Neither. WowUp was born out of the author’s dislike for Overwolf and it just sort of ballooned after that. I’ve had conversations with zakrn. Overwolf’s Curseforge wasn’t announced as a public beta for more than a month after he said something to that effect.
I do know that very early on, and not long after he said that, that zakrn was offered to be able to continue to use the Curseforge infrastructure indefinitely so long as he was able to meet certain conditions with his app in the form of showing the ads that otherwise would have been circumvented. He declined and put himself at an impasse with Overwolf.
This, however, did not stop him from taking a similar offer recently from Wago. The best thing for the users and addon developers alike would have been for him to have taken the offer from Overwolf.
That developer wasn’t me. See above. Hence, resentment. You make a good point, but I feel as if I would need an army of players willing to go to bat for me to explain why I went against my own morals for the sake of the players, because, quite honestly, the last thing I need in my life is more anxiety over getting grieved by players who would like to willfully misinterpret this as anything other than my wanting to take care of the players so that they don’t have to worry about this anymore. I’m not set in stone on this. I have to sleep on this.
I understand your point of view and hope you do strongly consider the user portion of this when/if you come to a conclusion.
With that said it is a little odd to me that WoWUp would take ads from Wago but not Overwolf, if ads were really the only issue. I can’t help but think there’s other issues going on since it doesn’t make sense on the surface.
Anyhow, I’ll put my money where my mouth is and contribute $50 to your project if it ends up on WoWUp/wago. It’s not a lot but at least a token that many of us have good will in this argument and we’re not just blasting our mouths to give people a hard time.
Actually, screw it - considering you took the time to have a civil dialog with us, even with all of the disagreement being flung around:
Enjoy the $50 and don’t feel compelled to go one way or the other, but please do note a lot of us aren’t trying to be whiny for the sake of being whiny but instead take the path we believe protects us the most.
EDIT: Your twitch says you don’t take Streamlabs anymore, something I didn’t see until after-the-fact (Streamlabs is listed on your addons page…hope you still got it and it didn’t go to the void)
It’s cute that you think this is unique to WoW. You will always have large brained individuals being unreasonable, whether it’s the people expecting to make a living off an addon a game they don’t own, or people expecting updates to free content they have no say in. Both things are still unreasonable, regardless of people doing them.
It’s one thing to tip someone or to be able to receive a tip. It’s another, like Tomcat’s been doing, to complain that you can’t make a licence restricted addon your entire livelihood because the community is, godforbid, expecting Blizzard TOS to be followed in spirit and otherwise (and expecting TOS changes to boot). This is entitlement and against Blizzard’s entire expectation for how addons were going to work when they wrote their policy back in 2009. It’s also not helpful when he doesn’t explain why he didn’t do literally anything else to make a living that isn’t contingent on a fan work. This isn’t some “hobbyist” being part of a community, it’s someone trying to profit where a company clearly doesn’t want them to profit.
Correction, Blizzard owes the players when they’re creating content with the expectation of certain addons being installed and currently up to date. They are now dealing with a playerbase who are now happy to live with outdated addons to avoid the hassle of manual updates from the avoidance of Overwolf. It’s “optional”, but it does negatively impact Blizzard as much is it does the players if player enjoyment of raids is relying on third party leeches and subsequently they stop engaging with content or playing the game.
Being you jump up and down about things I never said, try reading the rest of the attached paragraph:
Tomcat was digging out his disability in an attempt to emotionally manipulate the reader. It’s more ableist on his part to carry on as he is and deride the agency that quite a few disabled people work hard to maintain. It’s offensive for people, disabled or not, to give a blanket “I’m disabled and that’s why I made really bad life choices!” and expect the rest of us who worked around their disability to sit there and tolerate it. He might be disabled, but he can’t blame every single bad life choice on it and it’s insulting to the rest of us for him to do so as if disability is a magical explanation for all terrible life choices. I don’t care what his disability is, it’s not a magical excuse machine if he can make addons in the first place.
Self employment is still employment. There is absolutely nothing stopping you from working your own software and releasing applications, mobile or otherwise, that do not depend on Blizzard’s goodwill. When I’m between jobs, I rely on my freelancing, which doesn’t cease to exist when I move between employers. Your skills being monetisable are not entirely reliant on a job for another person, even if running your own business is more paperwork and management than working for someone, you’re basically doing it now anyway by relying on ad revenue. You mitigate your losses the best you can until you find something better through networking, friends or other relationships you can form through your independent self employment. Employment isn’t easy for anyone, disabled or not, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do other things that aren’t gated by being fan work and having IP licence restrictions on earnings potential.
I’m sympathetic towards your plight, as it’s similar to what my mother’s had for years due to a work injury which destroyed her immune system, but that doesn’t completely remove all of your options (in her case, she’s now permanently bedridden). At the same time, self employment is not entirely reliant on a schedule set by other people, especially when software developers can launch apps independently of commission. You do not need to rely on Blizzard if you have that skillset and the time you used for this addon could be used to work on software with better earnings potential. I would be perfectly happy for you to set your addon on fire in favour of a better earning independent application on Apple or Google’s app stores, because that’s life and you don’t actually owe us anything in the same way we don’t owe you anything.
I completely understand that dealing with the government can be a pain, especially in America, but that’s not the mentality taken in places outside of America. This is nothing wrong or shameful in asking the government for help if life screwed you over. I live in a country where the government going above and beyond assisting the disabled, both those living independently or otherwise, is an expected part of their job and a universal right generated by all taxpayers. If you need to ask the government for help, there’s nothing wrong with doing so (especially as ours allows the disabled to engage in supplemental income in addition to their pension). You wanting independence from the government’s welfare is understandable, but my entire point is that there are smarter more fiscal ways to go about it, especially given Microsoft’s acquisition implications.
As far as these go, I’ve only found that building predatory casino-like apps or other scams are the only ways that are reliable in this area and that the rest requires more than just a ‘build it and they will come’ attitude and programming skills. App development puts both time and a substantial amount of capital at risk as you need both and could still end up with zero downloads to your app.
An app’s success or failure is more dependent on marketing than anything else. This is increasingly difficult since anyone with money can get a simple app made on fiverr and give it a try. The space is extremely crowded and making apps on fiverr doesn’t pay enough as that space is also extremely crowded.
I’m not interested in making a living by preying on people’s gambling addictions, so what else is there? I have no shortage of other app ideas. Maybe you know something about this that I haven’t already looked into, and if you do, more info via a direct message would be welcomed. I’m just glad I finally may have something more reliable that I guess I’m going to find out if it’s a go or if it fell through in about 2 hours from now when I get on a conference call with India.
Also, I’m standing outside of the Darkmoon Faire portal on both a US and an OCE server since the last 20 minutes and the portal is still here and now I’m realizing that I’m almost 24 hours too early for this event to be ending! When it does end, I expect it to happen at 2:59am on Sunday the 13th for me. It will be 6:59pm on Sunday for you if you’re in the Sydney (AEDT) timezone. This is all while the Blizzard calendar will claim this is to happen at 11:59pm on Saturday. We’ll see if this is more than just a confusing (but accurate) calendar API. Interested in seeing an addon that makes the calendar show local time for everything correctly? The biggest challenge to making that work is not making it work, but to do it without tainting other functions, but I know how to do that.
No, I was digging out the disability card in response to the “get a job” types of responses. You seem to have some experience from my side of things as well… how would you have me respond to a person who assumes life is so simple as to just “get a job”? Like “Oh, that never occurred to me, thanks!”
I’m 48, not 19. I managed to survive 4 years during this crisis and while I came dangerously close to it, haven’t fallen delinquent on any account in the process. Consider next time that a person will ask your advice when they want it and don’t be surprised if the dispensing of said advice in an unsolicited manner isn’t gratefully accepted… especially when paired with a condescending attitude. You attacked. How does a person who is attacked normally react?
Anyway, I am glad that the conversation has moved to one of more civility. Let’s keep it there.
Thank you. I didn’t realize I still had a stray link out there. I only recently stopped using Streamlabs once I realized that I don’t agree with some of their business practices which I wasn’t previously aware of. I can get the money out of there. I appreciate it.
I need to hear from the WowUp author before I’ll proceed. What he says may not matter in the end regarding what I choose to do, but I want to be able to explain myself to my users and understanding who I am dealing with is an important part of that.
edit * I just realized how the Streamlabs comment may have sounded. Have to fear, I don’t believe they have any issues when it comes to their payment processing. The business practices I’m referring to are in other areas of their business.
Any independent product release still requires marketing, seeking out target demographics etc. You can’t release any product willy nilly in any field and hope that an income spontaneously appears. It does take work, but if you’re not getting any job offers, developing these skills further is still far more useful than trying to make peanuts off Blizzard’s IP. Peanuts that are entirely subject to the TOS not being nuked at any time and are even more risky than engaging in independent or freelance work. Diversifying income isn’t a bad thing. I’ve put out toy little projects (namely putting my own toolkits up for sale) and have had helpful, if not huge returns that do help with expenses.
I totally agree. It does take a lot of time and reputation to get going with freelance in particular with the rampant undercutting in freelance. These same people getting cheap apps don’t realise that it’s only cheap because corners are being cut and the service is never what they think it is - what you are providing is the service, not the app alone. If you would like to use your reputation as an addon developer to get a leg up on opportunities, then I don’t think anyone would begrudge you that. The benefit is not totally relying on Blizzard’s abnormal TOS provisions (I’m serious when I mean what they allow is rare), because if that’s changed the opportunities for any income off addons is gone and you’ll be back job searching or freelancing anyway. Why take that risk, especially with new owners incoming? New owners who do have their own addon store for Minecraft.
Unfortunately, it’s all persistence and networking (or nepotism, in the case of the entire game dev industry). There is no easy or quick solution to breaking into it and building up a client list. Charge fair prices, do good work, have excellent service, provide flexible and clear payment schemes, make sure any IP rules are clear and spread the word around that you’re offering the services. All the usual rules of freelance/self employment. I’ve been doing it for over ten years now and the more time that goes on, the more people you know and more known you are, the easier it is to get work. If you still have contact with prior friends in the industry or affiliates, they can also help with a full blown job or other opportunities. There’s a surprisingly large amount of people who are very understanding about people from years ago popping up again, trying to get back into things. Best of luck with your call to India at any rate, because employment or a meaty contract goes a long way to financial security.
Being in OCE, I’ll take this a step further because this a problem that extends well beyond Blizzard’s inability to program a calendar. I don’t just want an addon for WoW (though that would be very nice as well), but a full blown calendar application that tracks seasonal events across various games and displays those times locally to my timezone without me needing to do constant manual data entry. No one, whether it’s FF14, WoW, Destiny 2, now Lost Ark, or any other game providing seasonal, weekly or daily content, bothers to localise their times and events for any of their games. If you created a standalone application for that (as much work as it may be), I would happily be a paying customer for the privilege of never touching another day/time converter ever again to know when content begins/ends or attempting to demystify moving daily or weekly reset times. It seems like a small thing, but the suffering involved in playing multiple games with friends overseas and trying to work out what happens when is real when you’re also a day ahead of the usual dates. If there’s an app out there already doing this without me having to bash in details myself, I’m yet to find it. I can’t speak for how popular it’d be (demographic research required as always), but as far as I personally go, I’d love a calendar that was local time accurate beyond being a WoW addon.
I constantly receive “get a job” from jobless people themselves who have no idea what my job entails in the first place. My response is usually a far less diplomatic “piss off” and given your circumstances, I’d likewise understand if that was your literal response.
See above. We’re all strangers on the internet and there are people both on the net and in real life who do have “I don’t want to” without a good enough reason that they’ll dogmatically stick to regardless of the level of self sabotage. Reasonable people who are willing to communicate the issue as you’ve now done are not the norm, so assumptions will be made until it’s cleared up. That being said, I gave you flak for monetising fan work, which is largely career suicide in my job field unless you happen to be a prior employee of the company where the fan work originates (and even then, only if they liked you). For 99% of professions, it’s not something to attempt unless you want cease and desists. I don’t think anyone should be relying on Blizzard’s graces regardless of their level of ability, because I don’t trust them to maintain the TOS as is with Overwolf’s takeover of Curse and the consequent customer backlash. If Curse had’ve been bought by literally anyone else, this very thread wouldn’t exist.
Incidentally enough, defending Overwolf is also the biggest reason for why civility is flying out the window. It’s not just about Blizzard, but Overwolf not kneecapping addon developer’s income to take a larger cut. Nothing here is guaranteed.
Most may not appreciate that I have a vantage point and (from that) a perspective on this that most players don’t have access to. There is a lot to this story and WowUp may not be so innocent either. I think that the best thing for the WoW community as a whole is to get the truth out in the open for whatever it may be so that players can decide with clarity as to what they want… besides the obvious ability to get their addons updated painlessly and without compromising themselves. Speculation and fearmongering are not suitable substitutes for this. Players should try to appreciate that Addon devs are players too. We share everything that players have at stake as well as much more whether it be our time, passion, or some supplement to our income. By appreciate, simply not being mean would probably suffice. The author of DBM can’t do so much as even tweet ‘hello’ without getting bullied.
It’s less speculation, more I’ve already seen at least one post on this forum from an addon developer (though I wish I could remember who so I could link the post) that complained of noticing less Overwolf revenue for their addons while having their usual level of traffic. There does seem to be genuine concerns that if a monopoly is established that they’ll be free to cut back how much they pay, making them a risk to developers as much as end users.
The author of DBM long since should’ve been offered at least contract work, when the game design hinges on his work and that of Bigwigs. Blizzard have directly caused this problem by refusing to add so many of these features themselves into the game and maintain them as part of the sub fee. I appreciate FF14 more and more for their refusal to budge on addon inclusion, if this is going to be the outcome.
I’ve heard that the more popular mincraft modders make a good living. I’m actually expecting things are more likely to either get better or stay the same for WoW modders because of Microsoft’s ownership. They’re more of the mindset to find a way to participate and amplify the opportunity rather than squash it and sweep it under the rug. I’d hope that they treat it the same as they treat their Windows app store.
I would first suspect the problem to be a firewall that Overwolf doesn’t know how to deal with. Just an idea to throw out there as it works for mostly everyone…
mind you, that firewall may or may not be the one you install on Windows, or one turned on in your router, or something your ISP is doing
I don’t trust Microsoft either, until they actually make a statement once they directly start running the company (next June or July?). Maybe there’ll be an incentive for more addons where developers are financially compensated, but maybe they’ll also change TOS if they feel Overwolf/third parties are making life too hard for their players (see the boosting community ban). I’m not willing to put total confidence in them until we see how they run Blizzard. The entire takeover is a garbage fire with Blizzard’s behaviour and the choice of fire extinguisher on Microsoft’s part is in question.
The real project I want to be building would be a solution to all of the issues that make us wait around and wait to find people to do the same things in the game that we want to do… aka a group finder done right. Something which would take into account that people want to still be able to regularly play with the same people as often as possible, but just plainly don’t want to have to choose one activity at a time and wait and see if someone joins only to have 30 minutes go by and they’ve still not done anything satisfying in the game. It would be a big piece of the puzzle in terms of helping players make new friends in the game as well without requiring 1 in 5 people to have a leadership mentality.
Of course, I totally believe that if it’s been implemented well enough that Blizzard (Microsoft?) would learn from these ideas and build their own, but by that time I would have been compensated (read: crowd funding before I build) for my time and the player community would have had all of the benefits to being able to use something that should have been in the game since 15 years ago. I’ve spent a lot of time examining this area.
This would not be an addon. I’ve checked and the API is too limited to do this effectively as an addon without Blizzard trying to shut it down - not due to it being bad for players, but due to how their network works and it could be a problem for them in that way. It would be great for the players and it’s something that with my expertise would not be all that difficult to put together as an overlay and without breaking TOS.
Ewwwwwww no. Hope that they treat it better than the Microsoft Store. Apps that are purchased or downloaded through that venue are crippled. It’s the reason I ask people to check if they are using DCH drivers for nVidia or AMD and if so to use DDU to uninstall and install standard drivers so the control panel isn’t hobbled by the Microsoft Store limitations.
I’m also not a fan of MS’ stance on trying to make XInput the only option. I can’t use XBox style controllers with my tiny hands. They created a schism that cripples my ability to play most games outside of Steam because things like my DS4 won’t work without external software that conflicts with a lot of other things. MS did this in an effort to force Windows users to use their branded controllers only instead of anyone’s controllers. HID is HID is HID, except where Microsoft is concerned.
Accessibility seems to be the least important thing for Microsoft, which is ironic given they make the Accessibility Controller. The XInput vs. DirectInput (HID) schism plus the removal of exclusive fullscreen without giving users a means of locking focus on an app so nothing can interrupt it creates a whole slew of problems for disabled players like myself. An example is Star Ocean 4. It has no true EFS mode, and if anything interrupts the app and takes you out of the game, even momentarily, the controller permanently loses input capability until the game is restarted. Doing the endless endgame dungeon or Cave of the Seven Stars? Better hope you’re near a means of escape where you can use the arrow keys to get out without going into battle, because otherwise you’re boned. You can’t even re-enter the “fullscreen” mode once it’s interrupted.
So no, I don’t want MS treating anything like they currently do. I want better. So do other players. We deserve accessibility, not hinderances.
I really just meant in the way that it’s a marketplace where from the user’s experience things are fairly easy to find. WoW addons inherently shouldn’t care about the complexities that you mentioned as at the end of the day as long as the store is able to serve and install the addon archive, everything else is up to how the WoW client operates. A proper full-text search, a place for a well produced description, perhaps a better way for authors to receive trouble tickets without having to roll their own system, and a place to spotlight crowd funding goals would be ideal.
I like the idea of being able to ask the community if they actually want something and see if they’ll chip in to make it happen better than making it and asking for money after the fact. The first way gives a much more clear picture of a “we’re all in this together to make this happen” situation rather than feeling like I’m standing in traffic with a cardboard sign and people inadvertently feeling guilty about it situation. Nobody, literally nobody, is providing that for us right now in a place where the players can find it. Patreon, sure… but people don’t go searching Patreon for addons that they’d like to have made.