!
For the 3rd time, I'm not going anywhere. I'll still be here to post the news each day, ban you each day because you made fun of Garfield in the forums, and pretend that I know stuff about the codename Titan.


1. Redesign
Redesign means "make the site pretty", not completely change the layout of the page. If you want more details:
  • The site won't change to a fixed width because it sucks to read wall of texts (=80% of my news posts)
  • You will never get "AWESOME NEW STUFF RELEASED! Click the link below to actually see the news", everything will stay on the front page, simple and clean.
  • I want the blue tracker latest posts on the front page.
  • We might add a couple of extra features like a separate box to track new posts in Off-Topic forums, etc ...
  • We have to hunt down all the terrible bugs we have on the design. I mean, did you try to open the current site with IE7? Or did you try to edit your forum preferences without killing yourself because of how bad it looks? That's what I meant by "the current design sucks"
  • Visually, we can probably do much better than that without changing the structure of the site too much.

There is no plan to change the "core" design of the site, news will always be on the front page, high enough to be visible without scrolling down, and always fully expanded without the need to click to see the entire post.


2. Premium
I'm not going to bullshit you, premium might happen but it's really not a top priority for the moment. I would hardly call it premium, more like "Donator/Sponsor" for people who would like to help, I would also like to explore new features through that like user generated blogs or user groups on forums, etc ... But really, I don't see it happening in 2010.

If I ever add a Premium feature to the site, it will be because it can bring something more without penalizing people who don't want to pay, it won't be just because I'm jealous of Ghostcrawler and want to buy a bigger yacht than his. If something is free today, it will stay free. It's that simple.

Doesn't sound attractive or well-thought? Good, that's because we have no immediate plan to do that. Exactly my point.


3. Control over the site
I still take 99% of the decisions on the site, MMO-Champion is the biggest WoW news site out there and it means that the people I now work with know I'm not stupid when it comes to WoW websites. You don't just buy a site that works just fine with a plan to change everything, it's not worth the hassle, the only major change we could do to boost the traffic is to offer Night Elf porn to the users, and I was told I can't do that.


4. Current plans with the site
A lot of people are scared of the future, I'll try to layout the current plan for the next months.
  • Reactivate the search function.
  • Stabilize the site and make sure we stay online on patch days.
  • Clean up the forums, add a moderator application form to the site, recruit more moderators and open a couple of extra forums.
  • Redesign slightly and improve the Blue Tracker. (Search Function, etc ...)
  • Redesign the site to make it good looking, see 1. Redesign
  • Stronger support on all the tools I use to work on news each day, you have no idea how fucked up some of them are. I can't really post all the super secret stuff here but I can assure you that the sale will be a huge relief for me on that point.
  • Possibly go full-scale with db.mmo-champion.com because I'm pretty sure you're all bored of the item pages with just a tooltip and no drop location or screenshot. (But we still have to decide that)

If everything goes well, I will end up having a lot more time to work on news posts and the site will only get better, I think some people just underestimate the technical shitstorm behind each Beta patch or every single news. Having the backup of a WoW-focused company with tons of WoW-focused developers is a pretty huge thing for me.

If you remember the last beta patch, there wasn't anything on the front page for 10 hours. That's the time I currently spend on tech stuff that I could spend on pretty screenshots of mechanic bunnies.
This article was originally published in forum thread: MMO-Champion acquired by Curse started by Boubouille View original post
Published on 2010-07-20 02:09 AM
587 Comments
Comments 584 Comments
  1. Larwood's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Iselian View Post
    If you keep doin' what you're doin', Boub, you could be run by McDonald's for all I care.
    ^ That is all.
    well, I might have said "fuckin'" in front of McDonald's to get the point across.
  1. sulfuric's Avatar
    People get more outraged when MMO-C changes ownership and still has boubouille at the helm than when blizzard was bought out by activision and exported their entire a list design team to other games and offered us half assed expansions ever since.
  1. emjay's Avatar
    hmpf I'm not looking forward to this change. I love the current mmo design, its simple and effective plus I hate curse, their websites are ugly and overloaded.

    Enjoy your Premium user ripoff
  1. Vialle's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by plaits View Post
    Accusation != proof.

    Curse has never sold gold. Curse has never "stolen accounts" with "malicious software".

    Fake Curse clients have circulated around, but they're fakes used by hackers to phish.

    Ads on Curse have sometimes maliciously taken advantage of Flash vulnerabilities, but that isn't Curse's fault and nor is it something that is a unique problem for Curse, it can happen on any site.

    Check your facts please!
    And a friend of mine directly downloaded the latest curse client from curse website on his new laptop 3 weeks ago and got a trojan in it aimed for online mmo account stealing.
    Fake curse client hosted by curse themselves? damn, they are really kind with hackers then.
  1. Limelight's Avatar
    I'm glad you got paid, Boub, but you must be quite naive to think that MMO-Champion is somehow going to exist in a vacuum and will only be "redesigned" to grab more eyeballs. When you are bought out, you will always lose out to the financial considerations of the purchaser, no matter what promises they make you that the integrity and vision of the site will remain intact. Slowly but surely, this site will be folded into Curse's own.
  1. pixartist's Avatar
    curse is getting too big, I bet it's not gonna make it to 2013...
  1. Raqubor's Avatar
    It's well and good, I'm sure Boubouille knows what he's doing, BUT!
    Give Cataclysm update! I have no interest in who's selling out and who's going to monopolize over our geek life. I want info! On Hunters, Rogues and Warriors!
    NOW!
  1. OtisJay's Avatar
    "the only major change we could do to boost the traffic is to offer Night Elf porn to the users"

    wait,,, what?!?
  1. diseous's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by TheRabidDeer View Post
    I have been around for a few years myself, how has it changed for the worse?

    EDIT: You didnt even join until 2009...
    I lurked and read for a while before I made an account to post. How is that relevant? This place has changed, the site AND the people. If you have been around for a few years, you have noticed this as well. Maybe I am just the guy who doesn't like change when change isn't necessary.
  1. Daez's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by lewo_darkfluffy View Post
    WELL! My account got hacked a few months ago and blizzard told be to not trust CURSE.COM.... Hmmmm.... FUCK! I use to love mmo-champ!
    Screen shot or it didn't happen. Hell, I've had tech geeks tell me not to trust Yahoo. Do you trust Google? Probably shouldn't.

    In short, you shouldn't trust any website blindly, unfortunately, not even this one.
  1. muindaur's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Vialle View Post
    And a friend of mine directly downloaded the latest curse client from curse website on his new laptop 3 weeks ago and got a trojan in it aimed for online mmo account stealing.
    Fake curse client hosted by curse themselves? damn, they are really kind with hackers then.
    It's called a drive by and the people that want to steal MMO info will of course target the flash ads of a site specific to an MMO. I've gotten a trojan off a flash ad on a legit news site before. That's how trojans get in these days.

    Also, read the post you quoted. It mentions drive by attacks in it.

    Flash ads are a good target for them because it lets them select the type of audience that it goes out to(aka gaming sites since those sites will get ads more specific to gaming.) It also makes it harder to shut them out of an add network.

    So it wasn't Curse targeting your friend with a virus specific to an MMO but the hackers(they are smart people even if some of them have English that sucks) because they view the cost of placing the ad itself as worth it to reap the benefits of stolen account information.
  1. anywherenotes's Avatar
    Congratulations, hopefully you'll make a bigger coin than you did before.

    Keep up doing what you're doing.
  1. Resa's Avatar
    I'm glad about this change.
    This change means Boub gets more support (10 hours for tech stuff is just crazy, others should be doing that stuff), we get our updates faster, and we don't have to deal with those MLG vids on the main page anymore. Seriously, those things were just annoying as hell.

    Theres nothing wrong with Curse. The whole keylogger thing was because hackers created a fake copy of the curse client, and inserted keyloggers in it. You had to go to the fake website to get it, so if you did get it, its your own fault for using google, and not reading the link properly. As for downloading the real curse client, and it having a keylogger, see below. You need to keep your stuff up to date or keylogger ads can insert keyloggers into whatever you download.
    Its not like other websites haven't had keylogger ads - wowprogress had them a few weeks ago, and wowhead had them last year. But hey, its totally easy to avoid if you keep your system up to date via the adobe & java sites, and have a decent antivirus that'll block that stuff from even downloading. But hey, this also assumes people aren't lazy. Guess I assume too much. Essentially, its your own fault for having lax security.

    Congrats Boub!
  1. Warrax's Avatar
    My only concern is this: "In the next few months, visitors can expect an updated page design and improved user experience." I'm sorry but updated page design + curse = web page with terrible frame rate, specially when scrolling. Obviously not all pages from Curse are like that but some sites have become worst performance-wise after their acquisition. The current design is fine, make sure performance doesn't take a hit when you gonna update the page design.
  1. Daez's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by lolipopp View Post
    Have u ever heard of things like anitbanner or anti adds intergated in most popular anitvirus software mate :P? Try em ..they are awesome !
    Or you could get them for free with Mozilla Firefox and not have to pay for an anti-virus because their are plenty of free ones out there that lack such features which are free from Firefox. Personally, I despise paying a yearly subscription charge for an anti virus (especially when that charge borderline equals what you paid for the anti virus.

    ---------- Post added 2010-07-20 at 01:20 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by kingmob View Post
    Not being fixed (or at least not having a controlled column width to manage line length) makes for walls of text not the other way around. Reading speed and comprehension takes a big dump after a bit.
    No, actually it doesn't. One person might have a 15" monitor, another person might have a 22" monitor and yet another might have a 60" television as their monitor. Fixing the column or line width means that those three monitors view it to that fixed width whatever it is instead of adjusting it to their own settings. Its horrible design.
  1. Stonepony's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Daez View Post
    http://www.curse.com/Premium/Signup.aspx

    This is seriously what you guys are bitching about? Its less per year than you pay per month for a porn site (not that I pay for porn but still).

    Also, I just went to curse, and it had one flash add on it. That is less than is currently on mmo-champion. What exactly are you people bitching about again?
    The amount of money is irrelevant. The point being is anytime someone charges you a fee they must provide some kind of product or service.

    After looking over their web site the service they're providing just doesn't justify charging a fee. I understand that many of the people that play games online are young adults and don't understand the manipulative tactics that many companies use to try and sell their products/service. Most are just a smoke screen and snake oil to scam people. At any rate, if you're able to look past all the BS on their site you will soon realize the service they are charging their customers is actually free.
  1. Tharkkun's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Vialle View Post
    And a friend of mine directly downloaded the latest curse client from curse website on his new laptop 3 weeks ago and got a trojan in it aimed for online mmo account stealing.
    Fake curse client hosted by curse themselves? damn, they are really kind with hackers then.
    No, your friend did not download a trojan'd client directly from Curse. Your friend did receive it from an external source but it's not coming from Curse itself. Their client, addons, etc are all thoroughly scanned
    prior to becoming available to the public. Most likely your friend already had a trojan which attached itself to the Curse client.

    Despite Curse offering premium service all their other stuff is nice. Their updater is far superior to what Wowmatrix did and doesn't install old ass mods like Matrix would do from time to time. I like things that *work* regardless of speed.
  1. Cruckesmus's Avatar
    "Curse, the guys who blocked wowmatrix from updating addons from it?
    Then pretty much just ignored wowmatrix when they tried to contact curse about it, saying they would be nonprofit?

    And then curse made a curse client? That horribly slow thing?

    The Curse that offers paid premium services?

    You have sold your soul, Boubouille. YOUR SOUL.
    If I see any "premium" shit up here I'm going to be damn pissed, as will many others, though I'm fairly confident you won't let that happen"

    I totally agree with this guy. Curse is monopolist, if you let them slowly kill mmo champion from inside...I am gonna create tons of accs just to troll on every single forum
  1. Resa's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Stonepony View Post
    The amount of money is irrelevant. The point being is anytime someone charges you a fee they must provide some kind of product or service.

    After looking over their web site the service they're providing just doesn't justify charging a fee. I understand that many of the people that play games online are young adults and don't understand the manipulative tactics that many companies use to try and sell their products/service. Most are just a smoke screen and snake oil to scam people. At any rate, if you're able to look past all the BS on their site you will soon realize the service they are charging their customers is actually free.
    If you don't want to pay for the premium service, you don't have to. They ARE providing an additional service, just because you don't like said service, doesn't mean its not a valid one. It doesn't matter that YOU don't think its worth it. Others do.

    Its a done deal. Deal with it.
  1. voidillusion's Avatar
    I use the curse updater (non premium) and really don't see what's your problem... It's a nice aplication that allows me to update my comonly used addons without hassle. Never, ever, ever have i got a trojan or any other malware from there, and tbh that smells like bshit to me.

    Regarding MMO, if the good ppl who have the trouble to mantain and update this excelent site think this is a great change, i can only give my thumbs up!
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