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6 blue posts to read before Diablo 3's launch
Cross-realm zones coming soon
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsMMOUI Minion is coming
by Eliah Hecht 
May 7th 2009 at 4:00PM
Here are some salient points about Minion:
- Will work on Windows, Mac and Linux.
- Has an option to auto-update, set to "off" by default.
- There will be a premium version, but the only difference will be that premium users don't see ads. In contrast to the Curse client, the non-premium version of Minion is not crippled, and will have an update-all button and full download speed.
- If an author enables donation requests, they will show up in the updater.
Most interesting to me is the module system that the client will support. There's going to be an API in Minion so that anyone who wants to can write plug-in modules; for instance, Curse could write a module that would let Minion users update addons from Curse in Minion. They could show their own ads, and make their own decisions about whether to enable/disable "premium" features for the module. Security concerns for third-party modules are addressed here.
WoWInterface is asking that feedback be left on their MMOUI Minion forum. Without having used it, all I can say is the UI looks a little iffy (somewhere between Curse and Matrix in quality, in my opinion) - for instance, Mac apps don't generally have menus under a window's title bar. Anyway, I'm looking forward to giving it a spin, and kudos to the WoW Interface team for not crippling their free client.
Filed under: News items, Add-Ons
Reader Comments (Page 6 of 6)
Hoggersbud May 9th 2009 12:24AM
>When they blocked WoWmatrix, they didnt hurt WoWmatrix one bit.
You're confused. They were not interested in hurting WoWMatrix.
They were interested in controlling the usage of the bandwidth they were paying for.
Cairenn May 9th 2009 2:59AM
Vidi,
I can't answer all your concerns over here because WowInsider limits the number of links you are allowed to post, etc.
So, I have made a post for you here, if you care to read it:
http://www.wowinterface.com/forums/showpost.php?p=134611&postcount=1200
wobin May 9th 2009 7:24AM
Well you said it yourself: "NEVER pay for something you can get for FREE."
Clearly you don't donate to authors. You don't care that they have to spend their time to provide you with an addon. You don't care that the sites have to spend money to provide you with availability to an addon.
So really, you have no stake whatsoever in this debate. You don't pay for any product, you have no right to make demands about it.
You get what you pay for. Since you refuse to pay for anything, even if it is in time spent, or donated, you -get- nothing.
Vidi May 9th 2009 4:49AM
Thank you Cairenn
You just proved me correct.
You claim in your post that WoWInterface has known they needed to act against WoW Matrix since Oct of 2007.
thats what? like a year and a half????
You have had a year and a half to come up with a working alternative to WoWMatrix and have released nothing. Not even a Beta until after you shut down the player base on 3.1 patch day.
You knew ( based on your own quotes ) the consequences and the inconvenience this would place upon the player base but WoWInterface did it anyway and then tried to claim that they couldn't help it because Curse was doing it.
I'm actually more offended now that you've shown that you can't even admit what you did when even you provide the evidence for it. I just wish people could be honest and just tell the truth for a change instead of trying to twist what you did.
I think its hilarious that in those threads you seem sooooo concerned about copyright infringement.
The addon community is a volunteer community. Blizzard saw to that. Donations are ok but its a non profit community. Except for WoWInterface and Curse.com...hmmmm you guys get to charge for premium access to the addons.
Amazing how you who do no actual work on the addons are the ones who get to profit from them.
It's quite a scam you got going there.
wobin May 9th 2009 7:46AM
You really think they do no work? They have done far more for the addon community than you ever have or will. They developed the tools/bug reporting/repositories/etc that enable authors to develop their addons in the best available environment, they worked hand in hand with the addon community to give them the best possible platform to work with.
Acreon for sure did not care about how the authors had to work. They only saw us as a money making opportunity, and milked it for all they could before getting shut down. And they're still trying to follow your example and get everything for free, without paying for it in effort or example.
You, the self proclaimed "Never pay for anything if you can get it for free", waltz into the thread, complaining about how hard up you were on patch day, after all the time and money you've spent supporting the system, and you have the gall to say "Oh I bet you're raking in fat sacks of cash with no effort".
If it weren't for these two sites, WM would not even have existed.
So please. Go be happy with WM as it matches your ideals, and leave the community to the rest of us.
Shadoweric May 9th 2009 12:03PM
A year and a half because in the meantime they tried to talk to WM. Sure, you can go and believe WM's newly published FAQ that claims Curse/WoWI ignored them, but ask yourself why they didn't stop WM sooner then?
You might also want to pay attention to the fact that Minion's developer does that in his spare time, it's not his job.
What truth is being twisted there? It's true that if only Curse had blocked WM, WoWI would have been crushed under the load on patch day. How is this a copout answer? It's logical, for crying out loud. Try being a bit more open-minded and seeing things from their point of view, even if you disagree with blocking WM.
Also, this blocking of WM took place 24 hours before 3.1 came out, before anybody knew the patch was that Tuesday (was done many hours before the blue posts confirmed 3.1 was coming out). It was coincidental as it happens. But of course, nobody was looking at Curse/WoWI on the Monday and everyone seems to think it happened on Tuesday and on purpose. Everyone's against you, right? Sigh.
Blizzard's policy has nothing to do with this. Addons can still be obtained for free. Curse and WoWI are offering extra services at a cost, but you're NOT required to pay for those. As to what Curse and WoWI do for addons, you're quite mistaken. A ton of work has gone into the devloper's side of things and there are many tools for authors on Curse and WoWI (repositories and version control, ticket tracker, built-in localization, community). They're comparable to sourceforge and googlecode, but geared towards the WoW community. I'm not quite sure you realize the amount of work that went into those sites.
They ARE doing a lot for addons and their authors. Go look it up before saying they've got a scam going. Again, there's a reason authors stay with them. Quit conveniently ignoring that. You never even bothered stopping to ask yourself why authors are against WM.
Vidi May 9th 2009 2:24PM
Wobin,
I would and have pay a small fee for addons. Addons are something completely different that a client that points me to them. I have donated to DBM, Xperl, Recount and Omen. Small sums I admit, but I'm raising two growing boys who are eating me out of house and home lol so priorities...
Just because I haven't been vocal in the addon community doesn't mean I haven't been paying attention nor that I do not care. You're making assumptions based on the anger I have expressed at Curse and WoWInetrface.
Both of these sites will offer "premium" services now. This entire issue was about their money. But no where have I seen them admit that.
Zyn May 9th 2009 7:49AM
Ehhh, bandwidth is free?
JDM May 9th 2009 7:04AM
Well, now that Curse finally implemented my wishlist item: an RSS feed for favorites - I honestly see no reason why anyone needs these updater utilities. Add your favorites to Curse and WoWInterface, then drop their RSS feeds in your reader, and off you go...
I update over 200 addons which I use with this method, and it is nothing difficult to do. Never used an addon updater application in my life.
Tokum May 9th 2009 7:55AM
ARGUEMENTS ON THE INTERNET WHO IS RIGHT NO ONE WILL EVER DECIDE!!
In other words: Anyone who truly beleives than WowMatrix is a good thing either knows nothing about the situation, or is simply retarded and should be pitied rather than argued with.
Toliman May 9th 2009 10:53AM
i never thought Wowmatrix was eveil. or evil.
it was a cross platform app that came in first, worked, and actually worked. i can't stress that enough. you might have made something of the whole deal by getting your ass out and helping WoWint/curse with their client, but wowmatrix had a working app.
it's hard to argue with something that works (wowmatrix), versus something that doesn't exist (WI client) , or works, but crashes every 30 seconds (curse client) on moral grounds. so, take the low road. sabotage the working client. and defend it later by insinuations without regard to the fact that you screwed up.
so, if they took donations. and had a client that worked. they also stole bandwidth from Wowint/Curse and after a year of stealing the spotlight, got shafted for doing so. the question is, what possible purpose did it serve ?
well, ultimately, curse got to make money. a lot of money. likely at least $100k in subscriptions by now, compared to all the miniscule donations made to individual authors and developers, the lions share of all the advertsing and subscription revenues go to people who do not do any work.
Now, i think that curse.com is evil. and i just hold judgement on WoWinterface until they release their pricing structure.
so, curse.com and wowinterface, by never putting their cards on the table, continue to stand back on the sidelines complaining and lamenting their situation. which is sickening really.
of all the decisions that Wowint and curse could have made, they decided to sabotage their own interests rather than deal with a 3rd party. this is fine in business. if it is a business.
but, blizzard has explicitly told people they can't make money from addons. and now, by sticking their foot into the door and banning per-author donations, curse has finally shown what they are really doing. razing cash and investing in 'locked-in' customers by subscribing people.
so, thanks blizzard. this is utterly the reulting fallout of your decision. and by domain, it is indeed entirely your fault. the question is, will blizzard stop curse.com from cashing in at any future opportunity ? likely not.
for curse.com now to hold that they were being honest with "customers", it's as honest as any other kind of corporate approach to a volunteering organisation.
Shadoweric May 9th 2009 11:48AM
Wow there, slow down...
Per addon donations are not banned and are very much visible on Curse and their 2 developer sites Wowace and Curseforge. WoWInterface has them too.
Blizzard's policy is to prevent them in-game, not outside of the game.
WoWI's updater will include donation links, and Curse is working on updating their client to show those. And WM apparently has them too now.
And for the millionth time, you can use any of the updaters for free. Nobody's locking you into anything.
Blizzard has nothing to do with any of this, as long as you can get addons for free. And you still can. I've never used an updater and never will. Takes me a few mins to update addons, that's it. Favorites, RSS feeds, subsciption emails... etc. There are so many other ways.
As to what purpose did it server to shut down WM? It saved Curse and WoWI money. It's not just deeplinking that WM was doing, they kept scraping their sites to check for updates, at rates far higher than normal users browsing the website would, all the while skipping ads. Agree with it or not, the fact is that when you have 11.5 million players potantially visiting your sites for addons, the bandwidth bill runs up in the thousands of dollars. It's kinda expected that they wouldn't want to pay for something that has zero chance of helping pay the bills.
Vidi May 9th 2009 2:19PM
Toliman
thank you.
WM worked! And no sutiable alternative was put in place BEFORE the block came. thats the real issue here. Not if WM is evil or not, but if the actions of Curse and WoWInterface on Ptach day were necessary right then. I say no. I say they could have waited till between patches to block WM and given WoWInterface time to get a working alternative up and running.
And Im glad that some of you are able to update your addons on patch Day. I am truly jealous. But more often than not on patch day and several days following, WoWInterface has been completely inaccessible to me. It simply times out over and over for me ( see that "for me"? good )
WoWmatrix was the ONLY solution I had. It delivered what it promised. And in this day and age that's a rare thing and something that has earned my respect.
Shadoweric
I don't deny nor do I refute the fact that blocking WM saved these sites money. What I find offensive is that they threw some of us under the bus when they did it.
And they did it when they could get the very most bang for their buck. They did it to create a controversy to promote the release of their new client/services.
If they would just admit to that instead of acting like they are part of a community instead of sponging off of it, then I might have some respect for them.
I just don't like it when someone spits in my face and then claims it's raining.
Shadoweric May 9th 2009 10:32PM
Vidi, quoting myself from a post above that you seemed to have missed:
"Also, this blocking of WM took place 24 hours before 3.1 came out, before anybody knew the patch was that Tuesday (was done many hours before the blue posts confirmed 3.1 was coming out). It was coincidental as it happens. But of course, nobody was looking at Curse/WoWI on the Monday and everyone seems to think it happened on Tuesday and on purpose. Everyone's against you, right? Sigh."
Also as to them being part of the community, they ARE. quoting myself again:
"As to what Curse and WoWI do for addons, you're quite mistaken. A ton of work has gone into the developer's side of things and there are many tools for authors on Curse and WoWI (repositories and version control, ticket tracker, built-in localization, community). They're comparable to sourceforge and googlecode, but geared towards the WoW community. I'm not quite sure you realize the amount of work that went into those sites.
They ARE doing a lot for addons and their authors. Go look it up before saying they've got a scam going. Again, there's a reason authors stay with them. Quit conveniently ignoring that. You never even bothered stopping to ask yourself why authors are against WM."
And it's not just about the 20% authors are getting back from Curse. Otherwise no author would be using WoWInterface either. There are ethical reasons why WM is strongly disliked by authors. The bandwidth issue was just one side of the story.
Pockit May 11th 2009 10:45AM
Grrr! So, I get that Curse wanted people to use their own client, blah blah. Why not work with WoWMatrix. In all my years of WoW and add-on's - WoWMatrix has been the *only* add-on client, that was #1 Quick #2 Secure #3 Stable.
Curse's client is slow which leads me to believe they are hiding things in there; it stays in memory and does shady things. WoWMatrix was clean and had a great 'trustable' factor for me.
Sorry to gripe; it's very frustrating when good apps get mawled over. So, to MMOUI -- get it right, work with the various sites as a 'partner' to keep them happy and provide us a one stop shop. It is possible to generate income, drive ads and capture a user base but, still provide a product that is in the best interest of the audience -- don't people realize that's how you get business.
Quite frankly: I'd rather download add-ons 1 by 1 and update manually from any site but, curse.com (which is what I've been doing and did pre-WoWMatrix) -- it's garbage and we're being held hostage :(
Wow... whine much???? lol
Cairenn May 11th 2009 4:36PM
"So, to MMOUI -- get it right, work with the various sites as a 'partner' to keep them happy and provide us a one stop shop"
Which is exactly what we are doing with this. We've created an app that any site can write a module for, allowing users the "one stop shopping" and that will still respect their site.
The other sites just need to write their modules. :)
DarkElf81 Jul 28th 2009 1:16PM
Gees... i'm pretty new to this clients anyway... but hey ! guy's and girls carm down.. this is a forum for one of them...
Why the hell debate on it everywhere ? pick one you like... make your own opinions - distrust og trust who you want... but please for crying out loud... dont make it all a fuzz with arguments back and forth... its like listening to dog fight !!
A nother thing is that its not just a wow addon thing.... many other games has seen the light of the costemization of addons and are implementing it as well... making such a "minion" [put in any word that determines a collection and distribution tool in here] a great tool. I've been around since WOW was at beta and the addons actually was and still is a revolution for any game... it makes it highly costemizable and thats what really is the base idea of it i think.. but with so many great authors out there making bits and strips around for the greater good of all... its getting a jungle.
I for once wouldnt be without them, cause it makes it more fun to have some of the functions BUT the jungle makes it hard to get around all and still enjoy the fun of functions / game time, enjoying the game for what it is... A GAME.
i dont argue on witch one is better or worse... just stating out... why argue it over and over and over and..... [continues]
i like the idea of a stable fast and user friendly way to get on top of the jungle.... witch one makes this dream reality is yet to be seen if you ask me... but THIS site is for MMOUI minion.... let it stay by that and get lost with the rest....
/break