WoWInterface and Curse working together to help protect authors and other site-users - Page 45

***Cairenn*** · 04-25-09, 08:43 PM

And again, I ask that you read our FAQ about all of this.

Torhal · 04-25-09, 09:44 PM

Two separate entities with common goals yet differing philosophies being unable to work together isn't sad, it's a fact of life.

Bluspacecow · 04-25-09, 10:54 PM

Originally Posted by FaustusX

As a software manager/qa manager of 20 some-odd years, I tried both Curse and Wowinterface addons. Curse runs additional processes and triggered a bunch of spyware protections on my firewall and computers. Not cool. Wowmatrix, while it might treat the commercial sites poorly, treated my machine and system more appropriately.

Welcome to the discussion. Have a

See the real problem was WM was using the bandwidth of both sites without satisfactory reimbursement. The network admins of both sites have posted to say that their servers were being regular scraped. If you don't know this means instead of having a list of download URLs it had a list of addon pages it would load up about twice to get the URL to download from. Arrowmaster from wowace actually was able to pull apart it's source code from memory.

So IMHO both sites should never of mentioned the clients. I mean don't get me wrong they did nothing wrong here.

It's just that the instance their new beta clients were mentioned people concentrated on that instead of the real issue at hand. The issue that if they hadn't done this both sites would be going under. They would not of been able to sustain the traffic WM was generating.

30-50% of 1.3-1.8 TB Per hour. So much traffic that it has their hosting company regularly shutting down their servers in fear of DDOS attacks. Too much traffic to just write off at the end of the month (that's thousands of dollars worth of bandwidth per month)

Admins of both sites have never denied that WM is the better client in terms of ease of use , usability and interface.

It's just that they didn't like how they run their business.

That's the other thing - not a personal attack but as a software manager how would you feel if someone had an old version of say Excel installed on their computer? And that they were opening tickets for an issue that was fixed in a Microsoft office update that was released 3 months ago? This is exactly the issue the addon authors are dealing with.

Originally Posted by FaustusX

I'm loathe to install the addon management suites from sites that have appear to have bad interfaces, questionable features and security.

The new clients are both still in beta. This site has a forum dedicated to it's new client. I'll bet their is a forum on the curse site or a thread on the wow ace site for the curse client.

We would really love your input and feedback on the updaters in these forums. C'mon come get involved in the next version of the updater clients

Originally Posted by FaustusX

If these accusations are true, how foolish that all of you cannot work out a deal together and serve the needs of your user communities better. Just sad. Failing to collaborate when it serves your market and users to do so is sad.

Thing is they have. For at least a year now. I can remember Kaelten and some other addon authors having trouble with wowmatrix back in April 2008. If you don't know Kaelten's the Curse admin who was paying for files.wowace.com back in the day.

So admins of both sites and addon authors have tried repeatedly to contact them. They've completely ignored the peeps from wow interface and only spoken to the peeps from Curse. They offered to buy out the rights to the addons at a price that barely covered a fraction of the bandwidth costs they were incurring. Curse then offered to buy them out. The buy out price was ridiculously high.

So they were faced with either going under and there being no Curse or Wowinterface...... or block the traffic wowmatrix was generating.

So I see nothing wrong with what they did.

**Seerah** · 04-25-09, 11:16 PM

Originally Posted by honem

So IMHO both sites should never of mentioned the clients. I mean don't get me wrong they did nothing wrong here.

You want to know what's funny? Mention of the clients was not in the original draft of the news announcement which Kaelten and Cairenn drafted. I proofread it for them and suggested that it be added, to help the WM users adapt.

We keep saying that this wasn't about "pushing" our official updaters, but no one listens and/or cares.

Silh · 04-26-09, 01:45 AM

*delurks*

Well, I've been following this thread and some others for a while now, and I think the arguments on the multiple sides have been reiterated enough times at this point. Rather than add yet another attempt to restate the issues at hand, I'd like to mention a couple thoughts that have been going through my mind as I've been watching the walls of text fly by.

1. Symptom, or problem?

A number of people have alluded to this facet from time to time. Addon updaters are popular. Why? Since it gives a convenient method for players to update their addons automatically. Why do they need to be updated? Because they're broken due to a patch, or a new version has new features. Why can't people update manually? Since it takes too much time, or is too complicated. Why so many addons in the first place? Since people like the customization, extra functionality, 'Blizzard's UI sucks' or whatever...

Okay, okay, you can ask 'why' over and over again forever, but I think it can be instructive to look for the causes of the problem rather than stopping at the symptoms though they may be the first things you see. I can't say I have a solution or even partial answers to the issues. I'd just like to encourage people to ask *themselves* why. "Why do I want/need an updater?" "Why do I have all these addons?" "What can/should I do to deal with my problem?" "What can I do to help?"

Am I asking too much for people to take a measure of responsibility? Probably. I guess I'm just hoping at least a few people read and start thinking about it.

Oh, and one last question...

"Am I asking for more than what others can give?"

... which leads me to.

2. Will the emergence of another successful updater just repeat the cycle?

Wowace came up with an updater. It became popular... and the bandwidth soared... and the costs... and they had to shut it down. Along comes Wowmatrix, which starts eating up Curse/WoWInterface's bandwidth, to the point where they had to cut them off. Looking down the road, hypothetically... say WoWI's updater ends up working well for the end-user, it becomes popular... what then? I'd hate to have it end up the same way, with WoWI having to shut down because it can't handle the load.

I'm sure the WoWI guys have though of this... I hope!

(P.S. On a personal note... I've never used an addon updater of any sort, so I have no opinion on them. And yes, I run an insane number of addons, 92 at last count not including sub-modules, libraries, etc., which I update manually as needed. Design philosophy behind my UI: fall back to the Blizzard UI gracefully if something breaks. ie. most addons are for visual changes, data display, or data gathering; with very very few functional changes. That's what you get for occasionally playing on a laptop which can barely handle WoW, let alone stacking addons on top of it...)

(P.P.S. Apologies for my broken addons. One of these days I'll find the time to fix them...)

***Cairenn*** · 04-26-09, 01:54 AM

Thank you Silh for reminding everyone, us included, to look further than the immediate concerns.

thevoices · 04-26-09, 02:03 AM

Whoa page 13 and 15 were quite interesting....

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...id=1&pageNo=13
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...id=1&pageNo=15

Like the one person said about their use of WM I feel especially dirty for using it... I verified the piece of turning off lua errors and lo and behold its there 0 instead of 1. What the heck I feel as if i was violated.

Thanks for the welcome guy and gals... sorry was just being a baby and wanted some love ....

I have to say a massage would be awesome right now...

***Cairenn*** · 04-26-09, 02:18 AM

Originally Posted by thevoices

Whoa page 14 and 15 were quite interesting....

Like the one person said about their use of WM I feel especially dirty for using it... I verified the piece of turning off lua errors and lo and behold its there 0 instead of 1. What the heck I feel as if i was violated.

No worries, at least from our side. As we've said before, we don't blame anyone that didn't know. To blame someone that didn't know would be absolutely ludicrous.

Feeling violated because it was doing things without your knowledge or consent ... well, that's a whole other ball of wax and I just won't get into it.

Originally Posted by thevoices

Thanks for the welcome guy and gals... sorry was just being a baby and wanted some love ....

I have to say a massage would be awesome right now...

Bah, no you weren't. Everyone likes to feel welcomed when they join somewhere.

Wouldn't a massage just be fabulous? /dream

Yhor · 04-26-09, 02:21 AM

Originally Posted by Silh

<cut>
Okay, okay, you can ask 'why' over and over again forever, but I think it can be instructive to look for the causes of the problem rather than stopping at the symptoms though they may be the first things you see. I can't say I have a solution or even partial answers to the issues. I'd just like to encourage people to ask *themselves* why. "Why do I want/need an updater?" "Why do I have all these addons?" "What can/should I do to deal with my problem?" "What can I do to help?"

Am I asking too much for people to take a measure of responsibility? Probably. I guess I'm just hoping at least a few people read and start thinking about it.
<cut>

(P.P.S. Apologies for my broken addons. One of these days I'll find the time to fix them...)

I was wrong (it happens... often), there actually was more to be said that is worthwhile, thanks for saying it

. Personal responsibility seems to have gone out the window for more than just this current issue of WoW related -drama- (for lack of a better word). Any and everything gets blamed on the ones who try to do the right thing. Hell, burglars suing over injuries incurred from breaking and entering... and winning the suit. I find it very sad and demoralizing to a society. Why even bother fighting? Because someone has to. To blame WoWI for putting up a block to keep out the riff raff is just as sad and disheartening, to me. I don't understand why/how people can express anger towards them for doing the right thing, and because I can't understand it, it makes me

. WoWI wasn't hired to be a babysitter or school teacher or a foster parent, why should they have to hold someone's hand when they have problems that WoWI didn't create? I get

when I see the blame get put on an undeserving -entity-, no matter who/what it may be. They didn't sue WM, they didn't shut them down, they didn't do anything except stop them from harming WoWI.

Loved Ping Direction btw (that was you right?)

thevoices · 04-26-09, 02:26 AM

Actually I do feel very angry, when I use or used and addon Manager, I expect them to do exactly that. download and unarchive said addon in proper place and then go on its merryway... not change files it had no business touching. To me that is reason enough to cease use, not even the whole actually doing search and replace functions..... IMHO and its not so humble right now that it just down right underhanded.

Oh well guess it might be time for sleepy. I have been pruning the addons down need to get an a count but I have eliminated quite a few that were dead weight.

Bluspacecow · 04-26-09, 02:46 AM

Originally Posted by Silh

A number of people have alluded to this facet from time to time. Addon updaters are popular. Why? Since it gives a convenient method for players to update their addons automatically. Why do they need to be updated? Because they're broken due to a patch, or a new version has new features.

There's the thing tho Silh. People aren't asking themselves if they need to update their addons. They just do. They seem to have this idea in their heads that the new updates will always bring bug fixes and needed code optimisation when that isn't always the case. They have no idea what changes the new updates bring and some don't care. All they care about is their "update all" buttons.

Originally Posted by Silh

I'd just like to encourage people to ask *themselves* why. "Why do I want/need an updater?" "Why do I have all these addons?" "What can/should I do to deal with my problem?" "What can I do to help?"

More over they need to ask them selves "what's changed in these addon updates?" and "Why do I need to update?".

Like I said above. If the update for an addon isn't interesting to you , brings minor changes or is just a localisation change you should be able to get away with not updating. If your UI is stable you should be able to get away with *not* updating. It's not like it's a mission critical app that you might lose data from not updating. It's a game that if you have a problem with your addons the worst that can happen is either you disconnect or you get red errors sprayed all over you screen.

Originally Posted by Silh

Wowace came up with an updater. It became popular... and the bandwidth soared... and the costs... and they had to shut it down. Along comes Wowmatrix, which starts eating up Curse/WoWInterface's bandwidth, to the point where they had to cut them off. Looking down the road, hypothetically... say WoWI's updater ends up working well for the end-user, it becomes popular... what then? I'd hate to have it end up the same way, with WoWI having to shut down because it can't handle the load.

Problem with the WAU is the packager their server was running. Literally everytime the author would submit a new build it would package up a new zip to serve out. It made it possible for the average addon user to be able to update their addons 3 times a day with the WAU and get updates to their addons each time.

Thing was 75% of the time none of those users even needed those updates. It's lead people to believe that if they did not update every day at the end of a week they would have to spend several hours downloading updates.

This is not true - I update once per week , examine what I'm downloading and I only download 4 updates. And I only do this as I happen to enjoy the process of doing so.

IMHO I believe that once we get people periodically examining *what* they are downloading they're eventually going to see that some of those updates are relatively minor. Once they realize that much of what they are actually downloading with an addon updater program is needlessly minor updates then they will start not updating as often as they are. They'll eventually figure out that the addons they use don't update every day. Or even every week. And that is when the bandwidth use will start to go down as the servers aren't being hit every day by the same groups of users.

donchupa · 04-26-09, 03:07 AM

sad to say that im one of those mindless add on updaters matey lol, to be honest i just dont have the time to read through the update specifics, i like to be be abe to hit a button that checks and updates any add ons if needed before i log into raid, i seriously dont want red crap or addons not working mid raid.

Bluspacecow · 04-26-09, 06:05 AM

Originally Posted by donchupa

sad to say that im one of those mindless add on updaters matey lol, to be honest i just dont have the time to read through the update specifics, i like to be be abe to hit a button that checks and updates any add ons if needed before i log into raid, i seriously dont want red crap or addons not working mid raid.

But thats the thing. You update before Raid. Your UI is stable. You go into Raid.

So the next night you haven't downloaded anything new that may change how those addons act. There isn't anything new you have introduced that will get them to bug out and spray big red errors across the screen. If it isn't broken then why are you updating ? Why risk breaking what's already working for you ?

I have many of the common raiding addons on my update schedule. Altough I rarely get to raid I still keep tabs on addons like Omen, Deadly Boss mods, Xperl unit frames etc. And let me say that those addons I've listed don't get major updates that often. And nothing untoward has happened to me raid wise from my 1 week update policy.

I'm saying if nothing's broken why update daily ?

donchupa · 04-26-09, 07:02 AM

thats the age old ? matey lol, me i do it because just maybe the guy/girl who has written the code has found a way that makes me win the lotto at the same time

but as u state its mainly dbm omen etc that i watch and to be honest i cut my addons down to just 14 when wotlk came out and have stuck to a max of 15 no matter what

Silh · 04-26-09, 08:10 AM

Originally Posted by honem

More over they need to ask them selves "what's changed in these addon updates?" and "Why do I need to update?".

<snip>

IMHO I believe that once we get people periodically examining *what* they are downloading they're eventually going to see that some of those updates are relatively minor. Once they realize that much of what they are actually downloading with an addon updater program is needlessly minor updates then they will start not updating as often as they are. They'll eventually figure out that the addons they use don't update every day. Or even every week. And that is when the bandwidth use will start to go down as the servers aren't being hit every day by the same groups of users.

No argument there... Hopefully some people reading will ask those 'why' questions, but quite frankly the 'Update All' button is just much more convenient. It's less work on the user's part, in exchange for more work for the infrastructure. Story of human existence throughout history :P. Realistically... that's most likely not going to change.

Whatever happenned to "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"? Heck, I've got addons which are still sporting 2#### interface numbers in the .toc, if not 1####...

*steps out ... maybe I'll go debug my code -gasp!-*

Vyper · 04-26-09, 09:29 AM

Originally Posted by Cairenn

Wouldn't a massage just be fabulous? /dream

Pssst! Cairenn! I give excellent massages!

Slakah · 04-26-09, 11:55 AM

Wowace came up with an updater. It became popular... and the bandwidth soared... and the costs... and they had to shut it down. Along comes Wowmatrix, which starts eating up Curse/WoWInterface's bandwidth, to the point where they had to cut them off. Looking down the road, hypothetically... say WoWI's updater ends up working well for the end-user, it becomes popular... what then? I'd hate to have it end up the same way, with WoWI having to shut down because it can't handle the load.

I would hope that the adviews would cover the bandwidth cost for each person using the program and the updater program *should* use less bandwidth as the user will not need to download each webpage, even though people will undoubtedly update their mods more often, and if push comes to shove I suppose they could implement a system similar to Curses "Premium Service".

Also I can't be the only one scared of the fallout when they disable their "all in one button" :P.

But anyway I'm sure the WoWI guys have already thought all this stuff through

Bluspacecow · 04-26-09, 12:32 PM

Originally Posted by thevoices

Like the one person said about their use of WM I feel especially dirty for using it... I verified the piece of turning off lua errors and lo and behold its there 0 instead of 1. What the heck I feel as if i was violated.

Show me on the doll where the bad updater program touched you.

Sorry couldn't resist

DonCorneo · 04-26-09, 11:29 PM

Originally Posted by Cairenn

You guys didn't follow the bouncing ball I alluded to. Let me say it in straight out terms, then.

We didn't want to go here (breaking WowMatrix) yet. We wanted to wait until after our new updater was ready. But:

We.
Didn't.
Have.
A.
Choice.

Why would we not have a choice? Because other sites were going to be implementing theirs today, whether we did or not. If we didn't go ahead with ours today as well, we wouldn't be running at all today. They (WowMatrix) would have jumped from splitting their scraping of both sites to scraping only one site, our site, since they couldn't access the other one. We'd be down today, completely and totally, no one would be able to get to our site at all. How does that help anyone?

We are truly sorry that we had to do this today when we couldn't offer another alternative. We really would have preferred to wait. We're sorry that it had to happen this way. I don't know what else to say beyond that.

I kinda thought WI was more or less forced into this. Regarless of all else, I will stick with WI though you were planning of stopping WM eventually, at least WI was trying to plan it when it would be able to supply a client that would eventually replace WM. And please tell all who are working hard to get this client to "market", please do not rush it even though some of are in "great need" for it. I'd rather you take the time to get it right then release another Curse Client on us.
If you are looking for beta testers, count me in.

PS - Cairenn, you have done a great job through this mess. I really appreciate your levelheadedness when dealing with us knuckle-draggers. Basically, you are 100% responsilbe for making me understand what went on.

DonCorneo · 04-27-09, 12:12 AM

Originally Posted by Dolby

Who would pay for the CDN? I can't say I've reserched it but bandwidth is bandwidth and I'm sure its expensive.

Its actually our php server not able to keep up with them scraping our pages for every addon a user has. Its basically like a ddos right now. I wouldnt have had much of a problem giving them an xml feed if they contacted us and removed the ads from their patcher.

Keep in mind what we have done is only a temporary solution to try and stay a float.

Everything you said is easier said then done and takes time.

I'm sure a solution can be found though.

Instead of telling WM to take down their need-to-click-to-get-paid ads, did anyone ask WM to put ads up for WI? Possibly giving them the needed program for impression ads? Would that have been acceptable for WI?