Greetings everyone,

Today marks the release of our brand new, totally re-designed website as well as the domain change to www.Curse.com. While we've called this "v4" internally and even publicly in news updates about the website, this is truly a new step forward for the Curse brand.

We've learned quite a bit going from "v3" of Curse-Gaming to now. From working more closely with game developers to listening to user feedback about site features and upgrades, many hours have been poured into the creation of what we feel is the number one destination for online gaming. Our developers, designers, content team, and everyone else involved in the new website have shown tireless devotion to preparing the best possible end-user experience. We hope you agree that Curse is truly the next step in online gaming communities.

Gone are the days where you need to type annoying URLs to reach specific areas of the website; all of your favorite locations are just seconds away - be it Videos, Images, Forums, Downloads, or Blogs. We've also made general site navigation much simpler; the left-menu has been scrapped for a cleaner top-bar horizontal menu. In the place of the left-menu is now a menu containing logos for each of our game portals - all easily discernible and one click away for your game-specific needs here on Curse.

On top of that, we've worked on a full suite of new features for the website. My Curse; a fully-featured social network profile system which allows members to share the games they play as well as the characters from those games, create personal image galleries, post videos and projects, talk with other members, add and keep in touch with friends, manage favorite files and pages (as well as almost anything else on Curse), and even share information about themselves.

If you haven't yet, you'll want to check out the Control Panel - your one-stop solution for managing everything about your personal profile.

While you're managing your profile, don't forget to take a peek at our Games List; with over 200 games and growing, everyone is sure to find the games they play. And adding them to your profile games is just one click away! Our games list is also the home of our all-new mini-portal system. Each game in our database has its own mini-portal where you can read general information about the game, browse images and videos, post on game-specific forums, and even find other Curse members who play the game.

Although this is the release of Curse.com, we're not stopping here. We have so many amazing features lined up for the months ahead, from the Curse Client to many others; it's sure to be a great 2007 and beyond for Curse members. So why not sign up? It’s easier than ever; simply create a free account by visiting our Registration Page, and you’re set.

Forums

Our forums have undergone major improvements, and are now available for all games. Whether you are browsing the forums for a specific game portal, all forum posts on forums.curse.com, or the forum posts for a game in the games list, the forums maintain a standardized design allowing for ease of use. Our forums use the "Mediawiki Wiki Syntax", much the same as anywhere else on our website, allowing for cross posting of content with a simple cut'n'paste!

Blogs

A new addition we have with Curse.com is the Blogs section. Got something on your mind about recent game events and you want to share it with the world? This is the place to do it! You can even add other Curse members - allowing them to post their own stories under your blog! - a great way for guilds to create their blogs.

Videos

With the launch of Curse.com, we also open up our Video section for everyone to use. Feel free to upload any of your game-related videos to share them in high-quality streaming with the world easily through our object embedding syntaxing (details below). Featuring high quality video streams, Curse.Com video gallery is the perfect place to share, rate and find videos related to your game of choice! Whether it be WoW Videos or Warhammer Online Videos, Curse is the place to go for sharing and viewing it all! Be sure to submit your videos today!

Images

Our Image Gallery got overhauled again! No more need to use Imageshack or Photobucket with bandwidth restrictions for your image sharing needs ever again! Our Curse image gallery is unlimited amount of images and bandwidth usage on fast and reliable servers! You can even batch upload many images at once by adding all your desired images into a zip archive and uploading that!

WoW / VG Database

Earlier this year, Curse was the first to create the most comprehensive user submitted Vanguard Database, much to the rejoice of the Vanguard Community. We are once again expanding on this with a rich, fully functional and easy to use World of Warcraft Database that allows lookups for Items, Quests, NPCs, Spells and map locations! Additionally, download the Curse Client and participate in keeping Vanguard and WoW databases up to date! By using the Curse Client, you also have the ability to have character profiles for both your WoW characters as well as your Vanguard Characters automatically kept up to date!

Get YOUR profiles today!

My Curse

If you enjoy sharing your interests and experiences with others, then my.curse is for you. We have a full suite of features available for Curse members, all centrally located on one page: http://my.curse.com/yourusername/. Anyone who visits the Curse.com website will be able to view your profile and read any information you make available to them.

So what exactly can you do on my.curse.com?

• Control Panel allows you to edit every facet of your profile, including Personal and Additional Information, your default Picture, add emails, add your mobile phone for SMS messages, manage email subscriptions, set filters for news and downloads, and change your password.
• The Characters tab allows you to manage all of your characters you have on Curse. Vanguard and World of Warcraft characters require the Curse Client, but you can add characters for any game we have in our database as well.
• If you want to show off your latest rig, then the Hardware page is what you'll want to visit. Here you can add in any information about your computer and show it off to the world.
• The Articles tab displays a list of every article you've submitted to Curse, and the Images tab shows all of your personal images, including albums that you can use to sort images the way you like.
• Our Games List displays every single game we have in the Curse database. Over 200 to-date and growing.
• The Messages tab lets you view the messages you've received, compose messages to send to other Curse members, browse messages already sent and check out archived messages.
• Projects are easier than ever to access. This tab displays all of your projects on Curse, as well as the latest comments for each project. Clicking on the project will take you directly to the project page, and there's an edit link as well which allows you to quickly access the "Edit Project" page.
• If you've uploaded videos to Curse, then the Videos tab will help you manage them a great deal. Here you can view every single video you've ever uploaded to Curse, including links to the video and quicklinks to the edit page for that video.

Games List

Curse now lists most every MMO game there is, either already released, in beta testing or in development! Our Games List now has information, images, overview, system requirements and forums for every game currently in our database. Fielding a whopping 200+ games, we are sure to have a game that fits your taste! While there, be sure to add the games you like or play to your My Curse profile also! While we support character and server listing for ALL of our games, our World of Warcraft Characters and our Vanguard Characters are customized to allow display of items, stats and skills!

Object Embedding (Videos, Images, Files & Items)

We allow for easy cross-embedding of Images, Files, Items and Videos pretty much anywhere on site, be it a blog post, a news article, a comment or a forum post. In order to embed an object into content, there are simple tags that allow for this easily. You can find these tags in the "Share on Curse" as displayed here.

To embed a video, simply use: <video>videoID</video>. Optional parameters are width=x and height=x to customize the size of how the video will be displayed. For example, <video width=240 height=160>460</video> will display the video in a 240 by 160 resolution.

The same concept is implemented for Images also, and the tags to embed an image from our image gallery are as follows: <image>imageID</image>. Optional parameters are width=x (height will be autocalculated to ensure aspect ratio is kept intact!), type=default,thumb,original and align=left,right.

For items, the code looks like this: <item ns="wow">10042</item>. The options for the item tag are: type=default,tooltip and ns=wow,vg (World of Warcraft and Vanguard).

Embedding files use the same system: <file type=default>3404</file> with the options type=default,tooltip.

Summary

In conclusion, a lot of work has been put into making Curse the best MMO website there is. Here at the Curse offices, we are finally proud to present the product of many months worth of work. That isn't to say, however, that we will rest easy from here on out. We have a bunch of very awesome new features, extensions and tweaks in the works for the following weeks, months and even years!

So what can you expect from us in the close future? Well, I'm not going to spoil much of anything just yet, so I will leave you with this one small spoiler. A dark skinned theme for all of Curse will be avaiable as an option in your Control Panel shortly!

Sincerely,

Curse Inc.