Updaters and Such

[Vis]

I like the banner for sigs idea. I'd definately spam posts on my Guilds site to advertise it

[gaililao]

I actively use WM, it was the easiest system to me , but if it's doing damage , then dump it. I manually install any adds i need within a few minutes also.
I just think it's more of the point of being able to sit down , click a few keys and play your game at the end of the day. When this site updates finally, I'll try it out , heck it might even be better.

[merneith]

I'm glad Curse & WoWI took the steps they did. Both websites have seemed to work extra-snappy this week, which is an improvement. I've been using Curse Client for months (and in fact, I giggle a little at the folks who moan about how awful and hard to use it is.) I'm looking forward to checking out the new WoWI updater when it's ready to go.

This might be my first forum post here. I'm not sure. But you've all taken a lot of grief in the last week and I wanted to let you know you're appreciated. I hope Curse & WoW Interface have many good years ahead of them.

[Seerah]

Thank you, merneith.

[taco-man]

I just wanted to say im sorry to hear all the problems you guys are going through but i am excited to see the new updater when it does come out!

[Republic]

Originally Posted by Falter Well, I think the source for a lot of users like myself isn't the decision to cut updaters off. I acknowledge I always saw the business aspect of the equation, which is why I frequently just browse the site with ads blinking in my face. But, there are a lot of people out there like myself that help guildies with things like this and now we're being flooded with people asking for help in manually updating mods they need to raid that they were barely able to install the first time. And the only choice we have to save our sanity is pointing them to Curse's client. Every person that switches to Curse's client is going to be highly unlikely to return even after your updater is finished and that's bad for revenue (but good for bandwidth?!?). People are sheep and they are being herded to Curse and they will stay there until the grass is gone just like they did with WoWAce and now WoWMatrix. In the meantime, you might have pretty green pastures, but nobody's coming to graze. And it won't matter that Curse's grass is half astroturf. I hate pointing out issues without suggesting solutions, so... Consider allowing updaters to work again until yours is done Since bandwidth was the issue you posted and not revenue loss (yes, I know that's a part of having bandwidth), let the updaters work for the big tickets like ORA, BigWigs, etc.. Just give those updaters the bare necessities if you can afford it to keep the users using the updaters they have instead of switching just to Curse. By doing this, you could reverse the mass movement to Curse's client and maybe even grow your userbase, because people already have updaters working will stay with it until it doesn't. Remember those sheep from above? This is a small set of mods, but a large number of users, I get that. It takes bandwidth to push a smaller number of mods to a larger number of users, but I'm thinking longer term in that by not keeping those users on their existing updaters and off Curse, you'll end up with more bandwidth then you'll ever need because the user base is all at Curse. This would also take some stress off your developer so he doesn't end up pushing himself to get a product out that isn't ready. Because that will just further exacerbate things if it comes out and is functionally behind Curse's client. Right now, Curse has all the advantage, but I still think WoWI has the superior product. I don't want to see WoWI lose out. I know this is probably keeping you up at night and causing you gray hair. So let me end by saying that I wouldn't be taking the time to type these things out if I didn't appreciate the site and the effort that has been put into it. That I admire the abilities of the authors that post here and really like to anonymously and quietly troll about. I don't want to see it fade out by losing out to MegaMart, er, Curse. Further, all those attacks on you and the site by angry people, just try to understand that even those folks wouldn't be so angry if they didn't value the site so much. The magnitude of their anger reflects just how much they feel they've lost and that's a testament to the worth of the site and its community.

So, in your best judgement, it makes more sense for this site to go ahead and let the bandwidth theft continue in order to make it more convenient to keep your mods updated? Are you serious? You aren't even a premium user, imo you have no grounds on which to stand to tell the ownership of this site how to spend its money.

I'm not jumping on you for anything, I'm just saying you people who only focus on convenience are failing miserably to see the big picture associated with the COST of running sites like these. There is no way in hell this, or any other site, should simply lay over and continue funding an application made by people not associated with this (or any other) legitimate site.

Please keep the big picture in mind when you think about how things are really running these days. It is not this site's fault that WM chose to do "business" as they did. This site is not the bad guy. Your inconvenience is not relevant to the real reason WM should remain blocked from any legitimate mods site. Period.

If you consider the entire scope of this issue and look at it from all points of view (especially from the point of view as people paying for your convenience - the hosts), you will see the only sensible and logical solution is to wait for a legitimate updater to be produced that does not rip off someone else.

In the meantime, you could always become a premium member if you don't like the ads. Oh, one other thing, I don't buy the logic that someone else having a "superior" updater will impact this site's traffic in any way. This site has a very unique, professional environment run by people who actually care about the game and its community. Anyone who values such a thing will never leave simply because someone else can save them a few mouseclicks every few weeks when updating mods. You can't find what goes on here anywhere else. This is the highest quality WOW community on the web. Period.

[forty2j]

Speaking of WoWI updaters.. am I the only nutcase still using the old Java version (wowiuupdater.jar)?

I mean it works.. otherwise I wouldn't use it.. but it's klunky with a K

[Seerah]

Nope, you aren't the only one. There have been posts by users recently who say that it still works great for them, and previous WM users have tried it and got it to work, too. There's even this thread: http://www.wowinterface.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=22583

[dig81]

To be honest I tried WowMatrix just a few weeks before the blocking started and I thought it was terrible. It almost always failed to do a complete update, and sometimes didn't even extract an addon or two making them corrupt and causing many errors. Not to mention it installing extra data into every folder it touched. I've used the Curse updater for ages, and before that AceUpdater, in addition to the WOWI java updater for the few addons that Curse didn't update(Doublewide, Lightheaded, etc for example) and never experienced anywhere near the error messages as a did the few days I used WowMatrix. Not to mention, on top of all that, I just felt dirty using Wowmatrix, constantly paranoid, watching my task manager for foreign processes, and waiting for "Gold 1,000 gold for $3" ads to start popping up out of no where.

I do agree the WOWI updater leaves a lot to be desired but being I use the Curse updater as well, it is relatively painless when only updating the 5-10 addons Curse doesn't provide for me.

I must also give both sites Kudos, as another poster mentioned, both sites appear to be loading much faster. Keep on doing your thing.

[larkrune]

once upon a time i used both the wowi and curse updaters, and quit using either one after i realized i forgot to backup my addon folder before scrapping my entire ui i like updating by hand because i have the zips & rars on hand when i decide to scrap things and start over... bad habit of mine, i do it relatively frequently i recently installed the curse updater again to give it a shot, and will do the same w/ the wowi one when it is available. and really, i'll just be happy if both of them work on my absolutely lovely 28k dialup much appreciation for the work that goes into all of this

[sconley]

Originally Posted by dig81 It almost always failed to do a complete update

I've used WowMatrix for over a year and have very rarely had problems. When I did have problems, I went to the addons hosting site and downloaded and still had the same problem (reasonsable since Wowmatrix pulled the addon from that site). I used WowAceUpdater before that and had frequent problems (addons throwing errors in-game). I read that WowAceUpdater would install Beta and Alpha versions of addons. Don't know if that is true or not.

When I first installed the Curse updater (last week) I had a lot of problems. After messing with it for a few hours I found the problems were with the addons themselves not the Curse updater. My biggest Curse related problem was that it didn't always recognize my addons or picked the wrong addon even though Curse hosted the correct addon. Once I uninstalled my version of the addon and installed from the Curse Updater, that problem went away.

As far as WowMatrix modifying addons. I don't know what it did originally, but now all I see is that it adds one file to the addon's top folder. That's all the difference I see.

A lot of people are saying Wowmatrix didn't work, messed up addons, modified authors code, etc. I've had more problems with WowAceupdater messing up addons than I have with Wowmatrix. I have not used Curse Updater enough to give it a fair review.

Now the reason for this post. Wowmatrix was not the evil updater some think. Let's face it, enough people were using it that Curse and Wowinterface had to block it. Wowmatrix must have been working for enough people that it caused a financial problem for Curse and Wowinterface. If you don't like how Wowmtrix operated that fine, but don't attack the quality of the product they provided. I'm not saying you didn't have problems. I'm saying their software worked for a lot of people.

One last note. I've switched over to Curse updater. I'm doing the same thing now that I did when I switched to Wowmatrix: if an addon is not supported by Curse Updater, I'm replacing it with one that is. Here are the only exceptions: Carbonite (currently hosted on Wowinterface and it's own site), LightHeaded (hosted on Wowinterface), Zygor Guides (hosted only on their site; currently an add that I had to buy). The longer it takes Wowinterface to get their updater to work, the less likely it will be that I will use Wowinterface. If the Curse Updater and the Wowinterface updater won't co-exist peacefully, I will only use one (probably Curse). I'm also toying with the idea of marking all of my addons as a "favorite" with Curse and Wowinterface, and then updating them myself.

[Zyonin]

Originally Posted by sconley . I read that WowAceUpdater would install Beta and Alpha versions of addons. Don't know if that is true or not.

That is correct, the AddOns that WAU pulled where all beta or alpha builds in general. Yes there where lazy authors who had Release quality AddOns on the SVN that they never pushed to Curse/WoWInterface/WoWUI.Incgamers. However all of the major mods that WAU pulled down where beta builds. The lazy authors where simply there for easy AddON distribution. WoWAce was NEVER meant to be a release site. WoWAce has now returned to what it was always meant to be, a developer's site with the tools that developers need (forums, IRC to talk code in, version control via SVN/Git/Mercurial, documentation etc.)

When I first installed the Curse updater (last week) I had a lot of problems. After messing with it for a few hours I found the problems were with the addons themselves not the Curse updater. My biggest Curse related problem was that it didn't always recognize my addons or picked the wrong addon even though Curse hosted the correct addon. Once I uninstalled my version of the addon and installed from the Curse Updater, that problem went away.

There is a good reason why the Curse Client did not update "your" version of your installed AddOns: the file structure did not match with what Curse has. The reason why is the WoWMatrix DAT files. WoWMatrix drops .dat files in all the AddOn it installs/updates.

The Curse Client is coded to ignore AddOns whose file signature is not the same as the Curse version. The reason why is to prevent overwriting custom changes to your AddOns (such as custom textures/code). CC is being very nice in not touching those mods as opposed to both WAU and WM which both simply bulldoze the old mod, nuking any custom changes in the process.

Now the reason for this post. Wowmatrix was not the evil updater some think. Let's face it, enough people were using it that Curse and Wowinterface had to block it. Wowmatrix must have been working for enough people that it caused a financial problem for Curse and Wowinterface. If you don't like how Wowmtrix operated that fine, but don't attack the quality of the product they provided. I'm not saying you didn't have problems. I'm saying their software worked for a lot of people.

No one is attacking the code itself. The actual updater is a good one. The TOC updating portion of WM is not a good idea along with dropping .dat files in your AddOns. The rest of the program is fine.

However the company behind the updater is a bunch of complete 'tards (I want to use something much stronger here) who operate with a complete disregard for the AddOn community. They demonstrated this back when WoWMatrix first appeared in April of 2008 and they have not changed since. It's exactly the way any parasite would act.

I'm also toying with the idea of marking all of my addons as a "favorite" with Curse and Wowinterface, and then updating them myself.

By all means, tag your Favorites. I use this feature myself. The old and currently end of life WIU will work with your Favorites allowing for easy updating from WoWI.

[Cairenn]

We've said it before and we'll say it again. We (WoWI) agree that how WM worked for end users was actually very nice. Never said it wasn't. The problems with it from our end has to do with how it did what it did.

As for why we went ahead with blocking it when our own updater wasn't ready yet ... http://www.wowinterface.com/forums/s...&postcount=298

And yes, we know, we're probably losing users to Curse because their updater is ready and ours isn't. But, between ^^ and the fact that we put more concern on Shirik's "real life" (his studies, his paying work so he can afford to live, etc) than we do our updater .... it is what it is. =/

[septor]

I'd put money on, when the updater is ready, people will come flooding back.

I have no problem with Curse, or anything to do with Curse, but this site, and everything about it, is far more inviting than Curse ever will be.

[Ookami.kun]

I'm curious, and I'm sure it probably has been brought up in one of the multitudes of threads, but since I only read certain ones when they catch my eye I may have missed any conversations pertaining to this, but has it been proposed to possibly have WoWI and Curse join forces on producing an updater together that would be able to be used on both sites? Now, I must clarify that I am in no way a programmer, I deal with hardware on a regular basis so if this is a stupid question I apologize, but it seems to me that if it was feasible it might alleviate some of the issues brought up early on in this thread. I also have to say that while an updater would make things easier, after breaking the habit that was WAU way back when, I've gotten used to manually updating my mods and as long as WoWi (and sometimes Curse) keep sending me update notifications on updates to my favorites I'm happy.

[Cairenn]

The way we are making our addon will allow anyone that wants to the ability to write modules for other sites. So it is entirely possible for our updater to work for Curse's site if they choose to allow it.

[Ookami.kun]

Originally Posted by Cairenn The way we are making our addon will allow anyone that wants to the ability to write modules for other sites. So it is entirely possible for our updater to work for Curse's site if they choose to allow it.

Ahhh... that is a cool idea, but basically there is no, and will probably not be, any collaboration between the two sites to speed things up for those who are anxiously awaiting an updater. Either way, thanks for the info.

[Shirik]

Originally Posted by Ookami.kun Ahhh... that is a cool idea, but basically there is no, and will probably not be, any collaboration between the two sites to speed things up for those who are anxiously awaiting an updater. Either way, thanks for the info.

If you would check the stickies in this forum you will already see the API in an effort to get anyone who wants to work on it started. All that needs to be done by those that are confused by it is post a thread in this forum with any question regarding the API.

[Republic]

Originally Posted by septor I'd put money on, when the updater is ready, people will come flooding back. I have no problem with Curse, or anything to do with Curse, but this site, and everything about it, is far more inviting than Curse ever will be.

Who left?

[Cairenn]

It was a response to those that are pointing out that we are most likely losing users to Curse, because our updater isn't ready.

It is what it is. If we lose users to Curse because ours isn't ready, that's a shame, but we aren't going to change our stance that Shirik's real life is more important to us than our updater.