... You say you're a "Network Admin," Stormlor? ...

Anyway...
What you're talking about is a premium service. I doubt WoWI would be half as popular as it is if most of its offerings were only for premium members.

I would hope that WoWInterface and Curse would learn from this - build a better simple client.

I find it interesting that WowInterface says to use their updater and links to a page that has this at the top:

Instead of spending so much effort trying to prevent WowMatrix from working, how about trying to build something that is so much better than WowMatrix.

You sound like the RIAA trying to sue 80 year old grandmothers.

Heh... you obviously have no networking knowledge whatsover. The port WoWM was using is port 80. Same as ALL http. Block port 80 and no one gets in.

Secondly, WoWI is NOT a portal to another site, they host all thier own content.

I don't recall WoWI sueing anyone.

Is it just me, or do all of the arguments made by WM-defenders here seem to boil down to "the ends justify the means?"

Sometimes I do. Perhaps that's wrong of me. I also pay a hefty monthly subscription fee for my TV so I'm not too worried about my television content providers going out of business.

I guess I just feel like Curse/WowInterface are pretty small businesses and all they ask of me is that I let them serve up ads on their web pages. Ignoring ads is a pretty tiny cost, IMO - certainly smaller than watching 8 minutes of television ads for every 30 minutes television show.

So, if you want to call me a hypocrite - have at it. But the question still stands: How do we expect Curse/WowInterface to generate revenue to pay their expenses?

Beat me to it. This kid's as much of an admin as I am interested in his opinion.

That obviously. I don't use AdBlocker, mostly out of laziness than belief that I have to see ads or else bad stuff will happen. So as WoWI is right now, the site is very fine, and in my opinion a lot better than curse. I want an updater too, because having a half-page rss-looking list that tells me "this and this was updated" is a lot more convenient that having to open 20 tabs to check each addon one by one. Obviously the "my favorites" feature here goes a long way towards that, and with a little tweaking (I'll go post it in the suggestion forum), would eliminate a third of what I used WM for: see in a short and concise way what may need to be updated. The second third is the same thing for curse, and the last third is what in my opinion the updaters do best: not having to manually extract and replace every addon/module folder archive by archive. Which gives me an other idea for a suggestion in fact.
Concerning ads on the future WoWI client: I don't have any problem with them either, as long as it's non-intrusive, like it is on the site.


Up till now, they only site I went out of my way to remove ads from is Facebook when they changed their layout a couple weeks ago, adding a whole column of promoting crappy facebook apps (that were otherwise blocked, to boot) mixed with ads and legitimate friend stuff, while the previous ones had ads separated and no crap-apps suggestions forced on me.

Not only that, they all look like 14 yr old kids pretending to be network experts.

That's not what I meant :) My bad for not being clear. What I mean is, I would rather donate directly to WoWInterface rather than donating to Allakhazam. I don't use that site and would prefer the donation link be here rather than over there. Yes, I know it's all one in the same, but it's easier to do it from the site you visit rather than from a site that you don't.

See but that's the key. You didn't just *****, you wanted to understand the situation. You came here probably looking for a better explanation than the o.forums and wowins... or at least in hope of less immature whiners posting here since that would be effort (finding the site's thread, opening an account so you could post...) That's a lot more than the simply pissed off people will do.

The o.forums are a lost cause. Wowinsider could have done a better job of understanding the situation before they posted their story, and *should* have contacted Cair and Kael for comments, even if they were edited in later as updates. I don't know exactly how Curse has responded on wowins, but over here and on the o.forum Kael has admitted a few times that he knows their updater isn't as good, and it is being worked on. Shirik has said similar with regards to WoWI's updater.

I tried the CurseClient and got burned. I spent a good 2 hours fixing my UI after that, so no thanks. Add to my personal experience, the bad name CC has on the internet as a vector for malware and it's not a great option. (Edit: really? You're injecting an ad into my comment? I'll have to check some IP law, but I wonder if you're not in violation by making money off my creative writing.) (Edit2: and now it's gone while I edit? WTH?)

WoWI apparently doesn't have a "supported" add-on manager, and the only other one is in Alpha. I love you guys, but I don't think you planned the timing of this very well.


So here's the net result FOR ME:
I will use fewer add-ons. (read less ad impressions for WoWI)
I will try out fewer new add-ons. (read less ad impressions for WoWI)
If hand-managing the 192 items I have in my Add-on folder becomes too painful, I'll just write my own script to update my own mods. (guess what? Yep, less ad impressions for WoWI)


The only part of the rhetoric flowing on this issue that really bugs me is the "stealing bandwidth" spiel. If WoWI can provide a slim, sleek, low-resource, clean, easy-to-use, "supported" client, I'll gladly use it.

I really wish you guys had planned your timing better by waiting until you had an alternative. As it is, now I'm just annoyed at WoWI, unwilling to even visit Curse, much less install their client, and about ready to start blocking ads all over again.


Well played, WoWI. Well played.

@ Stormlor:

And the IP that wowmatrix was using what the IP of the *user's computer*.

Don't come in here and tell us that we don't know what we are doing and didn't try to stop this before. You *obviously* have not educated yourself on the subject. We have already stated time and time again that this was not our first effort at attempting to block wowmatrix. Closing the port was not an option. Blocking the IP was not an option. Requiring logins, captchas, etc, we did not want to impose on our users. Every thing that we did try to block wowmatrix was summarily hacked around as they continued to *knowingly* steal what we did not want stolen. We even tried ignoring them. The patch coming and the looming bandwidth costs and site crashes were the last straw. Some of you say we threw the baby out with the bath water. IMO, we cut a foot off to save the rest of the body. WowMatrix was a *parasite*. No matter how pretty that Venus Fly Trap looks, it's still a Venus Fly Trap.

The timing was actually very well planned. The intent was not to drive demand for their own updaters...

I think people are failing to realize that if they hadn't done it now, the site would be crushed under the wieght of all the WM users updating... and we wouldn't be able to have this lovely converstation.

Yup! My hopes are that we don't see "low bandwidth mode" ever again.

Cair/Dolby/Kael, can we get updated bandwidth stats for today?

That's it right there. Everyone whining about WM aren't understanding the intent. We (both wowi and curse) ***know*** that our updaters aren't finished and aren't as nice as wowmatrix. But, guess what? It wasn't about that.

The timing was planned for the patch. I don't know how much it costs to foot the bill on about 10TB of data these days, but we'll say $5000. I'm probably way off on my estimate, but that would be $5000 THIS WEEK (not this month). Combine that cost with continual site crashes, crawling load speeds, and time outs, and you will see that we did plan the timing very well.

I am still stunned by the number of people making arguments for WM. WM is not broken, folks. It just can't update from here or curse. Okaaay. So that means if you use addons that are exclusively posted here or there, then you will have to manually update them... OMG!!! I feel for you guys. You have to move that mouse several times and push buttons and click on files and... Oh the HUMANITY! WoWMatrix=Hindenburg + Titanic!

I respectfully disagree.
I know a lot of folks that are 100% uninterested in getting anything Curse anywhere near their hard drives. Which leaves author sites and WoWI, essentially.

Except WoWI's own client is, apparently, not up to par.

The message from an outsider is "Hand update or go get Curse, we don't care."
The net result, for me and mine, will be to now have a much lower regard for WoWI while not really having a viable option.

We'll use WoWI until something better comes along.

Ideally, WoWI would have either had the new client ready or updated the page on the old client to say "Due to our new alliance with Curse to prevent third-party updaters, we will continue to support the previous version of our own client until such time as we release the next version."
The current message is, in essence, "Nyah, nyah! You're boned. Better go get curse!"

I agree setting this on a patch day was ideal, but not having your own client and not having an updated message on the very page linked to by the front page article - the one that goes to the old WoWI Client - says bad timing or poor planning.

Unless, of course, WoWI really does want everyone to go get curse or to *grudgingly* continue hand-updating via WoWI. Probably with adblockers.

Not fully planned. Or maybe not fully implemented. One of those is only half-assed.

Then there are those like me who have a much higher regard for WoWI as a result of these recent actions. I offset you and I put my money where my mouth is. What do you do? Gripe about something free? And, as long as you have the option to not use anything, you have a viable option. In fact, I encourage you to make use of that option.