Actually, the only logical conclusion that anyone can come to, who has bothered to follow the progress of WoWAce, is that the "sellout" you are referring to, actually occurred a long, long time ago. Some people need a reality check.
Kaelten (and others) PAID for the hosting etc of wowace from their pockets, it wasn't doable anymore, Curse took up the bill, now we "merged". Sure, it's not perfect, but it was this or no more wowace. No one got incredibly rich of it, not even the "owner" of this community.
AFAIK the svn repository was guilty for all the traffic. Aren't there any "free" svn's to use? What about googlecode? Isn't that one free? Just asking. I still can't believe that what's happening was the best / only option...
AFAIK the svn repository was guilty for all the traffic. Aren't there any "free" svn's to use? What about googlecode? Isn't that one free? Just asking. I still can't believe that what's happening was the best / only option...
While googlecode is free, it isn't aimed specifically with WoW in mind unlike wowace/curse/wowi.
Kaelten (and others) PAID for the hosting etc of wowace from their pockets, it wasn't doable anymore, Curse took up the bill, now we "merged". Sure, it's not perfect, but it was this or no more wowace. No one got incredibly rich of it, not even the "owner" of this community.
That's precisely why I used the term "sell out" in quotes. I did not imply that there was actually a transaction involved because in reality, the aforementioned people have sustained WoWAce financially in the past.
The svn repo wasn't even a noticeable fraction of the traffic. It was files.wowace.com. The repacking of addons on every library update and the countless horde of mindless WAU users clicking update all addons everyday or even multiple times a day just to redownload all their addons that had a minor library update or a translation update for a locale they didn't even use was the major bandwidth problem.
And since WowAce was never ment to be an addon distrubtion website the goal of it was not to get as many people to use it as possible and 'make money'. It instead lost money, a lot of it.
Hopefully now that the repacking of addons on every library update doesn't happen anymore and that alpha versions are not the default for the updater, Curse will find out that the bandwidth usage has become reasonable and decide to let everybody keep the ability to update all addons in a single action. But on the other hand for the exact same reasons, you shouldn't have that many addons showing new versions every time you run the client so having to click once per addon with a new version isn't as bad as everybody is thinking it will be (everybody has a premium trial for now so nobody really knows right now).
That's precisely why I used the term "sell out" in quotes. I did not imply that there was actually a transaction involved because in reality, the aforementioned people have sustained WoWAce financially in the past.
I wasn't replying to you, sorry. I should have quoted the message I was replying to. I was answering to ozzsmeg's posts.
first of all I should say: Yes, I am one of those mindless drones, who started WAU before starting the game and updating the addons he had - without as much as visiting this site, reporting bugs or really doing anything else but using the things I found in WAU.
The reason?
I did not know any better. I got WAU the first time from a friend with a message along the lines of "Hey, look at this program. It´s cool! Now you do not have to look for addons for ACE anymore!!!". For me, WAU was nothing more than a "convenient way for users to update their addons". A great service someone did for the unknowing gamers out there. I was never aware that it was meant for beta testing OR that I was supposed to write comments. I was not even aware that the programs I got with WAU were beta versions. I apologize for this ignorance - probably I would have known better, if I had taken the time to just check out the site that the program came from. As I said - I apologize for this.
With "not checking the website" I did also not see any "Hey, could you help me out with some donations?" messages. I would have had no problem to donate. Actually, I would have been happy to. I am sorry Kaelten had to shoulder this financial burden mostly by himself. I personally think that even if the users who liked WAU had bothered to pay as low as 99 cents per month for this service, things would have been much easier and would have probably not led to the end of WAU and the following "uproar".
I cannot understand - and I tried now for a little while - how people who obviously liked the "free gift" (meaning WAU) they received and never spent as much as a dime on it, can now go ahead and troll around about how Kaelten or this site has "sold out" and how this is "pissing off users"!?
In the end: All us mindless "Ok, let´s update the addons before going into the game *click*" drones are very much responsible for the end of WAU. Honestly!? Why would anyone put alot of work in their programs and then PAY to have them "published"?
Kaelten, if you still accept donations "after the fact" - let me know.
I cannot understand - and I tried now for a little while - how people who obviously liked the "free gift" (meaning WAU) they received and never spent as much as a dime on it, can now go ahead and troll around about how Kaelten or this site has "sold out" and how this is "pissing off users"!?
In the end: All us mindless "Ok, let´s update the addons before going into the game *click*" drones are very much responsible for the end of WAU. Honestly!? Why would anyone put alot of work in their programs and then PAY to have them "published"?
There are more and more people every year who have absolutely no consideration for others and think they deserve - nay, are entitled to - everything. When the world shows them how wrong they are, they throw a temper-tantrum like a two-year-old or someone on the Jerry Springer Show.
It's very unfortunate, but as little as 20 years ago people were kinder to one another and made attempts to understand a situation before reacting. Now we have people going into grocery stores and grabbing ice cream only to drop it off in the produce section because they no longer want it...and they wonder why food keeps going up.
I will miss WoWAce Updater. I was an end user and couldn't find anything that matched its functionality.
I enjoyed its usage and cry that it is gone. I think it is with a heavy heart I will have to leave WoW for a while. I do not have the time to try and find a new addon manager plus with the economy being so bad. I just can't really justify a game that I don't play but 4 hours a week.
I thank those that paid for hosting the app. If I would have known that me using wowace updater was causing so much pain. I would have donated or paid a subscription to use it. I wish that a different solution would have been put in place.
My Ideas:
1. Make Curse rewrite their addon utility to use the guts of WAU.
2. Rewrite WAU to become subscriber based so that it only allowed access to the directory with a username and password.
OH and by the way... You didn't sellout. You did the best you could to maintain the Wowace community and have provided a great service for years to the wow userbase. Do not feel sad or upset by the posts of others. I commend you and your tireless loyalty to the end user.
Thraxius
Soon to be X wow player. (Might be back in a few months.)
Well now there's a better way. Update less addons less often (once you take out localisation updates and minor library/code updates you aren't left with many addons that need updating regularly). Subscribe to their project page on the wowace or curse site and get an email when they update. You can then open up the email and go "hey cool they did an update to fix the threat problem they were having on galv" and go update (totally made up example , yes I know accurate threat data is now attainable).
IDK If they attend to have a way of sending out emails for release quality or omg-you-must-update-now-major-bug-fix addons yet. A way of viewing simply what's changed would be nice but a way for the authors to click a button to notify users on a major bug fix change would be even nicer :D
With "not checking the website" I did also not see any "Hey, could you help me out with some donations?" messages.
No offense intended here but I do believe Kaelten stated that even donations wouldn't of been enough . IMHO it would of lead to the same situation once the donations dried up ...it would only have put it off to a few months or so. I think interest in giving donations would dry up after a patch day once addons started getting stable.
Your idea for a monthly fee type service is pretty good ...isnt that what Kaelten is doing right now ?
Your idea for a monthly fee type service is pretty good ...isnt that what Kaelten is doing right now ?
The problem people have with this, is that it's the site known as Curse asking for money to make updating easier. Even though Kaelten is now with Curse, people ignore this fact and focus on the company (It's not Ace (WAU), it's Curse (Curse Client)! Oh noes!! ;)).
It's unfortunate that the Curse Client isn't as smooth as most of us would like it to be, yet. But hopefully they'll be able to fix and polish it to work well, in the very near future. It won't be WAU (it shouldn't be WAU), but it will give us what we basically want. A one place app to update the most popular of our addons.
On that note, I probably will update my addons via SVN until the CC handles addon versions by checking the TOC, not the date, among other minor 'fixes'. Well once I get my computer back, that is. Hey with any luck, CC will be end-user functional by the time I get it back. :cool:
The problem people have with this, is that it's the site known as Curse asking for money to make updating easier. Even though Kaelten is now with Curse, people ignore this fact and focus on the company (It's not Ace (WAU), it's Curse (Curse Client)! Oh noes!! ;)).
Exactly they here "Curse" and "WAU closing" and immediately shut their ears against anything else we have to say.
Despite the fact that (correct me if I'm wrong)
Kaelten's been employed by Curse for months....
The new curse client is only in beta so we're interested in getting it improved (which takes time) .....
Curse has been providing bandwidth and server space unofficially for months ....
btw, we could have kept WAU in all honesty. The SINGLE biggest change that was made is the repo split up. Keeping WAU was entirely viable, if you know what drove it - keeping that going was totaly doable. ~!BUT we teamed up with curse.com in the proccess AND WAU had no current maintainer / developer to keep it going. So it died.
Like Seerah, my household is split too. My husband and kids just want to play the game, while I am more willing to poke and test addons. I understand the need to take the emphasis off of distribution and back to programming. Thinking back on all the posts, I realized its not the name Ace (I will always remember not to capitalize it now) that comforts me its the community of developers. That you strive to work together strengthens the projects. The same way as a bunch of sticks together can't be broken where the single stick can.
Having a community allows the projects to be able to compliment each other. Not bogging that down with users simply looking for distribution makes the connections easier to see.
I am still surprised the realize that the mods I gravitated to center around Kagaro, Xin and Nev. I enjoy testing their betas the best. They all fit together so well that I didn't have any issues come patch day. They are taking the concept of modules and running with it.
Thats fantastic. It keeps the coding cleaner and doesn't create huge monsters that take more time to support then to write the code in the first place. So give me time to learn the new Lua language and I will be more vocal on bugs I find. Being able to understand what the error messages are really saying goes a long way in fixing the bug.
And if anyone complains about how long its taking to put out a new version... I have stories of assembler and COBOL projects that didn't produce the data and even the professors couldn't find anything wrong with the coding. Then I will tell you about helping with the customization of the mod nurfedui for my guild. You think mobmap is a monster? Try following that coding. There are more patches to the coding then actual original coding.
Kaelten (and others) PAID for the hosting etc of wowace from their pockets, it wasn't doable anymore, Curse took up the bill, now we "merged". Sure, it's not perfect, but it was this or no more wowace. No one got incredibly rich of it, not even the "owner" of this community.
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Curse PremiumWhile googlecode is free, it isn't aimed specifically with WoW in mind unlike wowace/curse/wowi.
That's precisely why I used the term "sell out" in quotes. I did not imply that there was actually a transaction involved because in reality, the aforementioned people have sustained WoWAce financially in the past.
And since WowAce was never ment to be an addon distrubtion website the goal of it was not to get as many people to use it as possible and 'make money'. It instead lost money, a lot of it.
Hopefully now that the repacking of addons on every library update doesn't happen anymore and that alpha versions are not the default for the updater, Curse will find out that the bandwidth usage has become reasonable and decide to let everybody keep the ability to update all addons in a single action. But on the other hand for the exact same reasons, you shouldn't have that many addons showing new versions every time you run the client so having to click once per addon with a new version isn't as bad as everybody is thinking it will be (everybody has a premium trial for now so nobody really knows right now).
I wasn't replying to you, sorry. I should have quoted the message I was replying to. I was answering to ozzsmeg's posts.
first of all I should say: Yes, I am one of those mindless drones, who started WAU before starting the game and updating the addons he had - without as much as visiting this site, reporting bugs or really doing anything else but using the things I found in WAU.
The reason?
I did not know any better. I got WAU the first time from a friend with a message along the lines of "Hey, look at this program. It´s cool! Now you do not have to look for addons for ACE anymore!!!". For me, WAU was nothing more than a "convenient way for users to update their addons". A great service someone did for the unknowing gamers out there. I was never aware that it was meant for beta testing OR that I was supposed to write comments. I was not even aware that the programs I got with WAU were beta versions. I apologize for this ignorance - probably I would have known better, if I had taken the time to just check out the site that the program came from. As I said - I apologize for this.
With "not checking the website" I did also not see any "Hey, could you help me out with some donations?" messages. I would have had no problem to donate. Actually, I would have been happy to. I am sorry Kaelten had to shoulder this financial burden mostly by himself. I personally think that even if the users who liked WAU had bothered to pay as low as 99 cents per month for this service, things would have been much easier and would have probably not led to the end of WAU and the following "uproar".
I cannot understand - and I tried now for a little while - how people who obviously liked the "free gift" (meaning WAU) they received and never spent as much as a dime on it, can now go ahead and troll around about how Kaelten or this site has "sold out" and how this is "pissing off users"!?
In the end: All us mindless "Ok, let´s update the addons before going into the game *click*" drones are very much responsible for the end of WAU. Honestly!? Why would anyone put alot of work in their programs and then PAY to have them "published"?
Kaelten, if you still accept donations "after the fact" - let me know.
Toodles
Feyrun
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Project AuthorThere are more and more people every year who have absolutely no consideration for others and think they deserve - nay, are entitled to - everything. When the world shows them how wrong they are, they throw a temper-tantrum like a two-year-old or someone on the Jerry Springer Show.
It's very unfortunate, but as little as 20 years ago people were kinder to one another and made attempts to understand a situation before reacting. Now we have people going into grocery stores and grabbing ice cream only to drop it off in the produce section because they no longer want it...and they wonder why food keeps going up.
</rant>
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Curse PremiumI enjoyed its usage and cry that it is gone. I think it is with a heavy heart I will have to leave WoW for a while. I do not have the time to try and find a new addon manager plus with the economy being so bad. I just can't really justify a game that I don't play but 4 hours a week.
I thank those that paid for hosting the app. If I would have known that me using wowace updater was causing so much pain. I would have donated or paid a subscription to use it. I wish that a different solution would have been put in place.
My Ideas:
1. Make Curse rewrite their addon utility to use the guts of WAU.
2. Rewrite WAU to become subscriber based so that it only allowed access to the directory with a username and password.
OH and by the way... You didn't sellout. You did the best you could to maintain the Wowace community and have provided a great service for years to the wow userbase. Do not feel sad or upset by the posts of others. I commend you and your tireless loyalty to the end user.
Thraxius
Soon to be X wow player. (Might be back in a few months.)
Well now there's a better way. Update less addons less often (once you take out localisation updates and minor library/code updates you aren't left with many addons that need updating regularly). Subscribe to their project page on the wowace or curse site and get an email when they update. You can then open up the email and go "hey cool they did an update to fix the threat problem they were having on galv" and go update (totally made up example , yes I know accurate threat data is now attainable).
IDK If they attend to have a way of sending out emails for release quality or omg-you-must-update-now-major-bug-fix addons yet. A way of viewing simply what's changed would be nice but a way for the authors to click a button to notify users on a major bug fix change would be even nicer :D
No offense intended here but I do believe Kaelten stated that even donations wouldn't of been enough . IMHO it would of lead to the same situation once the donations dried up ...it would only have put it off to a few months or so. I think interest in giving donations would dry up after a patch day once addons started getting stable.
Your idea for a monthly fee type service is pretty good ...isnt that what Kaelten is doing right now ?
It's unfortunate that the Curse Client isn't as smooth as most of us would like it to be, yet. But hopefully they'll be able to fix and polish it to work well, in the very near future. It won't be WAU (it shouldn't be WAU), but it will give us what we basically want. A one place app to update the most popular of our addons.
On that note, I probably will update my addons via SVN until the CC handles addon versions by checking the TOC, not the date, among other minor 'fixes'. Well once I get my computer back, that is. Hey with any luck, CC will be end-user functional by the time I get it back. :cool:
Exactly they here "Curse" and "WAU closing" and immediately shut their ears against anything else we have to say.
Despite the fact that (correct me if I'm wrong)
Kaelten's been employed by Curse for months....
The new curse client is only in beta so we're interested in getting it improved (which takes time) .....
Curse has been providing bandwidth and server space unofficially for months ....
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Curse PremiumHaving a community allows the projects to be able to compliment each other. Not bogging that down with users simply looking for distribution makes the connections easier to see.
I am still surprised the realize that the mods I gravitated to center around Kagaro, Xin and Nev. I enjoy testing their betas the best. They all fit together so well that I didn't have any issues come patch day. They are taking the concept of modules and running with it.
Thats fantastic. It keeps the coding cleaner and doesn't create huge monsters that take more time to support then to write the code in the first place. So give me time to learn the new Lua language and I will be more vocal on bugs I find. Being able to understand what the error messages are really saying goes a long way in fixing the bug.
And if anyone complains about how long its taking to put out a new version... I have stories of assembler and COBOL projects that didn't produce the data and even the professors couldn't find anything wrong with the coding. Then I will tell you about helping with the customization of the mod nurfedui for my guild. You think mobmap is a monster? Try following that coding. There are more patches to the coding then actual original coding.
I just hope that when the dust settles we'll be in an overall better place with more good things in front of us.
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Curse PremiumWho changed my forum title? :P
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Curse Premiumrofl :D
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Curse PremiumFYI, 2 years = 24 months.