TL;DR: Curse Client v5 is being phased out, and all of its functionality is being added to the Curse app. This will occur for WoW mod users in the near future, and for other Curse modding communities later. We’ll have a way for WoW mod users who want to check it out earlier to opt-in and provide feedback before we complete everyone’s migration to the app.
The Curse app is leveling up with World of Warcraft addons! We’re bringing streamlined addon management to you as an all-in-one solution for WoW players.
Evolution of WoW mod management
Curse has been given full buffs for WoW, including support for both PC and Mac, rich chat embeds with loot linking and complete tooltips, character profiles to show off your current progress, and easy guild syncing to create a server to play in. We have everything you need to prepare for Legion and hit it hard on launch day!
Here at Curse, we put our users first. We want to deliver the most streamlined and best supported experience possible, and the prime way to do this is by offering addons within the Curse app. We recognize that the current addon client hasn’t been receiving the rich support that the community needs -- this migration allows us to provide a first-class WoW experience that will make addon use and maintenance better for everyone, new and veteran players alike.
The features that you already know and love within the Curse Client v5 have received updates with their migration to the Curse app to improve usability and enhance player experience. Everything will work similarly to the way it does in the Curse Client v5 with added clarity and better UI. The features you've been experiencing for free currently in the v5 client will remain free with the migration to the app, and we're even adding more free features. Premium subscriptions will also continue to be available for purchase.
Item linking with tooltips
Let’s round up the major features that become available with the migration:
- Full Mac support
- Expanded localization support for many more languages
- No more ads
- Memory usage remains very low, even with full access to the feature-rich Curse app
We’re also rolling out a TON of new WoW features to the Curse app:
- Easy guild server creation with loads of customization options for permissions and channels
- Armory profile syncing to keep your character sheets up-to-date within the Curse app
- Faction themes for Horde and Alliance
- Full item linking support to show off loot, complete with tooltips
- Guild polls can be used to help make decisions, like preferred raid nights
- Enhanced game overlay to easily coordinate gameplay during voice calls
Armory profile syncing
The full migration process will happen in stages. We expect everything to transition smoothly and easily, but we’re ready to support you if you experience any issues. You can always reach out to us if you need in-depth guidance or discover bugs via the links below.
- Stage one is rolling out WoW addons to the alpha Curse app. All alpha users will be able to check out the new World of Warcraft tab on the left navigation bar and immediately be able to access addon management.
- The second stage will push WoW addons to the live Curse app. The Curse app will also become the default download for new WoW addon users during this stage.
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The third stage will begin the migration of WoW Curse Client v5 users to the Curse app -- the client will provide information about the migration and point users to the Curse app. For a promotional period (30 days from the start of the migration), we are offering Curse app premium addon features (excluding addon sync) to app users during this stage as a thank you for trying it out early. (Updated 7/29/2016 to clarify details around the premium incentive that will be available).
- The fourth and final stage will migrate all remaining Curse Client v5 users to the Curse app. The client will ask users to install the Curse app to continue managing their WoW addons.
Thank you for your continued support and dedication as we move into the next evolution of Curse. We appreciate each and every one of you, and we want your voice to always be heard. Make sure to leave any feedback you have inside the app via the feedback submission form in the help menu. If you need help or have any questions, please visit our Knowledge Base or reach out to us on our Twitter account.
Extraordinary work you guys have done, at my end is it working pretty good so far.
Can we please keep the old one as an alternative or have a base program that is just an addon manager and the rest work like plugins so we don't have to install all the extras? I have no need for all the other features like guild servers, armory support, chat, overlay etc. Right now it looks like I will have find something else to keep my addons updated. Why? All I want is a simple, no fuss program - not something that is bloated with other features that are completely useless to me.
I have to admit i prefer to just have curse client the way it is now ( with some small updates to the interface and addon dev utilities/ powers perhaps ) , but forcing the "app" to people .... , feels too much of a power play -_- , just because you think we all need it does not mean that it's the case.
It's nice you have new features and possibilities but the fact still remains you ARE forcing this on all users even those like me who still believe it should stay clean and simple program and one purpose only ( addon search / updates ) , once you go all "super multi-function galore" you increase the complexity and bugs trying to keep it all in line .... .
Is there really no way to come to a middle ground ? , have a " curse light " with the current Curse Client purpose in mind , and a " curse full " for those who really can't live without the whole 'always connected to social media' aspect.
this suggestion would seem to please both sides IMHO.
Some more feedback after using it again today. If there's some other place I should be posting this, let me know.
#1
Kind of a critical failure, it's not detecting a lot of addon updates. At first it showed no updates, and no indication it was doing anything; the Curse Client has a status bar at the bottom where it will say "Checking for updates" with a progress bar. I tried clicking the "Refresh" button, in case it just didn't do a scan automatically, but there was no visual feedback to indicate the click had registered, and still no indication that anything was happening.
Thinking it impossible that there were no updates to any of the ~100 addons I have installed other than my own, I launched the Curse Client, and lo and behold, it shows 8 updates available.
At this point the Curse App is now showing 1 available update, so apparently it was doing something in the background before, but not very well, since it's still missing most of the available updates. Clicking the "Refresh" button now makes its icon turn gray and spin, but the other 7 updates still don't show up.
Both programs have the download preference set to "Beta and Release", and I've verified that the addons with updates shown in the Client but not the App are correctly flagged as "prefer Beta" in the App, although that shouldn't matter since all of the updates (the 1 shown and the 7 missing) are Release, not Beta, files.
Here are the updates that are shown in the Client but not the App:
#2
Startup time is really slow, even discounting the time it took to update itself. I assume this is due to all those social and multimedia features I'm not using, but it's noticably a lot slower than the Curse Client.
#3
The whole app feels laggy -- scrolling the addon list with the mouse wheel is a little slow, scrolling by dragging the scroll bar is really laggy, and right-clicking an addon to bring up the menu is so slow I have time to wonder if I actually clicked at all by the time the menu appears. Running under Windows 7 with Athlon FX 6300, 16 GB RAM, GeForce 750 Ti, all drivers up to date as of last week. Windows, WoW, and the Curse App are all on an SSD with plenty of free space. The CPU and GPU are a few years old now, but still hardly bottom-of-the-barrel, and there's really no excuse for an addon updater to require cutting-edge hardware to run acceptably. I'm assuming this is an issue with your UI framework (is it Electron? it's obviously Chromium-related, and Electron apps -- looking at you, Atom -- tend to run slow, so it seems like a reasonable guess) but surely there's some room for optimization.
@Phanx
Hey Phanx,
Thanks for the feedback! I have forwarded 1, 2, and 4 to the team so that they can look into these things for you :) (It seems they have been looking into your feedback tickets!)
2: While looking into your concerns with DPI we noticed that it is broken on Windows 7 and 8, but working on Vista/10. We will be looking into fixing this, thanks for the report!
The chat features can be easily ignored, you simply just set it to boot into addons and you're all set! As for a linux version, it's something we want to do but it's not at the top of the list at the moment.
3: If you go into settings -> addons -> next to scan now is add game
5: This feature is used to assist with Sync, if you don't use sync it's not used. No need to turn it off.
Some feedback:
#1
Are you guys using "Advanced Installer" to create your installer? If so, please upgrade your version. I recently noticed that folders named "AI_RecycleBin" had appeared at the root of every drive on my computer, and after a bit of research discovered these are created by old versions of the Advanced Installer product. The only Windows software I've installed recently is the Curse App, so I'm pretty sure it's the culprit.
#2
Please stop designing interfaces for ants. The fonts in the Curse App are WAY TOO SMALL and it ignores the Windows system DPI setting. The fact that you're using Chromium/Electron/whatever doesn't help -- now the fonts are not only tiny, but also composed of horrible pixellated blobs like it's 1992 again due to the lack of anti-aliasing. Finally, the contrast in many places (eg. version columns in the addon manager) is rather low in both the light and dark themes.
I've complained about these same issues -- small text and low contrast -- with pretty much every product Curse has ever launched. These are really, really simple accessibility problems to solve, but you guys clearly just don't give a flying @#$% about users with even mild/moderate visual impairments.
Between the fact that the Curse App sets a new record for unreadability, the fact that it's bloated with tons of "social media" features I will never ever use, and the fact that I'm no longer using Windows as my primary OS and the Curse App won't run (or at least, won't install) in Linux under Wine, I'm very tempted to just stop using it and write a script to update my addons with curl or something.
#3
There's no way (at least that I could find) to manually locate my WoW installation the first time. That option only became available after letting it perform a scan, which I would have preferred to avoid because it took about 5 minutes to scan the 6 internal storage drives (totalling 8.5 TB) in my computer.
#4
After it located my WoW installation, it didn't automatically scan for installed addons. The addon list appeared empty, implying I didn't have any addons installed. I had to manually click "Refresh" to make it detect my addons.
#5
Some clarification regarding the "backup" feature would be nice. In the Curse Client, it was somewhat intuitive to disable this by setting the backup interval to "Never". I don't see any such option in the Curse App, and the "maximum file size to include in backups" option only can't be set lower than 512kb. Is the Curse App uploading files from my computer to Curse servers? If so, what files is it uploading? Is there a way to turn off this feature?
I'm enjoying the alpha!
Nice work, guys. o/
@EthanCentaurai
I was looking at some screenshots just the other day, also the old Mac port and the failed Java port... <_<
Does anyone remember the old WowAceUpdater before the Curse Client ever existed? Things have come a long way since then.
:P
@kia1983
Hey Kia,
Why are you switching? :'(
Ok, shit just happened. I will switch to WoW Matrix. Damn, i used Curse from 2008 year.
Hey guys!
Updated the article today to add a little clarity where we find that a few users were getting confused. Thanks for all your awesome feedback and we hope you guys enjoy the new client! The changes include clarifying that you do not need premium to use the new client and a rewording of the third stage due to a change in how the backend was implemented.
Thanks, Zeldo
@peterstrong
Hey,
You will not be forced to pay for premmy to use this client! It has all of the same free features as the old client (and more!). It's actually a better experience for free users then the old client since you lose the ad unit in the bottom right corner of the client!
Thanks, Zeldo
Finally! *-*
Do it quickly. xD
I'm waiting for a long time.
EDIT: Curse app isn't a "trash app", and nobody will be forced to socialize. Just don't add any "friend" (if you have it, apparently not) and problems solved. I'm enjoying Curse chat and will be better for me use only one program in my PC. I'm really waiting for it, because Curse already have Minecraft plugins management.
@DienesToo
@Gadoink4
@phedre
We know you some of you guys don't want any of the chat features, and that is fine! There will be a way to hide that all away, so you can just view your WoW addons and manage them the same way you were in the past AND with some new features!
@kingdomchaser
I am sorry for the confusion, there will be NO requirement to pay, infact it will be a better experience for the non-premmy members then the current client is. On the old client there was an ad unit if you were not premmy, but the new client will forever be ad-free :)
There are some features that are behind premmy (Just like in the old client, Addon sync, update all) but no hard requirement for premmy. That would be lame!
Thanks, Zeldo
So am I understanding this correctly? People like me who use the curse client to manage their addons because its free and reliable will be forced to pay for the premium curse to continue using curse for their addons? I've been happy with the curse client for years but if its going to require a monthly sub now it might be time to move on.
I don't want some garbage chat client, I already use other stuff that I prefer instead. I just want to deal with my addons. Don't force this on people. Even if you don't continue to support the old program with updates, at least don't actively break it. Otherwise you'll get plenty of people who stop using Curse entirely and switch to different addon managers.
Looking forward to this. Thanks!
:/
I don't want a chat client, I just want to update the addons for WoW. I have zero need for "social" integration in an addon manager.
I use the curse addon client specifically because it doesn't include a bunch of garbage I don't want or need. Setting up a new windows install the other day I accidentally installed the new Curse App (Its not on a phone why are you calling it an app?) and immediately regretted it. It did nothing I wanted and was very worried you had replaced the addon updated with a bloated monstrosity social networking client. Fortunately I was wrong. Unfortunately I was just two days early.
I guess I need to start looking into another way to manage addons.