Review: Curse Client for World of Warcraft

clienticonWorld of Warcraft players are a notoriously picky bunch. They know what they like, what they don’t like, and have absolutely no issue with telling you exactly how they feel. Loudly, and with many, many petitions and forum postings. And that’s just the basic game. When you get into modifications, you’re into a whole new ballgame. And just making sure you have the most up to date software installed can turn into a major undertaking.

Some guilds won’t even let you go on a raid unless you have the proper addons, and anyone who’s had to try to help the less, shall we say, technically inclined know that getting everything to work right is sometimes half the battle. Now of course, we have software like the Curse Client Addon manager.

Put simply, the Curse.com’s software client allows you to manage all your favorite addons without making it complicated. Click the refresh button up at the top of the screen, and the client automatically checks all of your installed addons for new versions, and gives you the option to update them if a newer version is available. When you are looking for something new, you can search via name, category, or author. The interface then displays the description of the addon, the version number, and has a link to the addon where it is hosted. Curse hasn’t forgotten the Mac players either, there is a version of the client that works with the Mac OS as well.

There are a few things that set the Curse client apart from the other addon management software out there. Yes, you have to log in to download the addons, but registration for the website is free. The Curse.com website also has a very active community on their forums, and many times you can discuss future versions of the addons directly with the authors themselves. Curse also has a subscription option, which adds the ability to update all of your addons at once, removes the advertisements, and allows you priority access to the servers when it’s time to download. The subscription price varies based on the time period you are signing up for, but it runs anywhere from $2.45 a month (the best deal, billed annually) to $4.95 a month (billed month to month). The subscription fees help to cover bandwidth costs, and a percentage is passed on to the addon author, making it easier to help support your favorite.

As a WoW player myself, I feel confident recommending the Curse client over the other options available. I’m also able to show you something very something very special, a sneak peek of the new 4.0 client which is still in alpha, and won’t be available for download for about 1-2 months. All I can share with you is a screenshot, but having used the new client myself, I can tell you it is significantly faster then the 3.0 version, and works great with Windows 7 and Vista.

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