Questelper and Carbonite *DEAD*

[dbick]

Blizzard just announced that they will no longer allow addon creators to charge or ask for donations for their addons.

This is the new changelog that the author of questhelper posted:

= Version 0.95 3/20/2009 ==


* Disable donation request.


Bad news, everyone. Questhelper's dead.


Blizzard just posted their new UI Add-On Development Policy at
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/policy/ui.html. The important part is
that I'm no longer allowed to ask for donations in-client. I know how
much I got before I added the in-client reminder - it doesn't pay a
significant fraction of the bills. And, as much as I like you guys,
good intentions don't pay for my apartment.


So that's it. I'm going to be finishing up and releasing v1.0, and I'll
keep posting incremental database improvements every month or two. I do
plan to keep QH functional, at least through the end of Wrath, and
probably further. I've got one or two features in mind that I want to
do for my own sake - a few achievements, mostly - but besides that (and
the v1.0 release) that's pretty much all there's going to be.


I would like to say: thanks to everyone who donated in the past. I
enjoyed working on this quite a bit, and I always enjoyed seeing
another donation come in - not just because of the money, but because
it meant that people wanted to use QH and wanted to keep it going.


Let Blizzard know if you don't like it, and if I can get an exception, I'll start everything right back up again






What do YOU Think?

[Smoooth]

WoW addons are by nature open source. Someone wouldn't really be able to charge someone to use them and an in-game donation request could be taken out on the user's end if it bothered them that much.

But if someone wanted to try to charge or put in game donation request I don't see a problem. I'd pay for something if I think it deserves it.

[Starbuck_Jones]

Handy app, causes problems in Dalran, doesn't provide anything an alt tab and a website search can't do. The quest order thing was sketchy at best, standing next to an objective it would still want you to travel 2k m somewhere else first. Disappointing to see this is the creators attitude but I cant guess to know what his real life situation is regarding the donations bit. I wont cry if it goes kaput.

[Hachoo]

What does this have to do with Carbonite? I don't see it mentioned there anywhere, and IMO carbonite is hundreds of times better than quest helper anyway.

[Smoooth]

Carbonite has a premium version with a monthly subscription fee. I didn't know addons used to be able to call non visible code. Guess thats how the got away with charging for it.

All add-ons must be distributed free
of charge. Developers may not create "premium" versions of add-ons with
additional for-pay features, charge money to download an add-on, charge
for services related to the add-on, or otherwise require some form of
monetary compensation to download or access an add-on.

The programming code of an add-on must in no way be hidden or
obfuscated, and must be freely accessible to and viewable by the
general public.

[Macaroon]

To be clear,addon authors may still make requests for donations on the websites they are hosted at. Blizzard does not want any in-game donation requests.

This whole change was pretty much to shut down Carbonite as they started to go a bit too far with a full free version that would include in-game ads provided by sponsors of Carbonite's choosing.

[Chranny]

To be clear,addon authors may still make requests for donations on the websites they are hosted at. Blizzard does not want any in-game donation requests.

This whole change was pretty much to shut down Carbonite as they started to go a bit too far with a full free version that would include in-game ads provided by sponsors of Carbonite's choosing.

Ya, I honestly think so too. :P Wonder how much of an increase the QH author actually saw after he added the in-game "advertisement".

[Xinxo]

Never could understand why people wanted more then Lightheaded. It pretty much tells you exactly where to go.

[sqeaky4100]

Questhelper was always the cleanest, simplest, and most efficient quest addon around. The ToolTip display for quest tracking on mouse over was invaluable.... Made it so quick to see what to kill.

There is going to be a LOT of angry people over this, seeing as it has been the #1 downloaded addon for a while.

[Hachoo]

Questhelper was always the cleanest, simplest, and most efficient quest addon around. The ToolTip display for quest tracking on mouse over was invaluable.... Made it so quick to see what to kill.

There is going to be a LOT of angry people over this, seeing as it has been the #1 downloaded addon for a while.

Most efficient? Do a search for questhelper on this forum and find a dozen threads about memory leaks, crashes, slowdowns, etc, all due to this addon.