So plans are underway for wowace.com and all of its addon development to merge in with curse.com.
As it stands right now the following is set to take place eventually:
- files.wowace.com is being shut down. WoWAceUpdater, MacAceUpdater and JavaAceUpdater will no longer have access to those files.
- Developers will be forced to release their addons to addon hosting sites for users to download.
- Curse plans to offer a 1-button update application to replace WoWAceUpdater but will only be available for a premium subscription cost. A free of charge version is not set to be made.
This presents a minor issue for many here in that I know lots of people here use ace addons and have become reliant on WoWAceUpdater to keep up to date.
One of the things I dont like is the fact that this merger is with Curse.com. Im not a fan of their site design, host management team, or reliability/stability nor do I favor their in house developers. Over the last 2 years I've watched their site turn to complete trash as well as their apparent lack of ability to offer secure trojan/virus free downloads as a majority of infected addons which have caused WoW account hacks have been traced to downloads off their site.
The other issue I dont like with this is that Curse having turned a coporate eye to the WoW community and trying to profit off the market is only offering an update system at a subscription fee, making it a little harder for those of you who arent as saavy with computers will now have a little harder time updating your addons.
As things stand however, business as usual here wont change. I will continue to post updated addons on our site and am now exploring for a more improved system of file downloading then what is already in place to make it easier to navigate and view what is available. Im also looking at possibly working on some sort of web based 1-button update system that will help update those critical addons we use most within the guild and on raids so that we can make sure everyone stays up to date on things.
For the moment, I encourage you to use the download system on our main site for addons as I have many sources from where I get the updates posted there and I will be trying to work with some of the authoring teams of the larger addons we use to try and work out some sort of exclusivity with regard to releases so that I am less reliant on 3rd party locations for getting these updates.
Im also considering the possibility of setting up our own web SVN similar to that of WoWace and offering it up to some of the more common addon authors as an alternative to being forced on to Curse.com.
Just as an FYI for everyone who might be aware of this upcoming change with wowace, I will continue to post updated addons to our main site as I have always. I also want to try and improve that some for easier use and accessibility for everyone being that I know not everyone here is a shadetree programmer.
Thank you Shadow! I'm glad to hear you're able to stand up to Curse's evil plots and help us out at the same time. Thanks for taking the time and effort to maintain and help work on the addons and help the addon authors too. Yay for having a tech savvy, rebellious guildleader :)
That's depressing news. >.< Thanks as always, Shadow, for being ridiculously awesome and being willing to help us all out. :Bat:
If you need any help with that at all Shadow, please don't hesitate to ask.
Quote from: Nasanna on October 13, 2008, 05:54:33 PM
Thank you Shadow! I'm glad to hear you're able to stand up to Curse's evil plots and help us out at the same time. Thanks for taking the time and effort to maintain and help work on the addons and help the addon authors too. Yay for having a tech savvy, rebellious guildleader :)
Thanks a lot, it's so great that I can download the add-ons I want from our site and that i'm sure they don't viruses/trojan with it(really makes me feel safe lol) :)
This Curse.com takeover is proving to be more of a pain in the ass than I initially expected. As soon as I make some headway on these updates Ill post.
If I were an evil person, the things I could do to this site with such a descriptive error message....
If I had admins who let this sort of thing take place, Id take them out back and shoot them for the good of technology.
After seeing that kind of thing from curse, is it a wonder they have problems with hosted files getting infected?
Respectable web servers dont run Windows =)