Man all Blizzard has to do is send an email to them telling them not to block third party addon apps and we would never have these problems again. But they won’t.
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I hope not. I don’t want to use Overwolf. I tried it and did not like it. I think I’d rather install everything manually. Like I use to do.
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Yep, but it wasn’t anywhere near enough, which is why he started a Patreon - I think he has over a thousand patrons now helping to fund the development of DBM, as well as material support from companies in the form of PC hardware etc.
It’s not just that (though it’s already bad enough - does Overwolf now have my Amazon account details?) but their app is one of those “must run in the background all the time” things that are getting way too common now (how many overlays do we really need?)
Curse, when they were Curse, was notorious for “bad ads” that spread malware, so I was stoked when Amazon bought them. Now we’re back in that grey area again.
Wowhead also had/has a problem with unmoderated “bad ads” but their annual price to remove ads completely is low enough to make it a must-have.
If Blizzard would stop randomly changing their API so that every major AND minor patch throws up a YOUR ADDONS ARE OUT OF DATE error, it’d help.
I lost interest in the reasons for API changes long, long ago. It’s just annoying now. I just tick “load out of date addons” and move on with my life, because 99 times out of 100 there is no meaningful reason why they’re supposedly “out of date”.
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Wow, the thing that people were afraid was going to happen, happened!
I am shocked. Shocked!
Screw Overwolf and the people who defended them.
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I’ll keep using WoWUp until I no longer can.
After that, I’ll simply revert to manual downloads. I’ll even downsize my addon collection to the bare essentials if I must.
But no matter what, I will not support monopolistic bullies like Overwolf. They can rot and burn.
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And this is why I refuse to use that tumor, trying to monopolize something that is free with it’s ad filled virus of a program.
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Their business practices are just straight trash. And because they really don’t have much competition because they own the entire Curse database, they are going to squeeze it for everything they can to make a buck.
They don’t care about the addon creators, only what they own and control. They don’t realize if all the creators stop creating, they’ve got a useless database of old crap.
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i got rid of my facebook. i even got rid of WhatsApp and swapped to Signal.
so, i’ll have zero issues ignoring overwolf entirely and manually downloading. an extra few minutes of my time is worth not supporting that company.
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According to the roadmap wowhead posted from them it looks like everything may break around December or February at the latest which hilariously is around the time 9.2 is expected to launch.
So many players who refuse to use the insecure overwolf spy/adware platform and preferred open source alternatives that don’t expose their machines to the potential of malvertising campaigns (or just hate ads and shady companies profiling their PCs) may suddenly find the patch landing, addons breaking as a result of changes, updates not working and they will be frustrated at among other entities Blizzard as some amount of them will just see addons not working, their experience not being great and conclude it’s the game that broke things by changing (to be fair Blizzard makes some really odd changes sometimes that almost seem like api changes for the sake of change or internal reasons without any consideration to it meaning work for people they’re not paying).
Personally I’ll go back to manually downloading with an adblocker if it comes down to it but I understand a lot of people will be very frustrated by this.
I think Blizzard should step up to the plate on this. I know they won’t. They’re cheaper than ever but hear me out.
My Proposal:
Blizzard should host the addons themselves (or allow authors to host via github but publish an addon updater client which authors register their github with) and poll which addons are popular monthly or so. Toppest of top addon authors like the DBM author should receive real cash monthly for keeping people playing and doing work the devs don’t then have to do. Where will this money come from? Well they’re not using sub money to pay for all those GMs anymore among other things. Lower tier authors that still have say 50k installs should still also get a little money. I doubt it would cost Blizzard more than a few million a year if that.
(In my napkin math estimation if they paid the DBM and author say $60k a year (5k/month) and other top tier addons similarly but slightly less (adjusting down for addon usage by the thousands) they’d be able to pay all the top tier addon + middle tier authors fairly with a cost of maybe $1-2 million annually which is a pittance to them. They could further reduce this by say offering addon authors that might only get a hundred dollars or so a month to multiply that amount by 1.5 if they take it in bnet balance which some probably would at least some of the time.)
All addons above a certain threshold of popularity (which is lower than the threshold to receive real money) relative to the current playerbase size should result in the authors also getting perks such as free 6 month subs and bnet balance. Both of which are essentially free for Blizzard to hand out (resulting in no outflows of cash) and which would mean successful addon authors could play WoW for free, get expacs for free, be flush with mounts, pets, gifts for friends, possibly even maintain multiple accounts. More importantly making sure addon authors for popular addons can play for free means they’re more likely to stay around and develop for WoW even when they’re not so into the game.
But that’s just a dream. Blizzard doesn’t care and one day if the direction of this game continues to head down the drain they’re going to find themselves without addon authors and maintainers and losing money over it and wish they’d done something sooner. But too little too late as is normal operating procedure at Blizz HQ.
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Same here, I have been using it since it was in beta and never had any issues with it. Hell it runs better than the old Twitch updater.
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Why would Blizzard want to accept the responsibility of running a mod repo, not mentioning the cost of it. There is zero upside in it for them and nothing but down side. I can already image people coming here crying that some mod is broken and asking Blizzard when it will be fixed.
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Well…gaming companies could produce complete/finished products, aka games that are good enough to be played whithout addons 
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Next you’ll expect politicians to deliver on promises or tradesmen to turn up between 8 and 10 not 3 and 5.
Outrageous! Preposterous!
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Long time ago (actually longer than people usually think) someone said:
" There is no such thing as a free meal".
Well, it is true.
Overwolf is bloated junk. I hope wowup starts their own repository that lets us drop money to addon devs and cuts overwolf out of the picture entirely.
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Blizzard could also get on the FF14 train a bit and improve the base UI enough to where many players could do away with most of the addons they use. Starve Overwolf at the source. Bake in the functionality of addons like Bagnon and Bartender, and give us built-in coordinates, etc. and I could get rid of most of the ones I use.
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Please take off the tinfoil hat.
Everything is NOT breaking. If you read the post, in December the new API goes live and all existing projects will have third party addon managers enabled by default.
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