WoW UI AddOn Development Policy discussion thread

[seebs]

Originally Posted by Tekkub I just figured it out... you're giving him sex aren't you? It all makes sense now.

Hah, no. We're both happily married (and not to each other). No, we just get along well.

How can you not like a lawyer whose office has a 7' poster for London Calling on the wall?

[Satrina]

Originally Posted by Tekkub I found a reply on the o.boards that is actually good enough to warrant reposting over here...

I'm famous!

[Gemini_II]

Originally Posted by Silenia Just for you haha http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3v8MRlqya4

It's actually from Monty Python
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhh7Iu76yUA

Originally Posted by Tekkub How much time does it take to read a 67 page thread? Seriously. ****ing slackers.

Tekkub, I think your posts are one of the reasons I keep reading this thread.

[Jesamyn]

Originally Posted by Gemini_II Tekkub, I think your posts are one of the reasons I keep reading this thread.

It's the only reason I'm still reading it. Guaranteed for a few laughs or at least a couple of smirks.

[Tekkub]

*Looks around the locker room*

I WIN!

[Kimmik]

Can I apologize again for being a bad enduser.... been doing a lot of reading... and I really feel like crap now... Never knew auctioneer had a site... and stuff... and damn now I am feeling awful and ****... I am sorry guys I didnt know... *wrinkles nose* All for the sake of saving myself a mouse click or two... I shorted the authors... I really apologize...

*goes to her corner muttering about never taking the easy path before looking into it again*

[spiel2001]

Originally Posted by Kimmik *goes to her corner muttering about never taking the easy path before looking into it again*

Meh... it is what it is. I actually think the auto updaters are a great idea, providing a working solution for the authors is part of it. WoWMatrix, well... that's different because they are hostile to the authors they depend on.

All the same, the concept is a good one.

That said, and speaking strictly for myself, the auto-downloaders ARE the reason I added an in-game notice about donations... it was the *only* place I knew the user would see the notice since the updaters bypass the author.

I know Cairenn and company are working on a solution for WoWI and working *with* the authors. Curse is trying to work on the rewards thing, don't know how well that will turn out... skeptical on the one. The problem is, those are the only two I know of that are tying to work with the authors. The rest are parasitic and, frankly, a very non-trivial part of the download traffic.

In answer to the earlier post about how much it's worth on my scale, I did actually already publicly state it several times here and on the WoW forums. But I'll both repeate it and update it.

From June 1, 2008 through March 7, 2009 I did it EXACTLY Blizzard's way... no in-game request for donations, no premium version of my software and a "Please Donate" button/link on every download page nUI had and in every "New release" post I made. In that time frame, excluding three people who were incredibly generous for personal reasons, I made $300 in donations.

On March 7th, I released the nUI Lite version with an in-game request for donations and nUI Pro as a premium "thank you" version. As of this morning, I have received $5,500 in donations.

Since removing the premium version, however, donations have decline markedly and the number between Friday and today is skewed because a LOT of people donated to me just because they were angry with Bliz... many of them even noting they had never used nUI, but were donating on principle.

It's kind of hard to measure because of the skew, but in terms of real donations, since having to remove the "asking" for a donation and having a premium version, I am fairly certain the actual "real" donations have dropped off very markedly. I'll know better by the end of the week I think.

Now... if I'm doing that with my paultry little nUI and just 200,000 downloads or so... imagine what Carbonite is doing.

[Dridzt]

Short version to see if I understand this:

With the initial "soft" advertising method you made 20 months worth of game subscriptions (300$/15$)
in a period of 9 months... ie you were playing the game "for free" while doing hobby coding
(which I presume is added entertainment value for most addon authors)

After going for the more aggressive marketing strategy you have made more than half the world makes as an annual per capita income....

I'm not sure if that says more about the state of the world than the state of our minds.

I do know that to me it makes all the talk accusing users (Blizzard's paying customers)
of self-entitlement sound utterly ridiculous to my ears.

[Duugu]

Originally Posted by Dridzt With the initial "soft" advertising method you made 20 months worth of game subscriptions (300$/15$) in a period of 9 months... ie you were playing the game "for free" while doing hobby coding (which I presume is added entertainment value for most addon authors) After going for the more aggressive marketing strategy you have made more than half the world makes as an annual per capita income....

What a weird prevarication. Or did I miss some irony tags somewhere?

[Republic]

Originally Posted by Sepioth IMO .. if you fall for that and ACTUALLY give "them" your name and pass ... well you deserve to be hacked for being an idiot. HOW many time do people need to be reminded to NOT GIVE OUT names and passwords??? It really amazes me that even today people actually STILL fall for that crap. I suppose they could also make an part of the code make it so a Epic item is deleted if right clicked. BUT if any of these things where to happen ... it would be plastered ALL OVER these addon sites fairly fast .. and downloads removed from the sites.

In a game where kids race to be the 1st ones buying 20k elephant mounts to do nothing more than sit around Orgrimmar or Stormwind at a mailbox, and in a game where the lure of "I will deposit 5,000 gold into your toon's bank if you let me log in to your account" works, are you really surprised that people also don't have the sense to protect themselves? I'm not.

[spiel2001]

Originally Posted by Dridzt I do know that to me it makes all the talk accusing users (Blizzard's paying customers) of self-entitlement sound utterly ridiculous to my ears.

To be clear, I trust you are not accusing me of blaming the users for this... yes?

That said, if you read the WoW UI forum at all and dont' come away with the clear idea that there's a significant segment of users who do have an entitlement mentality, I'm stunned.

None-the-less... I do not blame the users and I have no issue whatsoever with anyone who wishes to use nUI and not donate. If I did, I wouldnt' have uploaded it to free download sites. I respect every user who asks me a question in my forums regardless, and frankly without even knowing most of the time, of whether or not they have donated to support nUI. My users are my users and without them I would be doing something other than what I love to do... whether or not they have made the voluntary choice to donate or not does not color my opinion of them. I am simply grateful for the donations I do receive.

However, I see nothing ethically, morally or legally wrong with trying to maximize the return on the time and effort I invest in nUI.

EDIT: Just to put things in perspective here...

DISCLAIMER: I am *not* complaining about how much I have or haven't made from my effort on nUI. I am only trying to put what I am grateful to have been making the last couple of weeks into perspective.

Based on the number of downloads nUI has, the donations I have received work out to less than $0.02 per download. Again... that's *NOT* a complaint

Based on the estimated number of hours I have invested in nUI and how long I've been working on nUI, it works out to roughly $20 a day or at best, maybe, $3 an hour. Probably less.

RE-EDIT: Actually, on second thought, my calculation of $0.02 per download is *way* off because it only counts the downloads I can track from WoWI, WOWUI and Curse... it does not account for WoWMatrix or any of the other downloaders or the other sites that post nUI. So the actual number is, I'm sure, *way* less than that per download.

[eqsanctum]

Just posting my support to the community of authors.

I'm not in any agreement of the rules posted by blizzard.

I've been given an ultimatum, in my opinion, which is very very close to what SWG did a few years back. I posted my response to all this on the UI and Macros forum on the official site.

I've been a registered user for a very long time, since eqinterface first showed up and went through... four? Facelifts?

Just letting the authors know that I'm here support you guys whether you agree with me or not, and quite a few of us are looking into legal consults to see if they have the ability to do this.

I also phone KCRA TV channel 3 in sacramento california. The Head news editor plays wow by the way

Anyhow, chin up all and have a good day.

[spiel2001]

I have to confess that I'm actually less antagonistic about WoWMatrix. Mind you, I wholeheartedly disagree with what they do and how they do it, but more from the perspective of the way they leech from the legitimate web sites -- stealing their bandwidth, etc, than from the perspective of distributing my code. There are dozens of web sites that offer nUI for download without having asked and the GPL3 pretty much gives them the right to distribute freely.

From a purely pragmatic point of view, I am more than aware of the fact that a lot of users never would have found nUI if it were not for WoWMatrix. They do put me in the position of having to figure out how to communicate with my users -- as do all of the other sites that post nUI for download without my knowledge -- but the do nonetheless help me distribute it.

As for what they do to WoWI, Curse, etc... I think they should be summarily shot in both knees, drawn, quartered and drug through the streets.

I had not thought to test to see if they were removing my in-game messages. I'll have to have a look at that, now that that subject has come up. If they are, that changes the game bigtime because then they are not only leeching off of the download sites, they're also violating my copyright.

EDIT: typoh'z

[Xruptor]

I can't imagine how frustrated the people that are paying for Carbonite are. The devs have refused to say anything to this day about the issue. I'm sure as previously mentioned they are taking trivial legal action on this and may possibly be speaking to a lawyer.

Still as paying customers they deserve some sort of response from the devs. Not speaking to your customer base and not giving them support on a product they are paying for is a big no no; Regardless of legalities it's just proper business practice.

If they aren't allowed to speak specifically on the matter, a simple "Were looking into the situation." would suffice. It's harmless and would not in danger their business in the least.

I'm just mentioning this because I do read the forums on Carboniteaddon.com since the UI Policy Wars started. Tons of people there are eager for a response.

[spiel2001]

Originally Posted by Derkyle t's just proper business practice

Agreed. Fully... it was the first thing I felt compelled to do with my own user base... start out by telling them I don't know what I'm doing yet, but I'm aware of the problem and looking at it, then follow up by telling them what I'm doing.

[Xruptor]

Originally Posted by spiel2001 Agreed. Fully... it was the first thing I felt compelled to do with my own user base... start out by telling them I don't know what I'm doing yet, but I'm aware of the problem and looking at it, then follow up by telling them what I'm doing.

Thanks spiel2001, I'm sure I'm not the only one that feels that way. Keeping your customers in the dark is not a very good way of keeping customers. It's my opinion of course but I think it's fair in the least.

The Carbonite devs really should say something IMHO.

[Satrina]

I expect that their lawyers have said to not say anything just yet.

[Duugu]

Originally Posted by Satrina I expect that their lawyers have said to not say anything just yet.

Or the new marketing policy says "Only good news are valid news".

Or they're just on vacation ... spending all the money for tropical drinks and stuff.

Or the dog ate the statement ...

or ...

[Xruptor]

Originally Posted by Satrina I expect that their lawyers have said to not say anything just yet.

That's a poor excuse to keep your customers in the dark. Instead of speaking about the UI policies, you can say something like, "We are currently speaking to legal advisors." Simple and efficient.

That at least would be something.

[mrsquiggle]

Originally Posted by Derkyle Still as paying customers they deserve some sort of response from the devs. Not speaking to your customer base and not giving them support on a product they are paying for is a big no no; Regardless of legalities it's just proper business practice.

1. This news just broke on Friday.
2. The addon still works.
3. Maybe they can't give an answer until they have one.