Hey could you guys add your addon to the https://addons.wago.io/ website?
With curse killing WoWUp’s ability to download from them it’ll be needed by quite a few folks I would imagine later down the line
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i really hope so - either that or wowinterface
We can look into it… I really dislike maintaining the addon on multiple repositories though.
maintain it on wago then 
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Please consider this.
I’m against using Overwolf and apps tailored by companies looking for endless ad profit.
With 3rd Party, Open-Source updaters like WowUp.IO being blocked from the Curse Forge API, its off putting for the end user to use a service they don’t support fully. Would love to get your insight from the other direction but all I see is greed, spyware and lack of sympathy for an otherwise unaware group of players from Overwolf/Curse.
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I’m not opposed to putting our addon on other repositories, it’s more of a maintenance thing for me since I’m generally overworked 
But if there is a lot of demand there, I’m happy to do it.
We will always keep it on curseforge as an option though. Over the many years that we have been around, both Curse and Overwolf have been good companies to work with in general. The fact that they are for-profit companies doesn’t make them bad in my book – I actually like that Overwolf tries to share some profit with the addon developers themselves. I haven’t followed it that closely though, so I’m not sure how well that model actually plays out. The concept is good though: when someone makes something valuable (a cool addon), help them get a little money to keep doing it. I know that a main motivator there is Overwolf’s own profit rather than the addon devs… but you can’t really blame a company for trying to make money, unless they’re being unnecessarily greedy about it.
I haven’t used Overwolf in a long time, so I can’t speak with authority to the claims of it being spyware. I highly doubt it is though… they are a pretty high-profile company now to be spyware, so the risk seems very low on that front. Back when Overwolf was really new, I spoke directly with one of their co-founders and made an AMR Overwolf app – my experience with them was very positive. Take that for what it’s worth. I may one day get the time to make a new Overwolf app for AMR… if my never-ending todo list ever shortens! It was a pretty cool app when we made it, really streamlined the process of importing/exporting your character.
I know that Overwolf blocking 3rd party updaters from curseforge is kind of a big deal right now. I think that this wowhead article about it is a pretty good perspective: Ads, Revenue, and API - WowUp and Overwolf Split Over Addon Development - Wowhead News
You can also read Overwolf’s own announcement about this: Update on CurseForge API. CurseForge API Submissions and… | by Gil Givoni | Overwolf Blog | Medium
Of particular note: if you want to get addons through wowup from wago.io, you will have to allow ads. wago.io as I understand does a similar revenue share with addon authors as Overwolf, so if you want addons from them, you have to allow ads. Now this whole thing really starts to sound like two competitors in the same space trying to use public opinion to win users from each other.
We don’t have a side in that competition – we wish both companies the best, and we encourage people to use whichever service they prefer.
For our addon in particular, the issue of author compensation is irrelevant. Our addon itself will always be free, and we will never try to get compensation through any of these platforms even if we could. We don’t have ads on our site either. We are kind of old school, and support the site entirely through our premium subscription, which everyone can try via a no-strings free trial that doesn’t try to rope people into forgetting to cancel, or have some arduous setup that baits you to the end then doesn’t show you the results unless you pay, or things like that. If the optimizer can’t convince you in a week, then it’s not for you – simple as that.
Mainly we want our addon to be convenient for our users to get. This fragmentation of the addon space I guess was inevitable… so it’s likely we’ll have to put it in multiple places now so people can use their favorite addon managers.
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For me this is not about ads, but about personal data stealing. I do not want to give any data to overwolf.
This is why any additional source of addon will be appreciated (Wago.io, GitHub, WowInterface).
Out of curiosity - why not just download it directly from us? The add on is always available here:
https://www.askmrrobot.com/addon
I haven’t looked at any of these clients in detail, but are you sure that the wago or wowup apps aren’t collecting similar information that overwolf is? Or any of the other clients you may be running as a gamer, like the steam client, or battle net client?
I don’t know the answer to that question, but I find it highly unlikely that overwolf is doing anything in this regard that other clients are not. The point being: if you are truly worried about that, you should stick to manually downloading your addons and not install any clients. As Swol said, you can get our addon directly from us, or download it from the curseforge site.
Yes, manual download definately is an option and i am going that way for now. This thread is only about convinience.
As for overwolf it clearly states that they will collect data while other addon managers states that they won’t.
I wouldnt mind getting the milk right from the cow but my concern is keeping things up to date 24/7. If you guys had a github (which im sure isnt a thing on purpose) we could use addons like WoWUp to auto update still.
For me, its personally enacting a freedom for choice and options. I dont like being contrained and eventually held hostage to a company like Overwolf/Twitch/Curse.
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The answer to this is that the source code is made public to some degree whereas Overwolf’s is not. The ads that are run on WoWUp are allegitedly in a sandbox mode so they dont creep on your system resources. We live in times that its hard to trust whats happening to your data and just offering an option of choice puts more at rest than youd think.
Closing thoughts, I appreciate such a detailed reply from you guys. Do what makes the most sense for your personal lives, ill still support ya’s
You don’t need to check addons are up to date every time you run WoW, that is just something you’ve been conditioned into by having it done automatically since the addon managers became popular.
There’s no need to update addons continuously, they’ll either work or they won’t. If they stop working, or are causing other problems, I look for an update preferring original sources. So for AMR I get the addon from this website, if there isn’t a website I look at WoWI or Curse. Since the Overwolf drama a lot more addons are moving to Github, so I’ve got a couple from there recently.
@yellowfive might be able to sort out an API for the other clients to include the AMR addon directly, I’m not sure if there’s a simple way of contacting them and I know your plate is already quite full.
I know foxlit, author of Venture Plan, Opie and others, set something up for his addons which he hosts on his website. Unfortunately the popularity of Venture Plan caused a lot of feedback in his discord which, I suspect, led to him taking a break.
From what I gathered, reading the discussion on his discord, he set up a URL the addon managers could look at which would flag if there was a new version, there was additional talk about the way he chose to do them which they didn’t like but he was trying to keep the data use low. Even 1kb of data becomes large if it’s being requested millions of times a day!
Not sure how much you know about the history of the managers.
The first time it became an option was with www.wowace.com which was initially just a library system for addon developers which Kaelten made, it became so popular that it became financially unsustainable. Back then bandwidth costs were a major component of running a website, making a client which people would run every time they started WoW caused them a lot of trouble, so they had to sell to keep it alive. If you clicked on that link you might have noticed it’s branded curseforged now.
That morphed into the Curse client, there were a couple of others but none seemed as popular as the Curse one. Years later and Curse was Twitch which was had been bought by Amazon a few years earlier. Amazon did what most large businesses do and looked at the costs/benefit of what they’d bought and Curse/forged was not seen to be worth it so it was sold. This is where Overwolf came in, they were aware of the costs and thought they could monetise it and make a profit. I’m not sure they were expecting so much resentment from some of the WoW community but it’s certainly caused them more grief than they would have expected.
A lot of what I wrote above is from memory, I’ve never used any of the clients and no longer have a Curse account. During one of the merger/upgrades/rebrands my account stopped working and I no longer had access to the email account it was associated with. Now I just have a Bookmark folder with the addons I can only get from Curse. If you’re young you might not know what browser Bookmarks are!
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I just like new features on things xD Same reason I check updates on Windows periodically
The dev at WoWUp mentioned this when I said that upkeep on multiple repositories is a valid issue.
Maybe it could help you
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because if you update it the chances of me seeing that its been updated without it breaking or the site telling me is almost zero.
Wowup just automanages my addons and updates for me so its easier. I dont like overwolf’s updated app I dont care about the ads or the data shit its just not as easy to use or as user friendly imo.
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Unless it stops working you don’t need to update it!
Perhaps @yellowfive can add a check when we import and if there’s a newer version let us know?
I don’t know if the addon version is included in the export from the game, if it isn’t is that hard to add?
I’d just like to +1 this request. I use this addon all of the time and recommend it to my guildees, but many of us, myself included, don’t wish to use the overwolf addon manager and, on the whole, have generally gravitated to wowup.
Like others have said - I don’t mind the adverts, but I’ve used the Curse and Overwolf addons in the past and really did not like them. They are probably great for some people, but I have pretty basic requirements and don’t need all of the bells and whistles, don’t want them, and don’t appreciate the way Curse/Overwolf operates.
I’ve had direct contact with Curse staff in the past, and it wasn’t pleasant, so I also have a personal reason for preferring not to use them.
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I simply ask for a direct link to the GitHub page if possible.
I do not wish to support wago since they force ad’s on us well.
Thank you for your hard work
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