Curse : curse

Win an Alienware M17x With the Alienware/Intel "All Powerful" Sweepstakes!

DoranM — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:27:18 GMT

There's only about two weeks left on our Alienware/Intel "All Powerful" where you can win the most powerful 17-inch laptop in the universe! The laptop is the Alienware M17x and it's an incredible piece of hardware and right now you can win one here at Curse.com!

Here's a look at the specs on this behemoth:

› Find more info on Alienware™ M17x
› Learn more about Intel® Core™2 Extreme Mobile Processor

Grand Prize: One Alienware™ M17x (value: $2849)

Processor: Intel® Core™2 Extreme Quad QX9300 2.53GHz
OS: Windows Vista® Home Premium (64-bit Edition) with Service Pack 1
Graphics: Single NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 260M
Memory: 4GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1066MHz
Hard drive: 250GB 7,200RPM w/ Free Fall Protection
Optical drive: Slot-Load Dual Layer DVD Burner (DVD+-RW, CD-RW)
LCD Panel: 17-inch Wide UXGA 1920x1200
Wireless: Internal 300Mbps Dual-Band a/g/n Wireless with MIMO Technology

To enter for your chance to win visit the Alienware/Intel "All Powerful" sweepstakes page!

Future Plans for the Curse Client

Kaelten — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:49:17 GMT

A few months ago myself and Adamar took over the actual development of the Curse Client. In that time we've taken it a long way, bugs have been squashed, ui's have been polished, and the experience has been streamlined.

However, we are by no means satisfied.

We've listened to the feedback brought to us by our users, we've examined them, and we've studied our options. In the next major release we're going to be doing a lot of things.

Some of these things include:

New features, such as UI Synchronization between computers.
Cleaner, more intuitive, interfaces.
Bugs will be squashed and problem code will be eliminated
No more popup progress bars!
Enhanced support for firewalls and proxies.

For our Mac users we'll also be bringing:

PPC Support
10.4 Support
A true, native feeling custom UI.

We are dedicated to the client as one of our most important products and will be investing as much time, energy, and caffeine as is needed to address the needs of our users.

I'll be keeping you guys updated as we progress including screenshots, screencasts, and further announcements.

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

Kaelten — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 19:36:42 GMT

Recently Curse and WoWInterface got together to come up with a solution for an ongoing problem. The problem in question is WowMatrix. The reasons they are a problem are many:

WowMatrix violates author copyright and intellectual property rights:
- They redistribute addons without authors' permissions;
- When they first started they would scrape the legimate sites for addons then upload them to their own site in addition to deep-linking from the sites;
- They edited authors' files to remove donation requests and links to their home sites, etc.; and
- They have failed on many occasions to honour authors' requests to remove addons from their application;
In a lot of cases the files served to users have been many versions out of date. This leads to authors having users complain about bugs, bugs that were fixed days or weeks ago in versions that are available on the legitimate sites, causing problems for both the authors and for the end-users;
Until the community raised a hue and cry, WowMatrix didn't even supply the authors' names as to who wrote the addon, let alone provide a link to where the addon was legitimately hosted;
WowMatrix leeches from the legitimate hosting sites without permission, let alone compensation. Originally, they scraped our sites so they could upload addons to their own site without permission, in addition to deeplinking from our sites. They have finally stopped hosting the addons on their own site, but they still deeplink from our sites, using our resources to run their program. Curse and WoWInterface use a lot of bandwidth every month which costs a lot of money. The way we pay our bills is through site ads, which are directly dependent on users viewing them, and premium memberships. WowMatrix bypasses our download pages, and, as a result, people are not viewing the ads. Of course, this means the ads aren't generating any revenue to pay for the bandwidth. At the rate they were going, if they were allowed to continue using our resources without any compensation, they were going to drive us right out of business. Not only are they stealing our bandwidth and preventing us from being able to recoup that loss, they also have their own ads all over their site and application. They are directly profiting from the stolen bandwidth; and
Due to the massive resource drains they put on our sites, we have all experienced heightened loads and weaker performance, especially on patch days. During those days they download so much from our sites that sometimes we have a hard time keeping up to the demands; thus causing legitimate users to experience problems accessing our sites. That's just flat out unacceptable.

For months now, both sites and multiple authors have been trying to come up with solutions to the problems caused by WowMatrix. However, WowMatrix just keeps ignoring authors' requests to remove their addons from their application, working around the protections we have put in place, and proving repeatedly that they have no intention of ever becoming responsible, legitimate members of the community. Instead, they choose to continue to leech off the community. Well we, Curse and WowInterface, have gotten together and between us we believe we may have found a solution to prevent them from pulling authors' addons from our sites to redistribute without permission and stealing our bandwidth any longer. Unfortunately we cannot release details on the solution, so as to keep it viable.

"Yeah yeah yeah, blah blah, get to the important question: What does this mean for me, your sites' user?" For the majority of users it should be completely transparent, you should not notice any difference whatsoever, other than improved site responsiveness during patch days. We hope that we will be able to revert the changes made to our sites eventually, if WowMatrix ever stops violating authors' copyright and ceases stealing our bandwidth and other resources.

If you were previously using WowMatrix to keep your addons updated, please use our official updaters (Curse, WoWInterface). You may also mark addons as favorites on both WoWInterface and Curse in order to be alerted when they are updated.

Kaelten
Administrator, Curse & WowAce

Cairenn
Administrator, WoWInterface

Addon Donation links on Curse.com

Kody — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 19:38:11 GMT

As just about everyone knows, recently Blizzard released a new policy that covers standards addon developers must adhere to in order to ensure their addons will not be blocked from running in the game. Part of this policy said that you cannot solicit donations from within the game as it is considered to be a form of advertising.

Yesterday, we pushed an update to Curse.com that displays donation info on the addon details page and download pages to support authors who have spent their free time enriching the gaming experience for everyone.

For Users
Not everyone is able to donate, and even if you can doesn't mean you have to by any means. However, for those of you who can afford and are inclined to donate I'd recommend asking yourself a simple question:

When you setup a new copy of WoW or clear all your addons. What addons must you have before you're willing to play?

Those are the addons I'd personally consider donating to.

For Authors

To setup donation info just follow the steps below.

Go to your project's page on CurseForge or WowAce
From the actions select "Edit donation info"
Complete the form and hit the "Edit donation info" button

From all of us at Curse.com, I'd like to thank all the addon authors out there who spend so much time developing addons that makes all of our gaming experiances that much better.

Happy Coding!

Curse Client 3.0 Release & New Mac Beta

Kaelten — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 19:51:37 GMT

Curse Client 3.0 Release

I just wanted to take out a few moments and let everyone know that friday we released the 3.0 client to our entire userbase. It's been a long time coming, but I feel it fixes the majority of issues people have raised.

Some of the highlights:

Redesigned User Interface
More accurate addon identification
Revaluated Defaults settings
More features (including whether or not to use embedded libraries)
Numerous bug fixes and stability improvements

Not only that but....

Mac Client 3.0 Beta Release!

We managed to get you a mac client beta out on Friday as well! This was a personal victory for me as I'm now actively working on the code for the mac client. In addition to the above changes we are happy to announce that updates are now done through Sparkle (same update mechanism used by Adium, Textmate and many other mac apps).

We are still in beta here as wxWidgets' implementations can drastically differ on mac vs pc, as a result we're working hard to iron out issues, and will be putting out updates all this week until we're at a more stable point.

However, there are a few...

Known Issues

Upload mistakes

Over the last week we've had a few authors mistakenly upload either the wrong file or files with invalid layouts that have caused the client's fingerprinting to mistake people's folders for the wrong addon.

Two known examples of this are Ace3 and Auctioneer getting flagged as Tournament Realm Spy and epgp. We've fixed it server side however the client won't just 'forget'. You'll need to remove the false match and in some cases reinstall the new correct match.

Mac Issues

A crash that can happen on load in the sort routine
A soft crash where the client stops displaying data and buttons fail to do anything
Menu options being decidedly 'unmacish'

Reporting Issues & Discussion

Windows

Mac

General

WowAce.com's Updater's Forums

Curse Client 2.1 RC1 Release!

Kaelten — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 20:35:17 GMT

I know it's been a while since I posted my last status update for the project. I apologize for the silence, but we're nearing payday!

So now, after several months of intensive development I want to bring to you guys the first release candidate for the 2.1 line.

What's New‽

Well, almost everything! Well, almost.

What were the issues again?

Here is a brief recap of what I posted in my last announcement as some of the major issues.

   * Ignoring manual deletions
   * Installing over addons
   * Downgrading addons
   * UI feedback failures
   * Poorly worded options and button text
   * Too much automation in some places, too little automation in others
   * Lack of features that are considered defacto standards
   * General reliability

Now let's talk about what we did about them.

What we did about them!

UI Changes

The UI has gone through some major overhauls. Hrm, how can I explain this......

The old client

The new client

There are more changes than can be seen in that screenshot, but I think it gives a rough idea of the depth of the changes.

New Features

Well we didn't get everything I talked about in the last message done. Here's the list. I've struck through things we've finished. Things that are works in progress I'm marking with italics.

   * Alternate Packages - It's back!
   * Dependency Resolution
   * Manual Deletion Detection
   * Alpha Support
   * Multiple Game Support - Even over network drives!
   * Version Pinning
   * Submodule support 
   * Saved Variable Scrubber - It's not 100% tested and polished yet.
   * Automated and Manual Backups 
   * Real Configuration Box - The game manager takes the place of most options.
   * Deletion before upgrade
   * Uninstalled Package Listing - It's the unknown addon listing.

We'll be finishing things up as soon as possible.

Changed Behaviors & Methods

Discovery and Detection of versions If anything we're too conservative now. We've gone through extraordinary pains to make sure that we know exactly which version of the addon you're using. If we don't know, we don't touch it. It can still get a little confused sometimes, mainly if an addon is shared by more than one project. We'll be working out a tweak for that situation shortly. Changes to Defaults Yep they got changed. You may not like some of them, but you shouldn't find them offensive! Popup Questions Well, 99% of the time you'll never see a popup question. Unless you're doing something that you can't undo. Like deleting an addon. We don't want a misclick to make you a sad panda...

The Mac Version

Do you want the good or the bad news first?

I'll start with the bad. It's not here.

The good news is, we're now actively getting it ready for it's first night out. I can't promise exactly when just yet, but Soon has never been so close. I hope to start leaking alphas out next week, but again I can promise nothing!

Conclusion

The one thing I don't think anyone can argue with is that this client is hands down superior to it's predecessor. There is not a doubt in my mind regarding that.

Is it perfect? Of course not. Are there bugs? Sadly, yes I'm sure there are. However, there was no way we could justify continuing to hold back this update and letting people continue to use the old version.

We're looking for feedback as we're getting ready to put this out there to all 700k+ users in the next few weeks. Please use the ticket tracker I'm going to link below to report any feedback. But please, try and see if the ticket already exists.

I also want to apologize to all you guys who've been struggling with the 2.0.0.14 client for so long. Support on it has been weak to non existent, I'm going to be keeping a tabs on things much much closer with the new client in order to ensure that the same backlog doesn't happen with this one.

So guys, last thing I'm going to tell you is how to get the new client. So make sure to check the link section below!

Authentication Downtime Tonight

CraigB — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:52:58 GMT

Starting at 8 pm ET / 5 pm PT, users will temporarily not be able to log in to Curse.com or create accounts while we move our authentication server. We expect the transition to take about 15 minutes. We will post an update if we expect this take longer.

During this time, Curse will still be up and running. You can continue to browse the site and download addons without interruption.

Curse Client Update - September 3rd

Kody — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 01:33:12 GMT

Today we're releasing the latest build of the Curse Client - the small utility that manages your game addons and submits data to WOWDB and WARDB. With the Curse Client installed, your game addons will be kept up-to-date, as they are delivered directly from authors hosting their projects at CurseForge!

This latest version is the most polished yet, correcting all known issues that the community has reported and adding filters to the Find an Addon tool.

You can download the Curse Client directly from http://media5.curse.com/dl2/CurseSetup-2.0.0.1.exe... or from WARDB.

Please report any issues you find at http://testclient.curse.com/

Note: This is a beta version of the new Curse Client, so please feel free to provide any feedback or suggestions you have, as well as bug reports!

New Curse Client Available to Test

CraigB — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 06:10:05 GMT

A new version of our Curse Client is available to testing. The next version of our client is a significant upgrade. The new version will have an all-new GUI that is much more intuitive than before. It also includes many new features. The first is an addon search within the client to assist you in quickly finding new addons. The second is a new function to share your interface with other people. This feature will tie in closely with the website, much like the screenshot tool. The rest of the new features will be disclosed as we come closer to launch.

We’ve also gone back and looked at the code to fix several bugs. A lot of issues that we were never previously able to reproduce have been identified and eliminated. Addon identification has also been improved. If you manually install addons, the client will detect them and attempt to match them against known addons. If there are many options, the client will then prompt you to pick the correct match. Lastly, it should be much more apparent when an addon needs updating.

The first test version has all the features except the addon management and news disabled. However, both are fully functional and can be used going forward. We will be enabling the screenshot and other features in the next couple of weeks. Whenever a new version is released, it will automatically update.

For those of you who want to test it out, you can download it with the link below. As with any beta software, it may be unstable. Please report any issues with the Report a Bug link at the top of the client.

http://static.curseforge.net/uploads/.../CurseSetup-1.0.0.16-Beta.exe

Note: It will overwrite your old client. Even if you choose to install it elsewhere, you will not be able to use the old client to update addons. If you wish to revert to the old client, you will need to reinstall it.

Known issues/upcoming changes

• Layouts are not final, and will change

• There will be a more visual indication when addons needs to be updated

• The client will detect addons in your directory, and attempt to find a match. We are tweaking the match algorithm, but the results should be very good. Let us know if you find something funny with the results

Site Status: Optimizations, Search Temporarily Disabled

ZealotOnAStick — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 04:18:40 GMT

Curse.com has undergone a hardware failure yesterday, and one of our media servers is essentially dead. The server is in the process of being rebuilt with new hardware, then will need to be reconfigured. Current estimate for this server being restored is sometime tomorrow (Wednesday July 16th).

While this server is in the process of being restored, our other primary media server is taking on the additional load. This has forced us to temporarily disable some of the functionality on the site. Media re-encoding for videos is down for the moment, as is search functionality for everything other than News posts. Yes, that's correct, temporarily, searching for addons is disabled.

We anticipate the media server being back online and functional tomorrow, and when it is, we will re-enable these features. It's not all bad, though: while our programmers were struggling to keep the site functional today, they were able to enact a number of database optimizations that should speed up the site noticeably.

Please bear with us for this period of inconvenience, and thank you all for your understanding and use of Curse.com and the Curse Network.

Curse @ E3: What games interest you?

Kody — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 05:02:18 GMT

We're going to E3 and want to know the games you want to read about! Blizzard won't be there, but we know many Curse.com readers enjoy more than just World of Warcraft, so here's your chance to voice your opinion on what you want to see coverage of most from E3 2008.

Based on IGN's The Big E3 List: 2008 Edition we've put together a poll below for you to participate in, and included some of what we feel will be the top games shown this year. The poll is multiple choice, so if you see multiple games on the list you want to know more about, select all of them! Don't hesitate to leave comments though if you don't see a game in the poll -- simply reply and mention the game!

Arena Junkies Joins the Curse Network

Kody — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 04:20:17 GMT

For over a year now, Curse has been looking for the best ways to support World of Warcraft’s growing PVP community – especially at the level of competitive gaming that the Arena system introduces. We’re just as passionate as anyone about gaming, and with that in mind we’re extremely excited to announce a partnership with Arena Junkies (http://www.arenajunkies.com). This makes them the latest website to join a stellar lineup of websites in the Curse Network. The crew at Arena Junkies is not only experienced in supporting their incredible community of passionate gamers, but they’re also avid Arena competitors, and that just makes this partnership all the better: both websites have a common interest in mind – supporting our passion.

As you can see in the Arena Junkies news update about the partnership, there are some very cool features in the works, and we will continue to develop new features to ensure Arena Junkies maintains the number one position amongst Arena and competitive World of Warcraft PVP websites.

Here’s a quick recap of the features, as discussed by Tyveris:

An enhanced talent calculator powered by WOWDB.
A robust Recruitment system – much improved over the current implementation.
And much more...

If you haven’t paid a visit to Arena Junkies yet, we encourage you to take a look. The community offers intelligent discussion regarding the World of Warcraft Arena system, and PVP in general. Head over and check it out!

Win a 22" 3D Monitor!

Kody — Sat, 24 May 2008 04:31:07 GMT

Curse.com has teamed up with iZ3D, makers of the world's first 3D monitor designed specifically for gamers, to give one away in the New Dimension of Gaming Sweepstakes!

From now until June 23rd, 2008, we'll be taking entries into the contest, and once the contest closes, the winner will be selected from all eligible entrants. The winner of this sweepstakes will receive a brand-new 22" iZ3D monitor, as well as the 3D glasses needed to see the games really jump out at you.

Just think, when summer truly rolls around you could be strolling through Outland in new ways. It won't just be the heat that'll make you sweat, you better watch out for that 3D Fel Reaver too!

Signing up is easy, simply head over to the New Dimension of Gaming Sweepstakes page and get started.

CurseForge Releases Today!

Kody — Mon, 19 May 2008 23:21:28 GMT

Today Curse is pleased to introduce one of the newest members of the Curse Network: CurseForge.com -- a website completely devoted to supporting video game mod developers. Our initial release will include full support for World of Warcraft AddOns, and in the future we will be expanding to support many types of game modifications, including Starcraft II maps, and even FPS mods -- so prepare yourselves; start planning your SC2 map projects now!

What exactly is CurseForge? The website has been co-developed by two long-standing, respected members of the AddOn Author Community: Kaelten, Administrator of WoWAce, and Ckknight, creator of many household AddOns such as Cartographer, Pitbull, Fubar, Cowtip, Parrot, and many more.

The goals of CurseForge are simple: to create a developer-friendly hosting platform for all of your project management needs. Included in the initial launch of the website are the following features:

Fully-featured Project Management System.
- Update your projects via the simple upload system, or automatically with several different Version Control Systems!
  - The following Version Control Systems can be used to update projects:
- Robust Ticket System
  - Allows users to create tickets so the developer is aware of outstanding issues with the project, or suggestions from users for enhancements. The ticket system is designed to be smart, so that similar issues are grouped together for easy browsing.
  - Also allows browsing of either the entire group of issues, or a single ticket under that group of issues.
  - Supported ticket types: Defects, Enhancements, Patches, Tasks, Other
- Every project has its own repository for easy committing of changes!
  - Project manager will be able to designate whether to sync the repository's password with their account, making it quick and easy to log in.
  - Includes automated / configurable Access Control Levels to grant only the access you want to give to other project members.
- Fully-featured Wiki
  - Every project on CurseForge will receive its very own Wiki, to store information about the project.
- Automated Packager
  - Automatically creates a zip file of each revision in the SVN repository for a project, making it immediately available for users to download.
  - These zip files are also automatically syndicated with Curse.com -- increasing the reach of a project more than ever before.
- Alpha / Beta / Release Distinction
  - Project managers will be able to designate Alpha / Beta / Release distinction, creating an "opt-in" scenario, where only users who wish to download pre-release projects with the Curse Client can do so, while those that only want stable versions can rest assured they will not download something buggy.
Ability to upload screenshots of mods
Forums powered by Vbulletin, one of the industry leaders in forum software.
News related to mod development

There are changes coming to Curse due to this as well. We'll be disabling project management on Curse.com and moving it over to CurseForge with the introduction of the website. This means project management will be disabled for the time being, as we transition over to the new system at CurseForge. We'll hopefully have it back and available very soon, so thank you in advance for your patience. We assure you the new management system is well worth the wait, and will make it easier than ever before to host your projects here on Curse.

Curse Client Update

Kody — Mon, 19 May 2008 21:30:49 GMT

Today we pushed live a new version of the Curse Client that addresses many of the issues users have reported, including a complete rewrite of the backend engine of the client to make it more efficient. We feel this is the most stable, reliable release of the client to-date, and hopefully you will too after giving it a try.

The first time you run the client, it will automatically update to the new version. If you haven't yet given the client a try, you can download it here.

A few of the major issues addressed with today's update:

Alert windows will no longer "spam" the screen -- taking up a large amount of real estate
AddOn Installation from the website was sometimes not detected; this is now fixed.
Logging into the client should be much more reliable now.

This is just the beginning of a huge week for Curse, so be sure to keep an eye out for further announcements today and tomorrow! Thank you everyone who has given the Curse Client a chance so far; we appreciate all the feedback on it and have many more changes and feature additions coming in the future based upon that feedback. We'll be able to talk more about that soon, so be on the lookout!