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

[Tekkub]

You can shove the topic too.

[Bouvi]

I will never understand the WM mentality.

Lets say that you (you being the people complaining) lived in a neighborhood and had great internet. You notice that it keeps getting slower and suddenly you bill goes up due to bandwidth issues. You find out all your neighbors are leeching off your bandwidth. When you block their access they all complain that you cut off their internet. You tell them that you did not think you should pay their internet bills yet they still complain. Do you think you would open up their internet access and keep paying the bills for everyone? I doubt it.

Same thing here. WM was STEALING bandwidth. WoWI and Curse turned it off.

Party on.

Oh lookie I have yellow name

[-Dragon-]

Well whatever you did it seems to have completely broken the ability to look at mods at least in IE8. Page crashes the tab a few times til IE gives up. I also like how you disabled alternate updaters without bothering to fix your own first, GG. (No I've never used WM but I have used others and these changes broke all alternate updaters, so now I'm stuck updating mods manually, again GG)

[Republic]

Originally Posted by -Dragon- Well whatever you did it seems to have completely broken the ability to look at mods at least in IE8. Page crashes the tab a few times til IE gives up. I also like how you disabled alternate updaters without bothering to fix your own first, GG. (No I've never used WM but I have used others and these changes broke all alternate updaters, so now I'm stuck updating mods manually, again GG)

Hey look, another 1 post guy griping about the action taken against the petty thieves of WM. I'm shocked! How many more forum names can you possibly come up with?

[Tekkub]

Don't feed the trolls, it just puts you down on their level.

[Republic]

Originally Posted by Tekkub Don't feed the trolls, it just puts you down on their level.

Speaking of feeding...

http://www.wowinterface.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=22119

Get on it!

[-Dragon-]

Your stupid out of date updater found NONE of my mods to update it wants me to resolve ALL of them manually. I don't care WHICH updater I use I just want one that doesn't suck. Fact: the WoWI updater sucks and hasn't been updated for over a year. Fact: Curse updater is ridiculously bloated. You're making a new one? Super but that doesn't help us today much does it.

[Tekkub]

Originally Posted by Republic Speaking of feeding... http://www.wowinterface.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=22119 Get on it!

Keep trying, you'll find the button eventually.

[Cairenn]

Okay, I have a lot of catching up to do (d@mn that need for sleep), so give me some time here.

Couple things right off the top, though:

a) Some of you are really pushing it with the personal attacks. You know very well and good that we don't allow that on this site. Don't make me give you a vacation; and

b) You're right, we do wish we were able to have our updater ready before we had to block WowMatrix. But as I have said other places,

• Shirik is doing this voluntarily around his school work, and as far as we are concerned, his school work is more important. He has been busting his @ss trying to get it ready, but he does have to sleep some times. He's d@mn near put himself in the hospital a few times, he's skimping so much on his sleep, etc.
• I don't remember many people offering to step up to the plate to help us get it ready. We don't have the budget to pay someone.
• Think about this next part really hard: Why would we take this action against WowMatrix if we weren't ready? If you follow the bouncing ball, you should be able to figure that one out.

[-Dragon-]

Don't forget the browser compatibility issues

[Republic]

Originally Posted by -Dragon- Your stupid out of date updater found NONE of my mods to update it wants me to resolve ALL of them manually. I don't care WHICH updater I use I just want one that doesn't suck. Fact: the WoWI updater sucks and hasn't been updated for over a year. Fact: Curse updater is ridiculously bloated. You're making a new one? Super but that doesn't help us today much does it.

Does using an outdated updater, expecting to find updated mods, make you stupid? Hmmmm. I'd like to recommend you uninstall WoW and move on to something else, as it's clearly too much for you to handle.

Fact: guys who use outdated tools expecting updated results probably have to concentrate to breathe.

[Tristanian]

Originally Posted by Tekkub You can shove the topic too.

Careful Tek, Cair will probably attack any moment with a new emoticon

Edit: Damn, she beat me to it !

And to stay on topic :

Yeah, it it sucked.

Those were peaceful times. People were confident in their addons, they did not update them every second of every day, they knew where to get them, they knew where to whine when something was broken, in a reasonable manner. Part of me, misses those days. Sure, we did not have all these fancy new toys and repositories and AceX and whatnot, but we did fine. Thinks worked for the most part and everyone was happy. It was not until WAU and the later days of WoWAce that users became accustomed to being spoon-fed and turn into mindless "need to update" junkies. I still remember the time where WoWAce was just a repository with a couple of forums (used to be in the same guild as Rabbit at the time) and no files hosted anywhere.

Unfortunately it seems like WowI and Curse are more interested in preventing WowM from working rather than making their stuff better. What will they do next, a rootkit like Sony?

If they were forced to indirectly cover expenses caused as a result of the bandwidth leeching, then they did the right thing. It is very much within their rights to block whatever their perceive is interfering with their service in a disrespectful (not to mention costly) manner. Again, part of me wishes that Curse and WoWI actually did NOT enforce a simple block at this time, but taking it one step further and shutting down the websites entirely, in protest, for a couple of days, on this very patch day, just to provide an answer to the people claiming that "WM doesn't need these sites". Now THAT would be inconsiderate to the user base, indeed.

So, what will probably happen is WowM will find a way around the problem, then WowI/Curse will have to block that, then WowM will find a way around it...etc.

It is my understanding that even if they find a workaround, the sites can just break it again forcing them to conceive another workaround. I'll leave it at that.

As for deep linking, it is legal. Just ask Ticketmaster. They found out the hard way.

If it wasn't legal my friends and they were actually hosting stuff, other than scrapping links, a simple DMCA takedown notice would do the trick. They knew about this, so they did not even attempt it. It was the only way for them to turn their application into a viable "business", without actually having to bear the cost.

[-Dragon-]

Fact: There's NOTHING else to use right now other than doing it manually and going to ANY addon page gives my browser fits so I can't even do that.

Honestly I applaud what you're doing here, I'm not really a hater, it's just the way it was done really does suck, leaving us with literally no alternatives.

[Vyper]

Originally Posted by Tekkub Don't feed the trolls, it just puts you down on their level.

[Cairenn]

-Dragon-

Please post the problems you are having in our Site Help forum, with details as to the OS, web browser (yes, I know, you said IE, but which version), and blocking scripts, etc that you are using. We can't fix something without details.

/edit Whoops, sorry, you did say which version. Still, need all the information in a single coherent post in the Help forum. Thanks.

[Bouvi]

Originally Posted by -Dragon- Fact: There's NOTHING else to use right now other than doing it manually and going to ANY addon page gives my browser fits so I can't even do that. Honestly I applaud what you're doing here, I'm not really a hater, it's just the way it was done really does suck, leaving us with literally no alternatives.

So they should keep allowing other to use their bandwidth? They did say in the originally post if you have problems to post to a specific topic and they will work on it.

Or if it is that important you could download firefox as a workaround.

[ashes11]

Originally Posted by Bouvi Same thing here. WM was STEALING bandwidth. WoWI and Curse turned it off.

Without getting into any sort of technical discussion about how WM may or may not have worked and how much bandwidth it used, how was using it different in principle than manually downloading add-ons from WoWI while running a browser ad blocker? Doing so consumes WoWI's bandwidth while denying them ad revenues. I'll bet many of the people celebrating WM's demise have AdBlock installed. I'll bet all of those that do don't or won't admit to their own raving hypocrisy.

Aside from that, I agree with some earlier poster that regardless of how evil WM was, WoWI and Curse have been extremely inconsiderate towards their non-author end users. In particular, Mac users are pretty much screwed. I just had the misfortune of installing the Mac curse client, which seems stuck in perpetual beta. After a forced sign-up for a curse account that I don't want and a half dozen cryptic error assertion alerts, I now have the displeasure of looking at a really ugly application that's slow, extremely cryptic to use and extremely un-Mac-like, and doesn't seem to notice about half of my add-ons (including many that I know are on Curse). WM was no paragon of good Mac UI, but it was simple, functional, fast, and had no strings attached. So if the curse client is the good way of doing things, then I'd rather be evil.

Beyond Mac-specific issues, there was a right way to go about cutting off WM, and WoWI/curse didn't do it:

1. Wait until WoWI/curse had clients on all WoW platforms that were out of beta, fully functional, and relatively bug-free.

2. Wait until the current version of WoW had been stable and out for a while, so that there would be little need for end-users to update their add-ons while they transitioned off of WM to something else.

3. Once they decided to pull the plug on WM, they should have given at least two weeks of warning before doing so.

Instead of working to make users' transitions off of WM painless, WoW/curse decided to pull this stunt when it would be maximally inconvenient. All I can ask is, WTF were they thinking? I'm now educated on why WM is evil. That's great. I'm also really, really irritated at WoWI/curse, because they chose to make my life more inconvenient solely for the juvenile satisfaction of giving WM a big virtual middle finger. That's their right, I suppose, but I hope they understand that their EffU is pointed at all the casual users of WM, too. They could have accomplished their goal of cutting off WM and getting people to use their clients without nearly so much large-scale annoyance.

[Tekkub]

Originally Posted by Cairenn We don't have the budget to pay someone.

This problem should resolve itself now that you've drummed up all that ad revenue that WM was eating into, you money-grubbing whore!

*edit* How is it that whore is not censored but ***** is? This is a load of ****ing **** if you ask my ass.

*editedit* Oh look ass got through too!

[Bouvi]

If they did not you realize you would not be able to even post here due to the bandwidth being overwhelmed right now.

I have around 100 addons and I still manually update. No big deal as wowinterface sends me an e-mail when one is updated and I go download them and install.

What if curse and wowinterface did not exist I would have to go to 100 sites.

People are *****ing about these sites saving money by not allowing WM to steal their bandwidth. HOW DARE THEY? What kind of world do we live in where stealing is ok as long as it is convenient to you?

[Maul]

Originally Posted by ashes11 Instead of working to make users' transitions off of WM painless, WoW/curse decided to pull this stunt when it would be maximally inconvenient. All I can ask is, WTF were they thinking?

Patch days tend to be high bandwidth usage days. The more bandwidth the addon sites need, the more money they have to shovel out. WM was not footing for any of the additional cost they added to the sites on patch day. We are probably talking about additional costs in the thousands of dollars for sites that are already running on shoe-string budgets.

I think there were other reasons (good ones), but I shall keep that speculation to myself.