Curse/MMOC Is Being Sold: Where Do Addon Authors And the Community Stand?

[Deleted]

Why not? It's a good model for addon devs.

Secondly, I believe Blizzard should ultimately take ownership of Add-on deployment instead of delegating it to 3rd party like curse/wow-interface. Ultimately, it is their API which the addon developers use. So, Blizzard should follow the Apple/Android model of an "Addon-store" with paid/free addons with similar business models like Apple/Android apps. I am sure gamers will be more than willing to buy some of the more popular apps from the Blizz Addon store and the money can be distributed to the Addon devs (with a Blizzard cut).

Explain to me, in your owns words, what the implications of that would be in the long term.
Also, what are your justifications for removing an implementation that works perfectly as is ?

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Why not? It's a good model for addon devs.

It's a good model for Blizzard, and nobody else.

Three words. Marketplace. Owner's. Cut.

[Sinyc]

Why not? It's a good model for addon devs.

Because someone else will just go and write a free version of an addon for WoW... Paid addons/mods are a terrible idea in almost any game that has them.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

I don't really mind, as long as authors get a decent cut (and can set their own pricing model). If Blizzard takes a percentage of the total so we can get rid of ad based financing, I'm OK with that.

See there's your problem. You're trusting Blizzard to not take the absolute maximum they can and get away with.

Even if they did take a modest, let's say 10%. Most addon authors who are used to getting X in donations would have to charge X+10% or else they're taking a loss by moving from WoWInterface with Donations to Battle.net Hosted.

And then you get the backlash of "oh now you're a sellout who's charging us more than you asked for in donations" and then someone steals the source code and makes A-Pearl instead of Z-Pearl and the entire system just goes screwy.

There's a reason this didn't work out when Bethesda or Valve tried it.

[Dejablue]

There's no reason they should remove the direct donations to authors - I'm just talking about a way to incentivize authors - just like the current CurseForge rewards system.

The value for Blizzard, would be keeping people within their ecosystem. It fits very well into the whole MAU chase they have going on and I don't quite understand why they leave that to third party sites.

I am surprised they don't do what they can to hide subscription/engagement numbers.

Right now you could go to Curse and scrape the top 100 addons' number of downloads for each release since BfA launch and get a good idea of the playerbase growth/shrinkage. An addon like DBM that updates frequently, nearly daily, could give a near real time sample of concurrency. I know it is a self selected sample and skews towards experienced players, but it is a lot of data, and other data I haven't even thought of, that Blizzard is leaving on the table. I am surprised MMOC hasn't included it with their annual scrape of players achievements via the official API.

Hell, heatmaps of where players place their UI elements could drive future UI development. If Blizzard curated addons they could allow serverside storage of the saved variables files like they do now for keybindings. Then they have access to the placement of all of those addons' elements. This is the kind of data they used to streamline the UI recently. All of the interface options that AdvancedInterfaceOptions addon adds back. Those were options telemetry showed were not frequently used.

As far as curating and comparisons to Steam/Bethesda; Curse and WoWInterface already do a good job of this. When I first started making addons it was because BaudMark had not been updated. So I took it and fixed it and reuploaded it. Curse said, "No, no, no, you need to get his permission." So I asked Baud for permission to take over BaudMark. Meanwhile I wrote my own marking addon, DejaMark, that also includes the world markers. Baud gave me permission so I still maintain BaudMark as well for those that still use it.

And there are several personal addons I have that haven't been published simply because it is a lot of effort to upload and describe an addon.

Then there are pet projects I want to do but don't have the energy, time, resources, etc. to pursue, such as DejaAuras.

My point is that this is just me, I would love to see all of the little personal projects of Nevcairiel, Phanx, Akis, Tuller, funkydude, etc.

I am not worried about my own addon distribution or money. I have a website for DCS: https://dejoblue.com and github: https://github.com/dejoblue/DejaCharacterStat I am looking at the big picture.

Twice I have been offered contract work for gray market addons such as Zygor (neither were Zygor); "premium" membership addons. Albeit one, maybe both, were spamming inboxes of WoWInterface authors.

It's the Wild West out there and Amazon is making money off of it while the community is ignorant of it or looks the other way because it is convenient for them. But it absolutely has pushed into the same realm of ethical dilemmas that pre WoW Token gold selling and buying was/is.

How many of the ubiquitous/popular addons are maintained by Curse employees/moderators? With the success of streaming the race for world first recently, what if Twitch were to sponsor or outright buy the rights to DBM and until Method got their first kill of the last boss of the tier DBM was not available for the masses and or only available to Method? DBM is easily worth $200,000 over the next three years, what would it be worth to a major company like Twitch to pull it from all other sources and direct traffic straight to DBM and or develop, integrate and or buy WeakAuras and or ElvUI and literally own the defacto interface of World of Warcraft as they do the addon distribution system?

Amazon recently launched Lumberyard and several game studios. They have a vested interest in knowing what players prefer. Again, owning those cloud saved variables files that you can already choose to have them save for you with the twitch app, is giving them sweet, sweet data they could use to make the best UI and gain market advantage.

But, hey, it's all for the love of the game, right? RIGHT!?
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[Deleted]

But don't you think that "someone" wants and deserves to get paid as well? The current addon authors get paid (but it's coming from Curse's ad revenue), why is the expectation that addon authords should give away their work for free?

I asked you two very simple questions, and I want you to respond. When you are claiming something of this magnitude, the grounds of justification falls on your feet.


What are the implications of an addon-store for this game? I want you to give me a real assessment on the matter, in your own perspective. You seem to think that making addons profitable by official channels has no drawbacks and that is absolutely irresponsible and short-sighted.


What are your justifications for removing an implementation that works perfectly as is ? Why is it not okay for a third-party option to get it's possible revenue from third-party sites?

[Onikaroshi]

You must be a dps. For tanks and healers timers are really important.

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I'll say it again. I'm stunned that people seriously think the solution is "Blizzard should take it over".

Blizzard would only take it over for one reason: if they see profit in it. And that means we get gouged. That also means that they start curating addons. I'm not even sure what else it means, but I mean, seriously, it's just like, the worst fucking idea ever.

Nah, I tank. I do still use DBM, but mostly just for vocal callouts and because I raid lead so I NEED the timers, since raid leading is basically just herding cats.... your average raider, tank or healer, doesn't really need them anymore.

[MrExcelion]

@Dejablue After DBMs first success (the first time, not the more recent one, and also Blizzwatch), many addon authors did try the Patreon thing, but without that Wowhead/reddit publicization they didn't take off. Real shame because I think thats the best way to get compensated. I feel like more authors would have tried it in the past before the DBM guy but there was this whole spooky "dont do paid addons" thing going around, so it was too much of a grey area. Even the Weakauras guy is still at $353 dollars a month and up until recently I think he was sub 100.

I still think Patreon is the right model, other than just becoming a WoW streamer I guess (and promote said addon on the side). I wonder if there'd be interest in a streamer that does say, some rated PVP or Heroic raiding on the side but answers UI/macro questions for people too. Like its informative at least. Has anyone tried that?

[Nevcairiel]

their terribly boated Discord-clone client.

Incidentally, Twitch is discontinuing its Chat, Voice and "Servers" feature. It'll just be a client for addons and watching twitch streams in the future.
https://help.twitch.tv/customer/port...ng-and-servers

They are openly suggesting Discord as an alternative in some places.

[Jervaise]

I've been saying for a long time that Blizzard should try to limit the addon API in order to de-escalate encounter complexity. It's silly that top guilds have their own dedicated WA writers. It's stilly that DBM is "required" addon. That should not be a thing. DBM shouldn't even need to exist - and maybe disappearance of some of the more popular combat based addons would push Blizzard to improve their default UI and perhaps we could dial back the Riverdance numbers that are modern WoW bossfights.

On top of that, I really don't understand why Blizzard hasn't taken the addon distribution in-house and built it as a part of Battle Net client. It's crazy that they allow that traffic to go to third parties and that they expose their playerbase to the risks that third-party advertising sites cause. It's very telling about their commitment to player security (they don't give a shit). For a company that seems so hell bent on keeping players within their ecosystem and counting MAU's - this seems like a real missed opporturnity. But I guess the Battle.net team is too busy building it into a Steam competitor with Activision titles and WoW is just too low priority internally.

MMO Champion going away - would be shame, it is still the nr 1 indipendent WoW discussion forum - even though the need for such forums has been declining with a new generation of gamers who are happy spamming Discord channels. I like forums, I like threaded conversations. Say what you will about the quality of some of our dicussions here but I think losing MMOC would be a huge loss to WoW community.

Just take a look at literally everything in the game. If blizzard was in charge of the UI, this game would be done. UI customization and addon friendliness kept WoW alive against newcomer mmos in the past, of course in addition to most of those mmos being shit in the first place.

[Nevcairiel]

Whoa, that's almost Google-like speed of creating a product and abandoning it

The Chat/Voice stuff existed at Curse for quite some time to be honest, Twitch is just killing it quickly after taking it over.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Whoa, that's almost Google-like speed of creating a product and abandoning it

Almost Google-like should be henceforth called Amazon-like.

[plz delete account]

I agree with this with one difference.

Don't even start trying to wade into the paid addon sphere. Nothing good ever comes from paid mods, just ask Bethesda and Steam.

Sims 3, 4, and Cities Skylines do pretty well with paid mods made by the community.

[Varvara Spiros Gelashvili]

I agree with this with one difference.

Don't even start trying to wade into the paid addon sphere. Nothing good ever comes from paid mods, just ask Bethesda and Steam.

It works for modders on steam because if someone can get paid enough for modding they can make it a job. Steam does this with warframe and we've gotten some cool skins. There is also patreon as well and I don't mind supporting creators. I don't even play but still support dbm on patreon because of how much I've used it.

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Sims 3, 4, and Cities Skylines do pretty well with paid mods made by the community.

Warframe is another example we've gotten some awesome skins from community creators and competitions. If a creator can turn creating into a job than they can create more content. I don't mind paying even, if I'm not currently playing wow.

I do this for dbm because a fucking pull timer should be baseline. I don't know why I need an addon for that when a good opener is worth 1-2% on some classes. This should be implement years ago.

[Nathanyel]

Sims 3, 4, and Cities Skylines do pretty well with paid mods made by the community.

From what little I know about Sims via assisting a friend, it's just 3rd-party websites charging for access/downloads of assets, probably because the publisher (EA? Ubi?) is too oblivious/corporate to care about this. Doubt content creators get a significant portion of the money.

[plz delete account]

It works for modders on steam because if someone can get paid enough for modding they can make it a job. Steam does this with warframe and we've gotten some cool skins. There is also patreon as well and I don't mind supporting creators. I don't even play but still support dbm on patreon because of how much I've used it.

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Warframe is another example we've gotten some awesome skins from community creators and competitions. If a creator can turn creating into a job than they can create more content. I don't mind paying even, if I'm not currently playing wow.

I do this for dbm because a fucking pull timer should be baseline. I don't know why I need an addon for that when a good opener is worth 1-2% on some classes. This should be implement years ago.

I own several community created skins from Unturned as well.

[Varitok]

Firstly, thank you for the work you have done with DCS. I have used this addon extensively and really like it.

Secondly, I believe Blizzard should ultimately take ownership of Add-on deployment instead of delegating it to 3rd party like curse/wow-interface. Ultimately, it is their API which the addon developers use. So, Blizzard should follow the Apple/Android model of an "Addon-store" with paid/free addons with similar business models like Apple/Android apps. I am sure gamers will be more than willing to buy some of the more popular apps from the Blizz Addon store and the money can be distributed to the Addon devs (with a Blizzard cut).

Blizzard is Bethesda tier now. Like anyone would want paid mods or Blizz telling me what mods they're allowed to use. No thanks, especially not in the current state of "No fun allowed".