Hi guys,
We're going to be doing a brief server maintenance in a few moments during which the main site will be unreachable, the repositories will still be up and working.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
UPDATE: and we're backup, sorry for the downtime there guys :)
Today a new Adobe Flash and Adobe Reader exploit became public knowledge. It's actively being exploited, and we could all be targets.
Quote:Adobe has announced that an exploitable flaw in Adobe Reader 9.x, Acrobat 9.x, and Flash 9.x and 10.x has been discovered and is being actively exploited. Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux versions are all affected. The flaw allows arbitrary code execution by attackers, and hence it is deemed "critical."
The article linked provides some details on how to protect yourself. But in summary, there is no current fix from Adobe. Downgrading to Reader 8.x can save you there, and apparently updating to the latest 10.1 beta of flash can help, but that seems scary in it's own right.
If you don't have an authenticator already, we'd recommend getting one. Pick your flavor:
Be safe guys.
About a week ago Curse Premium turned a year old. Our CEO sent out this email to our premium members and I wanted to share it with everyone here as there are some stats in there you may find interesting.
This is a major milestone for us, and I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for the last year. I'm also happy to announce that later this month we're going to be celebrating the 2 year anniversary of CurseForge.
Thanks again guys. Here's looking forward to another great year.
Today marks a very special day out there. It's Kaelten's birthday. Kaelten is one of the developers of CurseForge, and the administrator of WowAce. He's also the developer of the Mac Curse Client.
If you see him around today, wish him a happy birthday!
Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced plans for its fifth BlizzCon® gaming convention, to be held at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California on Friday, October 22 and Saturday, October 23, 2010. BlizzCon is a celebration of the global player communities surrounding Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft®, StarCraft®, and Diablo® universes.
"BlizzCon offers us a great opportunity to meet with our players and share our enthusiasm for gaming with one of the most passionate communities in the world," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "We're looking forward to providing another great show filled with entertainment, competition, and the latest information about Blizzard Entertainment games."
In addition to serving as a gathering place for Blizzard Entertainment gaming communities, BlizzCon will offer attendees a chance to enjoy:
The previous BlizzCon was held in Anaheim in August 2009. Tickets to the event sold out in minutes, and some of the highlights included the announcement of World of Warcraft®: Cataclysm™, the unveiling of a new playable class in Diablo® III, the first public hands-on with the single-player campaign of StarCraft® II: Wings of Liberty™, and a closing concert featuring rock legend Ozzy Osbourne.
For more information visit Blizzcon.com!
This is a pretty urgent thing to report because it could damage or potentially completely ruin your video card if it's ignored. The latest NVIDIA drivers, 196.75-WHQL released on March 2nd, 2010 are causing issues with the video card fan control while playing Blizzard (and other) games. This is caused by the Automatic Fan Speed feature being broken in the latest drivers.
The games included are: World of Warcraft, StarCraft II Beta and Warcraft III. If you play any of these games (which I'm pretty sure you do if you're reading this website), you'll want to roll your drivers back to earlier versions until this is fixed, unless you want to replace a video card within the next few days.
To find out what version drivers you're using:
Quote from Datth:We're getting reports where users are getting intermittent low FPS after installing these drivers. It seems that it is related to the fan control included in these drivers not working correctly and is causing the video card to overheat on 3D applications. This will affect Warcraft 3, World of Warcraft and StarCraft 2 Beta. Please uninstall the drivers and revert back to the older ones.
Windows XP: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_196.21_whql.html
Windows XP 64-bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp64_196.21_whql.html
Windows Vista/7 32-bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_winvista_32bit_196.21_whql.html
Windows Vista/7 64-bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_winvista_64bit_196.21_whql.htmlMore information can be found on threads such as these:
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=161525
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=161503
Going to share this news with everyone. Kody over at World of Raids has said it the best so I'm just going to repeat what he's said over there.
Anyone who has an authenticator attached to their account should run a search (and probably an antivirus scan in case it's on the threat list already) immediately and ensure the file emcor.dll does not exist on your computer. This file is one reported to be allowing hackers to access World of Warcraft accounts that have authenticators attached to them. It's also possible there are other variations of these suspicious files, so if anyone has additional information please respond in the comments.
Based on this thread, the file may be found in /users/username/appdata/Temp. Since the file is fairly new (first mentions of it are only a few days ago), and the common source is unknown, I urge everyone to not log in to World of Warcraft or the account management site until you've run a scan. Confirm your computer is secure before using your authenticator, because this DLL file is allowing hackers to crack through it and access your account.
A warning sign that you're currently infected with this keylogger is that WoW will say your authentication code is incorrect, even if you know for sure you typed in the correct code. Thanks to Cameron for posting about this in our forums, too.
There seem to be some server problems with Curse.com.
This will affect Curse.com and it also seems Curse Client downloads.
CurseForge/WowAce do not seem to be affected, so as a developer you can continue to update addons.
For end users, if you wish to download addons you can access them from the project page (http://www.wowace.com/addons/arl/ for example). Click on the files tab and you can download from there.
The people who make things work are aware of the problem, and are working on it.
Sorry for any inconvenience.
From Adamar:
http://clientsupport.curse.com/news.aspx?id=25
Update: The network issue has been resolved, and all services should be working properly again. We apologize for the inconvenience.
A network outage at a core router in New York City is currently preventing many Curse network sites and services from functioning properly, for people in certain parts of the world. We have contacted our data center, and they are looking into the issue now.
A big deal lately with the security of wow accounts seems to be phishing. Fake whispers in-game are stating to show up nearly as much as gold advertising.
With the admitted leak of email addresses on the WarcraftRealms website earlier in December due to a security hole, you need to be more cautious as ever, as phishing email is now back on the rise. The email read:
These people will stop at nothing to get your wow details, here is a perfect example of a classic phishing email:
At first glance, this looks extremely authentic. Note that even the email originates from "blizzard.com" which goes against the in-game loading screen "tip" of trusting emails with such extensions. Infact the only give away that this is a phishing email is when you hover over the link, you can see it forwards to a non-blizzard website, an attempt to steal your account details.
I see people frequently say things like "My computer is secure". That may be fine and dandy, but did you ever stop to think about the security of websites out of your control? The truth is, you just can't guarantee this security. So here's a few tips:
Happy New Year everyone!
Things should be getting back to normal on Monday, so if you were waiting for something from us, the queue will be reviewed then.
I hope everyone had a safe and Merry Christmas, had Happy Holidays, and had a wonderful New Year.
Well, it's that time of the year again. The holidays are upon us.
On behalf of all the people that work with Curse, CurseForge and WowAce, I'd like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and hope that you have a safe and fun filled holidays.
A lot of people will be taking time off so please have a bit of patience when submitting new files/projects for approval. We'll get to them as soon as possible.
We'll see you next year!
Patch 3.3 has hit US servers this morning. You can get more information about the patch at Curse.com.
Now, what does this mean to us addon authors? It's time to update addons again!
When you're doing updates for 3.3 make sure you update your addons TOC file. The interface version this patch 30300 which will make your ToC have an entry such as:
## Interface: 30300
If you're planning on updating another authors mod, please read the policy on abandoned and inactive projects. Following the rules outlined there will make the entire process smoother for both you and us (the moderators/admin staff).
Remember that you can upload through a script or if you really want to make the approval process easy, you can use one of the repositories here.
Have a great patch day everyone.
Recently we became aware of a needed change in how we've been handling payments to international authors.
While we'll still not need to withhold anything, we do need to start collecting a W-8BEN for any Non-US Citizen who wishes to redeem more than $600 worth of points a year. More information can be found [[kb:store/tax-information/|here]] and [[kb:store/international-taxes|here]].
Nothing has changed for US Citizens. We still need a valid W-9 on file if a US Citizen wishes to redeem more than $600 worth of points a year. More information regarding this form can be found [[kb:store/domestic-taxes|here]].
I hope that these knowledge base pages will help people understand more about why we need these forms and how to get them to us. If there are any concerns or questions we'll do our best to address them.
Curse is looking to hire a few new developers; and where better to hire than our own super-hecka awesome gaming community! We're looking for a .Net Web Developer and a PHP Web Developer. The requirements can be seen at the links below, but one of the most important things here at Curse is passion. Passion for what we do and what we're trying to build. If you're eager and have the knowledge required we'd love to hear from you!
PHP Developer Position Details:
Curse, Inc is seeking a talented PHP web developer to join its Huntsville-based team, for the ongoing development of Curse's PHP based fan site network. This is an exciting opportunity for anyone with a passion for online gaming, and an interest in continuing development on some of the web's most popular sites.
Click here for more information on the PHP Developer Position.
Curse, Inc is seeking a talented .Net web developer to join its Huntsville-based team, for the ongoing development of Curse's web platform. This is an exciting opportunity for anyone with a passion for online gaming, and an interest in developing the world's leading online gaming portal.
Click here for more information on the .Net Developer Position.
I am very proud to announce the official launch of Curse Client v4 Early Access Beta!
After the launch of Curse Client 3.0, we began taking notes on the most frequent user requests, complaints, and general feedback. The result of this feedback is version 4. In development since May, version 4 of the Curse Client has been redesigned from the ground up. Written in C# and utilizing Microsoft WPF technology, the Curse Client now sports a modern user interface and an entirely new set of features.
Below are instructions for how you can get into the early access beta, as well as screenshots showcasing the new client.
A native, Cocoa-based Mac client has also been in development, and will soon be entering beta.
Simply download the installer from http:clientupdate.curse.com/setup.exe and run it. The installer will verify a compatible version of .Net is on your computer, and update it if necessary. Depending on what version of .Net is installed on your computer, this process can take anywhere from 30 seconds to 5 minutes.
Please report all bugs using the integrated bug reporting tool. This will automatically include a snapshot of the Curse Client log data, as well as your operating system information. We're excited to hear what you think about the new Curse Client.
3.2.2 is now on the PTR. Patch notes are as follows:
The development team here at Curse has been hard at work on the Curse Client 4.0.
Crunch Gear was given a sneak peak at the newest alpha client, 4.0. It's been entirely rewritten to optimize performance, speed, and usability. Of course it's going to pack in some new features as well. It's only in Alpha so we can only share this screen shot of the updated UI.
I (Kaelten) also wanted to take the opportunity to post a screenshot of our upcoming mac client. Our mac users are important to us, and as a result most of my time has been monopolized by working on the new v4 Mac client. It's a completely native Cocoa app targeting 10.4 and will run on both intel and PPC macs. It's not as far along feature wise as the windows client, but again, I did want to make sure people know that it is actively being worked on.
For clarification the Windows one is the dark one, where the mac client is the silver one.
I just updated with an extra screenshot from today's alpha release. So please check it out. I hope you guys agree it's starting to come together. :)
Over the past month, there have been many enhancements to the site. Here's a quick list summarizing the major changes:
There's a few new changes coming down the pipe. There was a [[announcements:curse-client-4-0-sneak-peak|preview]] of the new Curse Client released a little while ago, plus there are a few other nifty features which I can't talk about now.
Hey beautiful people, ckknight here.
There has been some hub-bub about project approvals recently and one way we figured that we could help on the backend side of things is to introduce the concept of experimental projects. If you have a cool idea but nothing fleshed out, your project is best considered "experimental". This is especially true for libraries. Many of the best libraries out there have a lot of rehashing, discussing, even without much in the way of code. Previously, a lot of projects (especially libraries) were left in a limbo state where this should fill that gap.
You can flag your project as experimental when creating, or it may be flagged for you by an administrator while in the approval queue.
If you flag your project as experimental:
At any time, you may resubmit your project for approval to make it a non-experimental project.
Woo, the day has finally come when the author store is launched. A lot of hard work has been put into this, both on the technical end and on the business and legal side of things.
You can visit it at https://store.CurseForge.com/.
If you redeem an item, you won't receive it immediately. For the first little while, I'll be going through and approving all the redemptions manually, just to make sure everything's running smoothly.
In case you didn't read the previous announcements, in order to receive points which can be redeemed at the store, you must have an addon which has over 100 installs (as determined by the Curse Client).
The author rewards program is our (i.e. Curse, Inc's) way of rewarding our content producers which create incentive for users to subscribe to Curse Premium. 20% of all Curse Premium revenue goes directly into the Author Reward Program. This is our thank you for all your hard work.
Addons receive author reward points based on their popularity as determined by the Curse Client. Due to the amount of addons out there and the vast diversity, even the most popular addons only receive a few percent of the total pool, so don't give up hope. There are a few other details, but that is the main statistic. We feel that that provides the best relation as to what users actually want who use our services. We don't want to reveal all the nitty-gritty details in order to prevent gaming the system. If you do suspect gaming the system by someone (e.g. trying to actively manipulate statistics, uploading addons that aren't theirs, etc.), please report it. We want to reward those who actually deserve it, not those who think that they're crafty.
As a side note, everything store-related as well as standard logins now use HTTPS for security reasons.
Hey there, ckknight here.
I've been slaving over the keyboard for the past few days getting some cool features in that I hope a lot of you will appreciate:
Many people have very specific likes, and some people (like those with eye problems) have very specific needs. I think it's important to try to give a way for everyone to be able to use the site.
There are some very hard realities. We're not the greatest designers. At times we can bust our asses for days and be lucky to have something the won't make you run in terror. We're also under a very heavy workload and have a lot going on, and there is only two of us. So please keep in mind that the new design isn't really the target end point it's a stopping point into perfecting the main designs.
Approximately 25% of the users have voted a dislike for the new theme, with only about 17% showing a strong dislike. That's understandable.
For these reasons we've brought a theming system into the mix. It's currently not possible to replicate the old theme 100%, but it does give you a lot of control over the look of the website. The corners, the paddings, the fonts, and the colors, and more. We're also open to working with people to get more power added to the theming system so that their needs and wants can be met.
I'm hoping that as time goes by we'll be able to see an amazing set of templates that will provide to the needs of all of the users.
So I apologize to the people who are hating the new theme and want something different, or just the old one. However, I do thank you for all of the feedback and the honesty with us. Please keep it coming.
A few links people may find useful:
Hey beautiful people, ckknight here.
I've been working on the revamp of CurseForge for a long time now, and I've gotten to the point where I'm comfortable launching it as the main site.
This is the largest change to happen to the codebase since WowAce moved from its old technology to the new CurseForge-based one.
Apart from the following, many, many bugs were fixed in the process.
In the past day or so, some people have reported getting an e-mail stating it is from Curse regarding a password reset. The mail looked something like:
Your CurseID password has been reset. To login, simply enter your username or e-mail address and the following password:
We encourage you to change this password as soon as you login.
Your e-mails have not been stolen/hacked, and this was not a fishing attempt. It was a template for the password reset sent by curse, and was sent inadvertently by the bulk mail provider for Curse.
Your passwords have not been reset.
Hello friends, ckknight here.
We've been calculating points for the author rewards program for one month now. The numbers we had been using to give points was based on an estimate, which, after one month of business, has turned out to be a bit of an overestimate. You may notice that points generated are less than before, because of this.
We expect that, over time, the amount of points will increase as the Curse Premium becomes more popular (likely when the next WoW patch arrives).
I know it's a bit shocking, but authors had been getting roughly 40% of the Curse Premium revenue, now it is dropped to its previously declared 20%, though it is possible that this number may raise over time, mostly dependent on how popular Curse Premium becomes.
Any questions or concerns (from authors) can be addressed in comments to this announcement or by joining us on IRC on irc.freenode.net at #CurseForge. I (ckknight) should be able to field any questions.
