I just recently discovered that Curse went through a major overhaul, and I thought it was cool enough to share. Curse is now more about providing community tools and acting as a platform for content creators, communities, and guilds to interact. Curse is positioning themselves as the facilitator.
[su_youtube url=”https://youtu.be/5l7FmKDZ2O8″ width=”700″]
As a content creator and curator of a small gaming community, I like that these tools are open to me for free. I use Twitch and Youtube to publish video content, and Curse is now positioned to augment those sites. That’s a much better route than some sites are taking where they try and compete. Instead of going against the grain, Curse is working on chat bots for streamers, facilitating giveaways for streams, helping creators grow their audience, and integrating with these sites through their APIs. Smart idea to tag along rather than stand toe to toe with these juggernauts.
Curse also hooks into lots of games and tries to connect you socially to others. Last night I played some Overwatch and I noticed that all of my friends on Battle.net with Curse accounts could be invited to be my friends in Curse. I thought that was neat.
The only area that I see for improvement right now would be in their execution of the mods side of their site. The new curse app is great and works just like their site, but if I want to use WoW mods I have to have the different mods app. I want both features in one app.
I haven’t decided yet to what extent I’ll use the new Curse. I set up a “server” where you can chat and interact, know when I’m streaming, etc. I may not use a lot of the community stuff, but the tools are pretty neat for streaming and interaction with community.
I’ve been using Curse for awhile and while I generally like the way it works I really don’t like the latest iteration of the UI. I think they’d really benefit from hiring a competent/experienced UI designer to clean up the current mess.
I don’t know why they called it “Curse”. That put me off from the start.
@Bhagpuss: Yeah, I’ve wondered that myself. I think they called it the first thing they were able to find with a 4 letter .com. Then they stuck a fireball on it. Fireballs are cool, right?
One of the WoW streamers I watch makes good use of it. Its very well integrated with Twitch. Giveaways and polls are done nicely. I’ve never signed up for his webiste, but was happy to join his Curse community. Mostly because it was pretty convenient.
The name Curse comes from an old WoW Horde guild on EU server Stormscale (I think that was the server).
The guild grew huge and was one of the top raiding guilds in the world, with some world firsts to its name, as well as being renowned for PvP raids on Alliance cities etc.
Anywho, the guild grew, their website grew, they started hosting addons and guides etc, after a while the site was so big that the guild and site parted ways (not sure exactly how that went about).
Curse eventually disbanded and members joined forces with some former Nihilium guild members and created Ensidia, which was yet another landmark guild fighting for world firsts.
So there’s your explanation for the name. 🙂
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