WowAce - So long, and thanks for all the fish

[septor]

I just read a later post in the wowace thread and the updater will require you to pay if you want the same functionality wowaceupdater had. Doh!

There will be a free version too but with less features.

http://www.wowace.com/forums/index.p...topic=14316.80 about halfway down.

I suppose they have to do this to avoid the same thing happening as before.

It's a needed change, imo. Bandwidth isn't free, especially the amount WAU is generating. If even 1/16 of the WoW population is using it, and they use it every single day, that is a metric shit-ton of bandwidth being used which isn't free, like the use of WAU.

Ultimately, there's the possibility of an API (if you read the entire thread) that will enable third-party developers to create updaters at a later date, but I wouldn't expect it to be open to the freedom they currently have.

[Nezoia]

It's a needed change, imo. Bandwidth isn't free, especially the amount WAU is generating. If even 1/16 of the WoW population is using it, and they use it every single day, that is a metric shit-ton of bandwidth being used which isn't free, like the use of WAU.

Ultimately, there's the possibility of an API (if you read the entire thread) that will enable third-party developers to create updaters at a later date, but I wouldn't expect it to be open to the freedom they currently have.

Google , SourceForge and many other places offer free SVN. All you would need to do , would be to create a centralized index of what projects are being tracked in the different SVN projects.

We'll see a larger decentralization of addons, when paying comes into the picture.
More authors will start using Google Code's SVN instead, atleast I could easy imagine so.

[Lithix]

http://www.wowace.com/forums/index.p...1067#msg231067

7. Patches and Updates.

Curse Inc. may deploy or provide patches, updates and modifications to the Client that must be installed for the user to continue to use the Service. Curse Inc. may update the Client remotely, including, without limitation, the Client residing on the user's machine, without the knowledge or consent of the user, and you hereby grant to Curse Inc. your consent to deploy and apply such patches, updates and modifications.

o'rly?

[Hellslayer]

<kolie> To update your addon as a non premium user, you have to click teh addon, and click update addon.
<kolie> Update all checks all addons for updates at once
<kolie> it will not immediatly update if your non premium.
<ShaneSveller> so you do have to go one-by-one in non-premium?
<kolie> exactly.

WTFX -.-

[Thundercougr]

http://www.wowace.com/forums/index.php?topic=14316.0

Hurray, because of money WowAce will now be Curse, and for a time , meaning months, as shit as curse is in it's current state.

Not to mention, the WAU is crashing because wdnaddons.com don't exist anymore.
Which won't be fixed, resulting in the entire wowace repository more or less is unacceptable for a time.

Where do I find my addons now? *sigh*

FAIL

WAU works fine. I've updated and even installed new addons from it within 5minutes of making this post. No problems whatsoever.

[Nezoia]

FAIL

WAU works fine. I've updated and even installed new addons from it within 5minutes of making this post. No problems whatsoever.

Yes, they desided to update it this morning, even the official stand is they won't develope more on it, ever.

[Lysiander]

Curse and it's software is a skidmark on the internet... . If this means that addons previously hosted by ACE will need either that software or manual downloading I'll go back to the standart interface simply because I will not support Curse with my presence. Heck, to even download a simple standalone mod you have to wade through copious amounts of ads, popups and similar crap. No way no how for me.

Was fun while it lasted.

[Nezoia]

Yep.

And the reason behind the madness? Simple, traffic equals money.

By forcing the user to either pay for a updater, or manually update each application one by one, they force in more advertisement traffic and gain more money, for the (almost) same bandwidth spent.

[Slakah]

Pretty sure Wowmatrix and other such client programs are still out there.

I would advise against using wowmatrix as it steals many authors addons and uploads them to its site (it's pretty obvious due to the lack of uploading link).

If your looking for a legitimate source of addons I would advise wowinterface.com

[Lysiander]

I can understand the money reason. Every hobby project like ace that becomes popular has to face the music sooner or later and find ways to offset the costs. I don't blame addon developers or sites for adds or donate buttons per se.

Curse on the other hand is a site that may have started out innocent (frankly, I doubt it, but thats what they claim and I cannot be bothered to check.), but has by now turned into a website where mods are only a means to generate revenue. ACE was a community focused on providing help and mod content. That made it great. Curse is focused on making money, disregarding the means or effects on the user.

Internet Communities form out of one of two options. Either a comercial site picks up a product and thus draws a community that uses this product, or someone offers a product, again draws a community and eventually starts to generate money in one way or another off that product, originally to offset costs and eventually making profits. Serverforums, WoWHead and the like are examples of this. In the later case, the community is often willing to donate or even pay regular fees to keep the community they like going. In the former, the community is merely a means to the end of revenue.

Curse is the former. WoWACE could have been the later. Now, I fear, it will just fade and be absorbed by the "customerbase" that is the curse community.

[bbr]

I haven't used curse in months, their latest redesign sucks balls, i can't find shit anymore, can't log in, can't comment, cant rate stuff, cant find addons, it's horrible.

Curse Inc. may deploy or provide patches, updates and modifications to the Client that must be installed for the user to continue to use the Service. Curse Inc. may update the Client remotely, including, without limitation, the Client residing on the user's machine, without the knowledge or consent of the user, and you hereby grant to Curse Inc. your consent to deploy and apply such patches, updates and modifications.

e.g. risk of trojans.

Yeah, i don't think so either.

I would advise against using wowmatrix as it steals many authors addons and uploads them to its site (it's pretty obvious due to the lack of uploading link).

If your looking for a legitimate source of addons I would advise wowinterface.com

You're aware that site is owned by the same guys who own thott, wowhead, alakaz etc?
Their advertisements tend to have some nasty stuff in them from time to time as well.

[Lysiander]

e.g. risk of trojans.

Trojans I doubt as that would put them in legal jeopardy. Addware borrowing your CPU power, spyware to place your habbits in statistics for sale and other methods of abusing your "I Agree" click to make even more money off you on the other hand I find extremely likely.

Seeing as they apparently plan some sort of premium service, I kinda wonder just how much money they "could" make of the average user if they did the above.

[Slakah]

You're aware that site is owned by the same guys who own thott, wowhead, alakaz etc?
Their advertisements tend to have some nasty stuff in them from time to time as well.

I've never had any issues with wowhead or wowinterface. They validate every addon uploaded before it's placed on the site. Also the reason why WoWAce in it's current form is shutting down is due to mass use, i.e. people using it everyday when there was no need, and thus add revenue wasn't enough to fund the 60 terabyte a month usage.

[Nezoia]

I couldn't care less about them moving distrubtion to a less centralized place.
What I want is good free addons.

Nothing stop ckknight to move all his project to a SourceForge or GoogleCode SVN.

And then ACE could only be libraries for developers, and the developement of the ACE core - Even ever so many of ACEs developers are disliking ACE3, and not using it at all (including ckknight , according to himself on IRC ).

Moving the repository to such a shit place like CurseForge is the worst solution for everybody.

[ackis]

Kind of surprised at this.

I write a few add-ons, nothing major, but I put a lot of work into them.

I'm looking forward to this change because of all the new fancy things I keep hearing about with the new Curse Client and the new Curse site.

I really love Curseforge right now as well. /shrug

[Aiiane]

Just to put some things in perspective...

Bandwidth

WowAce's current bandwidth usage is somewhere between 30-60 terabytes of data a month (not counting major patch days).

The average rate for bandwidth is somewhere around $1-2 per gigabyte, if you're lucky you can find bulk plans that bring this down lower, at a very favorate estimate you might be able to get something like $0.25 per gigabyte.

Even with that tiny estimate, that comes out to somewhere from $7500-$15000 every month at that rate. And that's the low end.

Curse

Curse has, historically, been a bit of a cesspool. That said, there's a reason Curse made so many changes recently. Someone mentioned that Wowinterface verifies each file when it's uploaded before it goes live - Curse now does that as well, through CurseForge.

There's also a reason why WowAce is going to stay a separate site, even though it'll use some of the Curse software (specifically, CurseForge, not the rest of the site) - to help keep the WowAce addon community what it was, at a level above the "riffraff" of regular Curse.

Updaters

1. Yes, Kaelten and co. currently plan to make the new updater require 1-click-per-addon for free users, as opposed to 1-click-for-all-addons for subscribing users. See the "Bandwidth" section above for the reason for that.

2. Realize that Wowmatrix won't get you any farther than WAU will, both now and after WAU is no longer active - the same change that's making WAU inactive will make Wowmatrix not able to pull those addons either.

3. Realize that Wowmatrix puts their own ads in their updater while at the same time using the bandwidth of other sites, including Curse, WowAce, Wowinterface, et cetera. So not only are they making it harder for those other sites to pay their bandwidth bills, due to not displaying the ads from those sites; they also make money off the work of those sites who run the hosting in the first place.




So if you want to keep complaining that the gravy train just took a turn, go ahead... but realize that it's quite selfish to demand ads-free 1-click-updating when you're not paying for the bandwidth. Money doesn't grow on trees, and neither does bandwidth.

[Gnarfoz]

Anyone complaining about the quality of posts on Curse should read this thread again and look in the mirror, seriously.


Ackis' and Aiiane's posts are the first ones to actually make sense in here, and we're already on page 3.

Some people just need to get a grip on reality. ;P

[Boubouille]

[21:16:09] so, how long do you think before someone retorts angrily to this: http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.ph...8344#msg158344

10 seconds !

Anyway, Aiiane explained the situation quite well. Thread locked because there are probably tons of constructive discussion to be done on Wowace forums.

[ckknight]

I couldn't care less about them moving distrubtion to a less centralized place.
What I want is good free addons.

Nothing stop ckknight to move all his project to a SourceForge or GoogleCode SVN.

And then ACE could only be libraries for developers, and the developement of the ACE core - Even ever so many of ACEs developers are disliking ACE3, and not using it at all (including ckknight , according to himself on IRC ).

Moving the repository to such a shit place like CurseForge is the worst solution for everybody.

My issues with Ace3 are completely separate from my relationship with either wowace or curseforge.

I even helped write curseforge, and I think it's a great platform. It needs work, which I along with Kaelten are doing our damnedest on, and it'll become even better over time. I think wowace-on-curseforge is the best possible solution overall, for both keeping wowace technically proficient as well as economically stable.

I don't want anyone using my name to drag either wowace or curseforge through the mud.

[chaud]

The average rate for bandwidth is somewhere around $1-2 per gigabyte, if you're lucky you can find bulk plans that bring this down lower, at a very favorate estimate you might be able to get something like $0.25 per gigabyte.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=16427261