We’ve been keeping an eye on Wunza ever since it’s grand return a couple of weeks ago. After the impressive re-birth, Wunza has constantly been improving with new users being added, more content being uploaded and new members being recruited. The next major revision of the site dubbed Wunza 2.1 was recently rolled out and this version includes several new features, bug fixes and UI and design enhancements. One of the most anticipated and possibly the biggest change introduced in v2.1 is the ratio free system. Users are no longer required to maintain a global ratio and with this move, Wunza joins the ranks of ratio free specialized movie trackers such as PTN. Simultaneously, the site has gone invite only but if you still haven’t made it inside, invites are available in the official IRC recruitment channel.
When Wunza achieved a state of rapid growth after their return, staff made an announcement describing the upcoming v2.1 of the site. Quoted below is the announcement:
We said in our last announcement that the site will close for signups and become an invite only community when we reached 6500 members. Well, today we have reached that number! Signups have officially closed, the user limit has been set to 50.000, and all members have been given 2 invites: use them wisely. We remind you that it is strictly against site policy to engage in the trading, selling, or giving away of invites. The purpose of the invites is to give them to a friend who you think is deserving of it and who will contribute positively to the community. Please also keep in mind that if you are not active, your account will be deleted. All accounts that do not show any activity (signing in) for two weeks have been disabled, and we will continue this policy.
Also, on February 1st, Wunza will officially become ratio-free! Please keep in mind the required 120 hours (not consecutive) of seeding per torrent, or your account will be marked with a Hit and Run.
Some exciting changes and new features will be to the site as well:
- Chat Page [fixed]
- New Design [fixed]
- Ratio-Free [fixed]
- Uploader Class [fixed]
- Invite Only [fixed]
All the promises they made in this announcement (which was posted about a week back) have now been upheld. This includes the ratio free system which is now fully functional. Some might frown at the 120 hour seeding requirement (which is a tad higher compared to most other ratio free sites) but IMHO it’s a bold move that’ll extend the lifetime of torrents on Wunza.
Speaking of torrents, Wunza now tracks close to 1000 movie torrents. When we last reviewed the site back in December 2009 they only had 60 movies indexed. It’s finally nice to see Wunza breaking the curse of ‘not being able to upload enough movies’. Back in the days of Wunza v1, they had trouble getting the torrent count past 350 even after months of being online – it’s nice to see that things have changed for the good after the ownership change. The story is the same even when it comes to the number of registered users; Wunza now has a user base of ~5300 registered members compared to a mere 400 two months ago.
Even amidst rapid expansion, new features were also being added to Wunza web interface. The innovative browse page we spoke of in the last article has been improved with further tweaks. New chat widgets have been installed and several more design aspects of the site have changed. It’s good to see a tracker not focusing only on torrent uploads and member recruitment but continuing to improve site usability as well.
Although Wunza was open for signup back when we posted our previous article, it has now gone invite only (with the launch of v2.1, of course). If you still couldn’t register, there is no need to worry. You can obtain an invite for free by going through the IRC interview process. To log in to the invites channel, all you have to do is to click the link below – Wunza will load the interview channel in your browser itself. This should be good news for those who dislike installing IRC clients, configuring them and logging into IRC channels.
Site Name: Wunza (http://wunza.ws)
Invites Channel URL: http://wunza.ws:9090/?nick=&channels=interview
