Not quite sure where to post this because this app covers a lot of different games. But since I primarily play WoW, I decided to drop it here. Please feel free to move it to a more appropriate location if I chose the wrong place.
We’re pleased to announce a new home for CurseForge!
The CurseForge mod manager is transitioning out of the Twitch client, and moving to a new dedicated desktop app. Please click here to visit Overwolf’s site, where you can download the desktop app and learn more about Overwolf and future plans for CurseForge. Or, if you are a web user, you can click here to learn more
On December 2nd the “Mods” tab in the Twitch client will no longer be supported.
If you don’t like the company that took over twitch, as many don’t because they have a history of adding things to your computer you don’t know about, a good alternative is WoWup.io. It works great and comes as the executable file you just unzip and put wherever you want it and make a link to it. It pulls from curse/forge as well as wowio
I intend to give Overwolf a try, mostly because many of the issues are blown out of proportion by the media. I think they have a bad reputation, which is their own doing, but I also think the community has exaggerated some of the issues. After reading their legalese, I do feel Overwolf is too intrusive for what they offer. I expect something like Discord or Twitch to be more intrusive because they are linked to multiple features. Overwolf is only an addon manager.
I don’t mind the ads. It’s their business model and they’re trying to give $ back to the addon writers, while making $ themselves. That’s business. I do mind if they are overly intrusive. If the ads are so much of a hassle it’s the same to download them manually, then so be it. As @Lorantell mentioned above, wowup is developing a great reputation and has improved a lot since this whole twitch sale happened.
Disclaimer: Wowup is being tested in the household (just not by me). I have NOT tried the overwolf beta. I do intend to try it at release. I won’t be using it if I can’t disable some of the features I find unnecessary or intrusive. This is just an opinion.
I downloaded and installed Overwolf last night and it actually scanned for loaded games and seemed to pickup on all the Twitch addons I had installed without any hitch. Only one addon had to be deleted because it had actually been pulled from the Twitch database. That was the Handy Notes for BfA achievements. Don’t know why but its gone now.
So far with Overwolf I am not happy with the fact that their bit “remove ads” box is so prominently displayed taking up the right corner of their dashboard. I am not a fan of ads being included for things unless its a request for support of the addon developers themselves. So the fact that is all their ad box seems to request support for, I don’t mind.
And the best part is all I see on the dashboard is WoW, not any other game by Blizzard or any other development group out there, regardless of the game they make. I truly did not like Twitch for this very reason. I hated that I had to sort through all that other garbage I was not interested in just to get to the addons for the only game I have installed.
But I do plan to watch this unfold. I also have marked the WowUp option Lorantell has mentioned to see how it works for me as well. So for the next week I shall swap out and see how each works for me.
One of the things I’d recommend people do is go into the settings for both Overwolf and CurseForge and turn OFF the setting that allows it to autolaunch when windows starts. Although, if you’re like me and you never turn off your computer except for restarts, it doesn’t matter as much.
WowUp is very easy to use but you have to remember that it is a 3rd party software that is pulling the updates from a variety of sources: Curse, WoWInterface, etc. Overwolf had mentioned they were shutting down that 3rd party access since it dings their revenue model. I have seen players mention that Overwolf & WoWUp have been talking so maybe it will be worked out, maybe not.
If the only ad you see is one on their Addon Screen, no big deal. But some people mentioned that Overwolf seems to add an overlay screen to your pc and this is going to be the destination of the old ad type “Pop-Ups”.
Can you imagine your in the middle of a Raid/Mythic+ and suddenly you get an Ad on your screen for fill in the blank Rx Medicine
I’ve noticed Malware Bytes doing it lately. I will suddenly get a White Box in the bottom right corner of the screen wanting me to do the Premium Trial. Only way to prevent it is to shut down the program unless actively scanning your system. I choose to use the program, i accept they will try and convince me to go premium.
I will wait for it to go live to see how it affects everything and then decide.
Everything that pops up intrusive boxes that have nothing to do with what I’m doing at that moment gets immediately uninstalled.
It’s why I got rid of several antivirus/malware/whatever programs, it’s why I use Discord on my web browser, it’s why I uninstalled the Twitch desktop app, etc.
For those looking for options with addon installers/managers, Minion is also another one that I’ve found very nice. It’s super clean, and I use it for both WoW and ESO. Pulls things from WoWInterface, as far as I know.
I actually have pretty strong protections that block popups. Pretty handy because I can actually look at the log and see what it was, to see what, if anything, I may want to look at.
So far so good. I always log out of any addon dashboard once I’ve updated my addons, so I’ve never been bothered in game for those things. Those programs are not even added to my start menu to begin with and disabled in services, which is pretty handy.
Some of my old tricks I used back when I was using DoS, still work pretty well with the new stuff. Ya just gotta not allow those little extras they like you to click on using. I disable all of those, and when I do any install, I uncheck any extra stuff I don’t want. This last piece works wonderfully for my drivers that I update periodically. Those I do manually, always.
I really liked Minion for ESO, but I didn’t find it all that great for WoW. This was a couple of years ago now tho. It just didn’t support enough addons.
Same here. Minion is really nice for ESO, but I found Minion is missing several of the addons I use in WoW.
I (reluctantly) migrated over to CurseForge from Twitch, as instructed by Twitch. The migration of all my WoW addons was seamless.
I say ‘reluctantly’ because previous interrations of Curse never uninstalled cleanly, and left all sorts of garbage on my computer. I have since rectified that by using a paid Uninstaller, Revo Uninstaller. I am hoping this new iteration of Curse(Forge) will be better.
Lastly, besides turning off the autostarts that were mentioned earlier in this post, I also went into the Overwolf Privacy settings and turned off:
Use data to optimize performance and Stability.
and
Use data to customize Overwolf for you.
These were the only options I could actually turn off. If I could turn off ‘Use data to make Overwolf work’ I would have turned that off as well.
Hope this info helps others. Best of luck in Shadowlands!
Hmm, I wonder why the business decided to do this. Are they breaking up/spinning off or is there a failure here within the company? I can’t figure out a reason it would be better for Amazon to do this.
Mmmmm… I was totally unaware Amazon owned Twitch, for some reason I thought it was run by a group of gamers. Silly me, I really need to dig more into ownership of more things these days.
But here is a note I found and I do not see Amazon mentioned.
