Automated updating of World of Warcraft add-ons is serious business.
User interface mods are an important part of World of Warcraft (WoW). While over the years Blizzard has limited the functionality of its scripting language to prevent massive automation of tasks, mods are still seen as mandatory by the majority of the player base. For some, this means a handful of mods that help with raiding, for others it means literally dozens of mods, each tweaking an aspect of the game.
Generally speaking, mod authors do it as a hobby, not a career. There have been a few exceptions over the years, with paid-for add-ons like Carbonite and RDX, but Blizzard recently laid down some hefty restrictions on what authors can and cannot do for cash. Add-ons must now be free, and the source code open. Authors can ask for donations on their websites, but in-game soliciting is now a no-no.
Apart from a few isolated incidents, most add-on authors congregate on two websites – Curse.com and WoWInterface.com. These sites provide not only a place for users to download the latest version of the mods, but also a centralised place for communication between authors and users. This has led to a situation where one or both of these sites have an effective monopoly on popular mods, with authors denying permission for add-ons to be hosted elsewhere.
One of the major issues experienced time and time again over the years is that when a major patch drops, a lot of mods break (although, to be fair, this has improved greatly over time). This leads to a massive spike in users jumping onto add-on sites trying to get updates, which tends to bring the sites to their knees. This has led to a rise in popularity of updater applications that automatically check for new mods, then download and install them. There have been a few such applications over the years, the important ones in this case being WowAceUpdater/Curse Client and WoWMatrix.
First, a little history. WowAce is a framework for building add-ons. Its popularity rose around the time of the Burning Crusade’s launch, and soon most of the popular mods were using it due to improved performance and low overheads. The WowAce website provided a code repository for add-on authors, and subsequently had the most up-to-date versions of WowAce-based mods. It also had an updater application, WowAceUpdater, that tapped this repository and updated mods in a quick and easy way.
Problems occurred when a patch would be released and important raiding mods would be intractably broken. Perhaps the biggest culprit this author encountered was the Omen Threat Meter, which was one of the two or three required mods for every raid guild. It was the only way of knowing whether the tank was going to lose control of an angry boss because, at the time, Blizzard had no accessible threat reporting in game.
Because the application was being updated two or three times a day, version compatibility became a major issue. It was not uncommon for people to be unable to see the threat of anyone running a different version of Omen, which led to a need to synchronise everyone’s versions on virtually a daily basis. In our guild at least, the solution was not only letting all the raiders in on the secret joy that was WowAceUpdater, but to make updating Omen before logging on to raid mandatory.
A lot of the time, the changes were minor and version compatibility was fine. But it was easier to eliminate the issues entirely through everyone having the same version. In other words, the number of downloads being served by the updater was grossly out of proportion with what was needed. What a lot of users didn’t realise was that WowAce was part of Curse.com, which was hosting the stable versions of the add-ons. But going to Curse involved navigating the pages to each mod, downloading, and then manually installing. Add to that patch day congestion, and the updater route was just easier.
Last year, Curse closed down the WowAceUpdater to much confusion. It then announced that it was working on the Curse Client, an updater of its own. This client went into beta late in 2008, with beta users having access to the full functionality premium version of the client. This provides a one-click update function, much like WowAceUpdater, but is much more inelegant.
There are also annoyances like the inability to remove the ‘CurseProfiler’ application which supplies data to the affiliated WoWDB.com website (and sucks up system resources in the process). It is unfortunately a very unwieldy piece of software, thanks to this system resource sucking. The Mac version of the client is also notoriously buggy, to the point where most people find it unusable.
A few weeks ago, with the launch of WoW’s 3.1 patch, the Curse Client left beta and now operates as a limited functionality free version and a US$30 premium version. The free version only allows for mods to be updated one at a time, while the premium offers a one-click update and installation process. Importantly, for add-on authors, 20% of the revenue goes into a pool, which is then divided up according to add-on popularity and given to authors as redeemable ‘reward points.’
Curse isn’t the only update option out there, though. For some time, now, the program WoWMatrix has enjoyed high popularity among end users, thanks to its simple updating and fast performance. It is also available on Mac and Linux, areas where Curse has not yet delivered. Unfortunately, the developers of WoWMatrix are seen by the add-on author community as leeches, thanks to some decidedly dodgy business practices in the past.
Central to this is how WoWMatrix was sourcing downloads from sites like Curse and WoWInterface, but not providing any compensation for the bandwidth. This not only meant that the hosting sites weren’t getting advertising revenue, but also that the extra load was contributing to them going down on patch days. One can argue that Curse, especially, is quite ruthless in its moneymaking, but bandwidth does cost and the massive load produced by a program like WoWMatrix inflated the bills significantly.
While this, at some level, appeals to some people’s liberal ideals, WoWMatrix went one step further and deliberately screwed with mods. In particular, it was notorious for stripping author and web site details from mods, and even making them appear to be up to date when they weren’t. A particularly notorious example was when WoWMatrix recently purchased the questhelper.com domain from a squatter and redirected it to its site. One of the most popular mods out there is called Quest Helper, and the author uses the domain www.quest-helper.com to direct to the mod’s page on the Curse website. If these moves were made in an altruistic way, then it may have garnered support, but WoWMatrix was making money off ads served to both its client and its website.
However, on the day of the 3.1 patch, when add-on demand was at its highest, both Curse and WoWInterface changed the way their sites worked with the specific aim of neutering WoWMatrix. Since then, the WoWMatrix application has been unable to update some of the most widely used mods.
The debate surrounding add-on updaters has been raging for some time. Recently, WoWMatrix made a statement that it was going to clean up its act, host its own add-ons, and properly credit authors. It did so in a FAQ on its web site, which clarifies the ongoing stoush from the perspective of the WoWMatrix team.
It outlines repeated attempts to first contact WowAce, then Curse, and then WoWInterface. This also includes accusations of Curse trying to protect its revenue stream by refusing offers of compensation for bandwidth used. This is, of course, a no-brainer. While Curse does indeed provide add-on authors with a range of services, it is a for-profit company and has every right to protect the business it has built over many years (I say this despite the many frustrations felt with its current updater).
Unfortunately, this history of antagonising add-on authors and the websites that host said add-ons is backfiring on WoWMatrix. Despite that it is now offering to host add-ons in-house, most prominent developers are flat-out refusing to take part. Firing up the application now results in very few add-ons that it can update. With the majority of these commonly used add-ons now unavailable to WoWMatrix users, it seems that there will be an uphill battle to not only regain respect with the add-on development community, but also to simply retain its current user base.
- Login to post comments
Supporting our habits:
Fresh confabulation