Curse CEO hints at 'premium subscription' coming later this year
by Natalie Mootz 
Jun 6th 2008 at 1:00PM
CEO and founder of Curse.com Hubert Thieblot revealed this week that Curse plans to launch a premium subscription service later this year. The service would cost $4 per month and is slated for release some time in July 2008. Thieblot mentioned the new service last Tuesday at a social media conference hosted by Under the Radar. Curse hopes to get 35,000 subscribers to the new paid service by the end of 2008, working up to a total of 100,000 members by the end of 2009. The conference presentation is available on YouTube, but unless you're a masochist or a business conference groupie, you should only watch the video if you have insomnia.
We have no idea what this premium content entails -- what you see in the presentation slide is all we've got to go on -- but it's a good bet that it will be out-of-game services. Maybe something like Armory data, player profiles, or even some kind of addon profiling system. Will it be worth another $4 a month on top of what we already pay for WoW? We'll have to wait and see.
Update: Mr. Thieblot has commented below and said that whatever the service offers will be "nothing that has been hinted at so far."
Filed under: News items, Add-Ons
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Beelzebud Jun 7th 2008 6:12PM
If they plan on charging a subscription to have access to mods that users made for free, then I will not support them at all.
Matthew Jun 6th 2008 1:19PM
Sign of a failed business idea #1: You cant justify why you are taking $4 a month from someone other than calling it a Premium service.
Sounds like a cash grab to me......
murderbeard Jun 6th 2008 1:27PM
i agree.
Mike Schramm Jun 6th 2008 1:48PM
To be fair to Curse, I want to clarify: we don't know why they're charging for this service. That doesn't mean there isn't a good reason, it just means that we don't know what it is yet.
Jay Jun 6th 2008 5:27PM
Its probably something stupid. They'll limit the amount downloads/uploads or something.. or offer "premium download" links. Then the premium service will probably remove advertisements. Hello AdBlock Plus.. I prefer files.WoWAce anyway.
Jay Jun 6th 2008 5:30PM
btw: I mean I know its hosted by curse or w/e but I prefer to use WoWace, simple one click downloads.
alrdye Jun 6th 2008 5:49PM
This could be a really good thing. I don't use curse for most of my addons now but back in the day, I would have gladly paid $3-5 / month to be able to access my addons when their servers had gone down due to new patches and what not. If they offered servers for the addons that paying subscribers could always access, that would be very worth it for some people.
Paymetohealu Jun 6th 2008 1:20PM
Completely off-topic, but..
Is the WoW forums down for anyone else? Or is it just me?
Nate Jun 6th 2008 1:41PM
Yes, been down for a while and the main website seems a bit off too.
DaraAllen Jun 7th 2008 9:13PM
I am so not happy about this. It convinces me that Curse has gotten too big for its britches. I've been using it less and less because of all the junk on the site. This will become the nail in the coffin to me.
Leviathon Jun 6th 2008 1:36PM
Sounds like they just want money to give some lousy perks like other sites.
darian Jun 6th 2008 1:37PM
They'll have to do some pretty impressive stuff for me to pay money for their site, beyond just removing the advertisement.
Generally speaking, addons aren't big enough for any of those "better download servers" schemes. That makes thing difficult, as it's not clear to me what else they have to offer they could charge for, or what they could add.
Signatures are already available for free from a number of sites.
Wowhead and other websites already provide quest/item/raid/skill searches.
Allakhazam already tracks auctions.
There are other competing Addon download sites.
Wowjutsu, and other sites, track progression.
There are more niches to carve, I'm certain, but as it stands one has to wonder what niche remains that one could charge $4 a month for. In fact, I'd wager that anything they make will be quickly duplicated by a creative college student looking for an interesting project to give to the community.
Hubert Thieblot Jun 6th 2008 1:40PM
I appreciate everyone comments. We will announce more details soon. It will be in fact nothing that has been hinted so far.
Angry Joe Jun 6th 2008 1:40PM
And that's why I like Ace add-ons
ShadowEric Jun 6th 2008 3:42PM
FYI, www.wowace.com is hosted by curse and many of the same people run both sites.
John Jun 6th 2008 1:52PM
If they can absolutely, positively guarantee 100% without a doubt that I won't get a keylogger, virus, or trojan...that might be worth $4 a month. I just won't go to curse or any site other than the addon author's for my addons, too many scares at curse and others to take that risk.
Natalie Mootz Jun 6th 2008 2:06PM
I agree. I might pay money for (1) addons I knew were not security risks and (2) automagic updating and restoring.
Rexigar Jun 6th 2008 1:57PM
I agree, if they can provide piece of mind of no keyloggers it might be worth it. If they can quality check and certify add-ons then it would be the place to go.
Kuroyume Jun 6th 2008 2:03PM
a service they could provide would be to keep a list of all the addons you use... so if for some reason you need to start fresh, you can just go to curse and download a big meta-package with all your addons... maybe they could also keep copies of your config files so you can have a complete backup...
PeeWee Jun 6th 2008 2:04PM
Maybe they should focus on getting their stuff to work first? Their lousy addon category filters haven't worked a single time yet, and their addon search engine is just utter crap.
Wait, I know! They want you to pay to get the working versions?