I know this post is a little aged now, but I had to update my impressions after a recent experience I had. Several of you didn't like Waves licensing, and at the point they posted here, I hadn't had any issues of my own--yet!
 
My house needed some construction work done and my Internet access was turned off for awhile. I was mid-project and using some Waves plugins. Due to how I had my Waves licenses setup, once the Waves plug-ins couldn't access the Internet (probably to communicate with the Waves license server) all of the plug-ins began failing--pretty much Sonar said the plug-ins were gone, and when it asked for me to browse to where they had gone, nothing would work regardless of me pointing to the location of where the plug-ins were.
 
I reached out to Waves and they let me know how to setup my licenses locally on my iLok dongle--which I did. Now for some reason, even though I uninstalled all of my Waves plug-ins and reinstalled them, am on a completely new project and a completely new updated version of Sonar, and referred the Waves plug-ins to my iLok dongle, Sonar still says they are not there. I can browse in Sonar to where the Waves plug-ins are installed--it makes no difference. I tried multiple uninstall and reinstalls of my Waves plug-ins.
 
Where this left me is that if it is this hard to deal with a plug-in, I'm out. I have lots of plug-ins from other companies with no issues, and the ones I got from Waves were the lower cost sale items anyway, and it's just not worth the headache to me. Sure I could research the problem more here, on the Waves forum, or with their support, but I didn't have an established foundation of trust or loyalty to them yet, so I'm just going to move one. It's not worth it.
 
That's where I am today.
 
FYI--

My Waves plugs just simply work in SONAR, Reaper, Studio One 3 Pro and Mixbus.
 
I WUP (almost) every year. I am currently WUP'd until Feb 2018 for Mercury, Abbey ROad and SSL.
 
Sorry to hear you had troubles razor. 

I've had a few Waves plugins for about 8 months now. I didn't WUP, just paid the base price.
They're installed locally on a PC that is only connected to the internet for a few minutes if I buy a new piece of SW.  They all work really well with Sonar, I'm surprised to see some of the complaints.  For the price, they seem to perform perfectly well.
 
Most software that I have on various PCs (work, home, recording, etc) doesn't allow me to sell it 2nd hand.  Many also don't include updates.  In my professional life, this is the standard.  Following this trend, in my musical life I just assume that by the time my recording PC dies or I have to leap up too many OS', i'll just have to buy the product again.  I'll also have to upgrade my IO box, as the vendor will probably give up on creating new drivers in a few years (M-audio did this with my beloved 2496 soundcard).  That's just life in a digital world...

Waves don't use iLok devices anymore.  You can tie your Wave's plugins to a USB storage device (which I recommend) but not to an iLok device.  Perhaps the poster is just using the word "iLok" as a generic term when they meant a USB storage device (a thumb drive usually)?
If the Wave's license center shows your USB device and it has the licenses on it, then your issue is solely with the Wave Shell and Sonar.  If the Wave's license center doesn't show your plugins then you need to start with fixing that.  And yes getting Wave's plugins to install and work correctly can be really painful and difficult.

msorrels
And yes getting Wave's plugins to install and work correctly, for some, can be really painful and difficult. But for others it seems to be a breeze.

I'm sure that's what you really meant.

So what are the favorite plugs out there my is the tapes tubes and transient, piug plugs, ren.

just call  waves support back and they will help and walk you through it

thornton
So what are the favorite plugs out there my is the tapes tubes and transient, piug plugs, ren.

UAD.

bapu
My Waves plugs just simply work in SONAR, Reaper, Studio One 3 Pro and Mixbus.
 

Damn that's what I thought too, until this happened tonight in Mixbus with ALL of my VEQ's
 

 
Opening and closing the GUI didn't help. I would have to either delete the EQ and load it again, or restart the project. Didn't happen with any other of the non-Waves plugins in the project. 
 

sharke

bapu
My Waves plugs just simply work in SONAR, Reaper, Studio One 3 Pro and Mixbus.
 

Damn that's what I thought too, until this happened tonight in Mixbus with ALL of my VEQ's
 

 
Opening and closing the GUI didn't help. I would have to either delete the EQ and load it again, or restart the project. Didn't happen with any other of the non-Waves plugins in the project. 
 

Just tried that exact plug in Mixbus and it worked fine. No problems with the GUI or operation.