World of Warcraft is undoubtedly in a place of transit at the moment, with the buildup to the newest expansion, World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, continuing every day as Blizzard works to tune things to the standard they’re expected to use.
But among those changes came one that few people were expecting, as Twitch sold off the client for CurseForge. For those who may not be familiar, CurseForge is a popular addon client, which contains thousands and thousands of World of Warcraft addons, as well as plenty of other titles.
With this sale, those that used Twitch for their addon management suddenly had something new that they needed to get used to. With Overwolf as the new home for CurseForge, the Twitch app suddenly wasn’t the place to go for management.
So what did this mean for players? Above all, it meant needing to migrate to Overwolf, something that most players weren’t too excited at the thought of.
The main reason for this is that Overwolf has a reputation for being clogged with ads, whereas Twitch used very few – and very non-invasive – advertisement campaigns. Overwolf is often also considered to be less user-friendly as a whole, which frustrates players having to migrate from Twitch, which is considered to be extremely intuitive.
More than anything, though, players are just annoyed at change in general. Upsetting the status quo is rarely something that players like, especially when it may include the uninstalling and reinstalling of dozens and dozens of addons, many of which are considered crucial depending on what players are using them for.
Either way, Overwolf is the new home for CurseForge, and they’re working on making sure the experience is as enjoyable as they can. Today, they’ve released the beta for their CurseForge app, which they intend to have dedicated towards managing addons for players.
At the moment, this addon platform only supports World of Warcraft. Support for additional games, such as Minecraft, as well as a dedicated Mac client, will be arriving on November 17th.
“Today’s launch is a great opportunity to extend our MASSIVE gratitude to everyone who tested the CurseForge app during the alpha,” the team announced today with the release. “Thousands of gamers and creators inspected the app closely, shared feedback, and helped us make it more streamlined.”
Moving forward, CurseForge is intended to be seen as “the home for all mod authors, and as a result a wonderful discovery platform for gamers.” The team also intends to be as transparent as possible, so if you’re interested in seeing how things are going on the Overwolf end, they’ll likely be keeping us updated every step of the way.
