WoWInterface and Curse working together to help protect authors and other site-users

[orthwein]

Originally Posted by Vyper You obviously haven't bothered to read this discussion. As has been stated WoWMatrix refused to work with Curse and WoWI to come up with a mutually benificial solution.

Yep, and it's selfish and greedy of them to have refused to work something out. I fully realise that if we had to rank bad guys, they'd come out way ahead of you. I don't think many are going to claim that wowmatrix is a bunch of kind loving well intentioned people. They're clearly in this purely to make money in whatever way they can, because they saw that the current solutions are crap.

However, there are tons of updater authors out there willing to 'do the right thing' though. By all means have your blocking in place, but stop trying to keep marching down the 'one client per site' road. To try and steer the debate into something more concrete, what is wrong with my premium web API suggestion? Surely you have something similar in the curse client currently, so just document it and allow other clients to use it.

Originally Posted by Vyper I won't bother to go into the morality of this statement, as you obviously don't care, but to expect WoWI and Curse (or the record companies) not to try to stop you from stealing from them is simply foolish.

Of course I expect you to try and stop me, I'm not proud of using wowmatrix knowing the evil it does, and yes, it is a choice. It's the same kind of choice many of us make on a daily basis, to go for a less idealistic solution that happens to be more convenient. You're right though, the point of this thread is not to debate morality, but to try and provide constructive criticism, so I'll shush now.

[Jzar]

If WoWMatrix hadn't been stealing bandwidth from WoWI and Curse for so long, they wouldn't have had to waste so much effort trying to prevent it, and could have spent that effort instead working on their own updaters in the first place. Why do you think the WoWI updater has been a little stalled? No, I can't say authoritatively that that's the cause, but I don't doubt that it's contributed to it.

As an addon author myself, I don't feel that WoWI and Curse are leeching from me by putting up advertisements with my addons, because I of my own free will and choice, uploaded them here. They're doing ME the service of giving me a (limited) amount of notoriety among my peers, and to recoup the cost of bandwidth, are making it back up in ad sales.

Contrast that with what WoWMatrix is doing. I have not asked them to distribute my mods, and they're acting in a way detrimental to the sites I do support. If they make WoWI close its doors because they can't afford bandwidth anymore, then my favorite distribution medium is gone, and it hurts me. And trust me, even though I use curse to an extent, WoWI *is* the best (legitimate) WoW mod distribution medium. We don't want it abused!

[Shirik]

Originally Posted by orthwein stop trying to keep marching down the 'one client per site' road

I can't speak for Curse, but we have never told anyone that has contacted us that they cannot make an updater for our site to my knowledge. Accordingly, please stop spreading misinformation (or at least implying misinformation).

[Vyper]

Originally Posted by orthwein To try and steer the debate into something more concrete, what is wrong with my premium web API suggestion?

Absolutely nothing, and I honestly don't think the WoWI team would be adverse to it. In fact I think it would be an ideal solution. I also however, doubt that there are as many out there scrambling to make addon updaters as you think. If there are, I highly encourage them to contact the WoWI team. I have never known them to be less than reasonable.

[WiredLain]

Originally Posted by Zirco So in my neighborhood there have always been these guys who drive around in trucks selling TVs and computers and such. It's really convenient and their prices are great. But just before Christmas I learned that Best Buy hired round-the-clock security guards and suddenly my guys in the trucks stopped coming around. I'm so mad at Best Buy for doing this. What is their problem?! Don't they care about their user base? And to do this right before Christmas no less. If Best Buy doesn't like these guys they should set up a system of trucks that sell stuff for really cheap, too!

The whole analogy falls flat on the fact that if I go to the store and get the tv, it costs me nothing, while if the truck comes, it costs me... nothing. The only difference is on the convenience of haiving to go there or not, and that best buy's delivery team either sucks or isn't hired and trained yet.


I have a much better analogy for you.

In this neighborhood, there's this team of 10-20 (1) guys. They work for free, but would not say no if I were to give them money (2).
Any time I want, I can call that team of guys, and they will check my bookshelves to see what books I have and how old they are. They will then run to these two big libraries (*) around and see if newer version of the books are available. If there are, they make a list of the new book prints (3).
If I want to try new books, they even have a list I can browse (4). I can even ask them to take me to the shelf that has it, and it allows me to double check when I think they got prints wrong. (4b)
So on that list, I see some of my books are outdated, and I tell them to go get the new one. They'll go back to the librariess, get the book, bring it back, and put it in the bookshelf and toss out the old one. (5)
Of course, the problem is that they move as a team, so when they check the books, 10 of them enters each library at a time, and it causes inconvenience for regular customers (6). When one of them goes to get me "computer for dummies" published on apr 14 2009, he zips by directly to the computer section, to the shelf where that book is and gets it and comes back. This displeases the manager, because a regular visitor looks at other shelves (7), and may even wander to the partner department stores in the malls (8).
One day, the managers of the two libraries decide to stop the loss of ad revenue and the crowding issues by putting a big guy at the entrance to prevent the team from entering or getting to the books. (9)
Unsurprisingly, people who were used to having the team get the food for them are frustrated at having to go and get each book one by one, especially since neither of the stores has its own decent team to do it. (10)

(*) These libraries have infinite stock. There's no fee to enter the enter either. At most you need a free membership card.
(1) that's about the number of concurrent threads I see when WM checks addons
(2) WM's donation button. Personally, I never used it.
(3) WM's list
(4) "Get new addons"
(4b) Right click an addon, go to official page.
(5) Update addon
(6) since a lot of people in the neighborhood are doing it, it really crowds up some alleys, and other people have trouble getting to the food, just like on patch day people have trouble getting to their addons' pages.
(7) other addons
(8) ads
(9) "401 unauthorized"
(10) The overall mixed (**) reaction today (and I expect tomorrow when Europe goes through update day), and the outdated wowi client (I'm looking forward to the new one by the way, I just wish a beta was available, I'd be happy to test it) and the cursed client.

(**) From what I saw on the wow forums and my guild forums. Wowace is so full of backpatting it's laughable. At least there's some discussion here.


Anyway, back on the topic. I understand WoWI and Curse's choice, but I don't buy the "other site-user" interest argument. Authors yeah, obviously, since no more WoWI/Curse means having to find other places not necessarily adapted. Someone mentioned sf.net on the wow forums, it's like killing a flying with a bazooka. I'm also not buying into the "stealing". Depriving maybe, since some people would look at the ads, since not everyone uses adblock. But they don't get any of my money for it. For the bandwidth, same thing, if I was to manually check every addon that I use by hand, I'd pull almost as many as WM (*), and for each addon I'd update by hand, same as WM.
The two reasons why bandwidth use went down:
- some people simply didn't update because it's not as convenient as before, and they can't be bothered
- manually checking is a bit more efficient on the bandwidth because:
(*) WM checks modules as seperate addons

Personally I fired WM, saw it wouldn't download, so I right clicked each addon in the list to go to the "official site" I wanted to check and manually compared versions. On WoWI it was pretty straightforward, and in case of doubt I get a meaningful change log. On curse, I actually went to the wowace repo for some addons that I know haven't been updated on curse (xperl for example). The only annoyance comes from having to manually unpack and copy each addon.

Additional but probably offtopic question: Is there a way to see the date of the last update on the rss feed for my favorite addons? I don't always know the version, but I find it easier to tell by date. Like if I look today and see it was updated yesterday/today, chances are I don't have the last version. Just having that info readily available is half of my WM list taken care of.

[orthwein]

Originally Posted by Shirik I can't speak for Curse, but we have never told anyone that has contacted us that they cannot make an updater for our site to my knowledge. Accordingly, please stop spreading misinformation (or at least implying misinformation).

I'm not. I went to the irc channel (this was perhaps 6-9 months ago), and asked about being able to provide direct download links under whatever terms, and was told that there's no way of doing it, and that I have to use the official curse client.

Perhaps things have changed, but that was what I was told. I have no axe to grind, and am thrilled that you're not against an updater that's easy to use.

[Marthisdil]

Originally Posted by Tristanian I keep hearing the term "customer" over and over again. According to wikipedia : "A customer, also client, buyer or purchaser is the buyer or user of the paid products of an individual or organization, mostly called the supplier or seller. This is typically through purchasing or renting goods or services." So, can anyone here tell me how much they have payed for a single addon (and I do NOT mean an OPTIONAL donation but a mandatory payment) they've downloaded themselves, either from here or anywhere else for that matter, especially after Blizzard's refined policy in the matter ? Reality check. Customer ~= User. A user that is not being charged to use something offered for free cannot be treated in any way as a paid customer, nor can he invoke any special rights. Keep that sense of entitlement buried. It holds no water whatsoever and no sensible person is going to take it seriously. All I'm reading in these posts is "QQ we want our updater back, you are the source of all evil on this Earth." This is what it has come down to, then. WAU created a monster. A boss one that cannot be killed too.

If that's the case, and we're not customers, why try and "entice" us to click ads to generate revenue? or how about the people who occasionally click an ad, thus making the site money, thus they technically became paying customers at that point, right?

And yes, I've paid addon authors for using their mods in the past (and will in the future - Blizzard be damned).

[Zirco]

Originally Posted by WiredLain The whole analogy falls flat on the fact that if I go to the store and get the tv, it costs me nothing, while if the truck comes, it costs me... nothing. The only difference is on the convenience of haiving to go there or not, and that best buy's delivery team either sucks or isn't hired and trained yet.

Ummm... I think you missed the point. The guys in the trucks were STEALING the goods from Best Buy. That's why hiring more security guards made them disappear. They weren't buying and reselling them.

[Thengus]

Originally Posted by Cairenn If you were previously using WowMatrix to keep your addons updated, please use our official updaters (WoWInterface, Curse). You may also mark addons as favorites on both WoWInterface and Curse in order to be alerted when they are updated.

This is Crap.

And I use the Curse Updater… and I also download some add-on manually from WI, when they are not on Curse… and I did not want to use wowmatrix for a number of reasons (but I have to use it on my mate computer, however, as I cannot run the Curse updater on that one)

However, let me repeat it: This is Crap

The Wow interface application do not exist (the one that exist is windows only AND discontinued) and the Curse one (now at version 3) is just barely usable, still crashes and on OS X only works if you have 10.5 and an intel processor.

If the ppl at WI and Curse want to resolve the issue with WM, just buy the damn product from them… and use it as your manager!

We already know that WM manager works with your websites and it works better than anything you currently offer. it works basically everywhere, uses less resources and is faster…

If you had a good product out, almost no people would use WM in the first place, and the problem would be non existent… But you decided a manager was not a priority… guess what? all the ppl that uses WM thinks otherwise…

I do not know how many users have WM instead of Curse manager or using manual downloads from WI, but they must be A LOT if the problem is so pressing…

The solution is never to try stop someone to do something… You will spend more money and in the end fail at that. The solution is to offer something that render the product offered by that someone unappealing…

So the owners of WM are so uncooperative? Reverse engineer their SW and create one that work almost the same… and that have a good interface and do not cause more problems than it resolve…

Wanna get an amicable solution? i said it earlier… buy and use the damn thing!

my .02€

Thengus, EU Shadowsong

[Zirco]

Originally Posted by Thengus This is Crap Thengus, EU Shadowsong

Thengus,
I'm just curious. If you had to pay to use WowMatrix how much would you pay? $1 per month? $5 per month? If paying was the only way to use a really nice client like WowMatrix would you go back to manually downloading?

[Thengus]

Originally Posted by Jzar If WoWMatrix hadn't been stealing bandwidth from WoWI and Curse for so long, they wouldn't have had to waste so much effort trying to prevent it, and could have spent that effort instead working on their own updaters in the first place. Why do you think the WoWI updater has been a little stalled? No, I can't say authoritatively that that's the cause, but I don't doubt that it's contributed to it.

Or better even… If Curse and WI had not been lazy while WM was been created and worked (at the same time) at a good manager the problem would not be existant at all…

But in order to do that, the ppl at Curse and WI should have understood the importance, no the necessity of having a good and working manager for the add ons, a thing they simply ignored until the damage was done…

Thengus, Shadowsong

[Thengus]

Originally Posted by Zirco Just curious. If you had to pay to use WowMatrix how much would you pay? $1 per month? $5 per month? If paying was the only way to use a really nice client like WowMatrix would you go back to manually downloading?

I do not know. I spend enough money for my WoW acoount, i think.

But I can live with adds on a website or on a add on manager.

At the moment I'm worried of the time that Curse will start asking for subscriptions, as it might became a problem for me, but I'll think about it then. They might improve the client up to stability and usability or even buy WM in the meantime… you never know…

Thengus, Shadowsong

[Tekkub]

I saw a very good point on the wowinsider thread I'd like to reiterate. I'm going to make the text large so that people might see it. I ask that a moderator move this to the first post or better yet, a news posting. Okey here we go, brace yourselves...

Are you a wowmatrix user? Are you pissed that WoWI and Curse made a total *****ass move and blocked your updating? If you answered yes to both of these questions, BOYCOTT THEM. Join our cause, don't give these sites the pleasure of your business.

I'm serious here. You'll be doing less damage than you were using WM if you boycott.

[Kardinalsin]

Unable to read favorites list. Check your internet connection and try again.


pretty fail to not have a working client out in wowinterface


i HATE the curse client


i miss WUU !


someone pleaswe tell me how to fix the updater lol



im running windows 7 <3 is that helps

[WiredLain]

Originally Posted by Zirco Ummm... I think you missed the point. The guys in the trucks were STEALING the goods from Best Buy. That's why hiring more security guards made them disappear. They weren't buying and reselling them.

You're missing mine. I can enter the store and get the goods from BB (WoWI/Curse) for free. The truck guys do it for me. It's not theft at least not in the legal sense, at best it's contract breaking if terms of use for WoWI/Curse disallow using information for their site for a commercial purpose (since WM takes donations).

The main probelm with WM is that it's so easy that people check it way more often than they would check the websites manually, so instead of pulling one page per week, you pull that page once a day. Bam, 7x bandwidth cost. And on top of that, there's no ad viewed. It's a very valid reason to not want WM, but then be honest about it. All the stuff about "stealing" bandwidth is bull, it's not stealing more (minus WM bad habit of checking modules as if they were addons) than having two RSS tabs or a cron script to pull each addon's main page with links to the addons would.

[genom]

I do want to thank the admin folks for responding with their side of the argument.

Unfortunately, regardless of intentions, the users are the ones getting the shaft.

But, it's pointless arguing now. What's done is done. How do we move forward?

Figure an average page-load is ~250k or so (probably low, but we're being conservative here). What's the bandwidth cost of a user getting a single addon?

Main page -> Search page -> Addon page -> Download

For simplicity's sake, let's also use 250k as the size of the download. Some addons are smaller, others much, much larger, so I think this bit of simplification is fair.

That makes 4x250k, or about 1MB per addon. We'll assume in a run of 100 addons, there are enough larger addons to compensate for the fact that you generally wouldn't need to go all the way back to the main page.

So 100 addons would be about 100MB. Just as an estimate.

Now, let's compare that to what could be done with an XML feed (RSS/Atom type stuff, but not necessarily RSS or Atom specifically).

Assume the feed contains the name of the addon, an id number, a version number, and a timestamp, for each addon. Let's also say that the full feed weighs in at 5MB. That may or may not be larger than necessary (5MB is a LOT of text). This feed is populated once an hour from WI/Curse's DB (which shouldn't be a tremendous load), and served via HTTP (so a well-mannered client could ask the server if the file has been updated since it was last seen, and only download it again if necessary - only incurring bandwidth if theres actually an update)

The client compares the versions/timestamps on the client side, and only downloads the addon if necessary.

For a run of 100 addons, then, we'd incur 5MB for the updated feed, then 250k for each of the 100 addons, or about 30MB total. Let's add 33% of the addon total (10MB) to that as compensation for the larger addons, and we're looking at a total transaction of 40MB.

60% savings.

For a much smaller number of addons (20), we'd see 20MB for visits, and 13MB for our estimated feed. 35% savings.

Now, I made a lot of assumptions and estimations there - but I think the theory is sound.

[adlWoW]

I don't know if this will be considered "on topic" enough - but since one of the issues with WoWmatrix is that it allows you to download files without seeing ads - is it also considered taboo to download files using Firefox with Adblocker?

Also, what are the chances of having some sort of button on each addon download page - configure it somehow with the location of your addon directory, and then press one button to update? Is that even possible?

[Zirco]

Originally Posted by WiredLain You're missing mine. I can enter the store and get the goods from BB (WoWI/Curse) for free. The truck guys do it for me.

What Best Buy do you go to? I've never been to one that gives their goods away for free. But I'll pack up the missus and make a special trip if there really is such a store.

[Tristanian]

Originally Posted by Marthisdil If that's the case, and we're not customers, why try and "entice" us to click ads to generate revenue? or how about the people who occasionally click an ad, thus making the site money, thus they technically became paying customers at that point, right? And yes, I've paid addon authors for using their mods in the past (and will in the future - Blizzard be damned).

Enticing or not, point remains that clicking is entirely optional. Basically you are doing it "out of the goodness of your heart" (if at all). There is no mandatory fee associated with downloading an addon and since Blizzard's policy there never will be one.



But just to compliment tek's post I'm gonna go ahead and post some invaluable quotes from the wowinsider article comments.

"If stolen gas was easier to obtain, yes I would love to have a car that could use that instead."

"Wait, is Curse affiliated with Scientology? It would explain alot."

All I can say is "Shame on both of you, Nazis".


All I can say after that is...Heil Cairenn !

[Zyonin]

Originally Posted by Tristanian Enticing or not, point remains that clicking is entirely optional. Basically you are doing it "out of the goodness of your heart" (if at all). There is no mandatory fee associated with downloading an addon and since Blizzard's policy there never will be one. But just to compliment tek's post I'm gonna go ahead and post some invaluable quotes from the wowinsider article comments. "If stolen gas was easier to obtain, yes I would love to have a car that could use that instead." "Wait, is Curse affiliated with Scientology? It would explain alot." All I can say is "Shame on both of you, Nazis". All I can say after that is...Heil Cairenn !

So many of WoWInsiders commenters remind me so much of the trolls that infest the official forums. I don't know whether to laugh or puke.