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Thanks for the answer.
Let me say, that I do everything I can to make my system as safe as possible, and if it's me who has to take care of it, then I'll have to block everything I possibly can, without loosing functionality otoh, and that includes blocking any ads I'm afraid of.
Oh, and I don't care if hackers steal any database-records in the internets, as I've not given out any information about my adress or bank-accounts to anyone.
And robbers will have a good time breaking into my house aswell. If they make it past the fence, they'll be greeted by my two Dobermans
Yes, I'm just that paranoid
Such as Amazon does not guarantee a hacker won't get your personal information or your local government does not guarantee your house will not be broken into. MS or Apple does not guarantee that their OS is 100% hacker proof...this is just the way the tech world is. Bad people are out there doing bad things and all we can do is our best to stop them.
In all of our time online we had one incident where a SWF (Flash) banner had malware. It was delivered from a general network (what we show when we don't have an internal ad campaign). We shut it off immediately and we stopped using that network and posted a notice to our users. Adobe shortly after fixed the hole in Flash that allowed this exploit.
And this is why we run anti malware
I trust MMORPG's intentions. But unfortunately, it only takes one miss. And someone's gonna have issue on their PC.
This is what I'm leaning toward. All the flashing ads and sounds are annoying, but the safety of my computer and my information is my priority. Like others said, let us donate and have all this removed. No one enjoys ads, we would rather pay money to not see them.
This site is a great place, and I want it to stay around. So give us options to keep it alive.
i will say this.. the red bar at the top of the page is really really @$@#4 annoying. everytime i refresh the forums the page drops down.. while its great you are telling me you detect my adblocker and would like me to whitelist you... surely there is a better way to go about it then that huge bar that continues to drop my page down.. everytime i load the forums i wind up clicking on search or the guilds page instead of "next page" as the forum section loads, then the red bar drops the screen as i click...
are there no other means to generate rev via ads then the current ad-bars? as i still recall the adult ads mmorpg ran for a few hours awhile back when one of their "great" ad providers decided mmorpg was a site that needed that sort of .... ad type..
surely there is a way to create a "ad" based section on the site for people to browse ad links (that are safe) to generate rev ? while im not sure how mmorpg is setup internally. i cant see why it wouldnt be possible to make a section users can go, to receive ads for things (related to games....) that wont require people to disable their adblockers or risk possible malware infecting their computers.
i was under the impression opening an account on mmorpg saved users having to deal with a majority of the ads. i know gamespot used to do it like that years ago, any Anon user had ad spam but logged accounts had little or no ad spam. (ads were super limited or non-existant)
Great post Hokie. I think like most things in the world all parties will be sharing in the blame. Advertisers, publishers like us, people making apps like AdBlock and users that use them. We will all play our role I am sure. None of these things exist without the other. I do feel based on what I have seen personally over the time running this site is the free Internet will eventually die - blame who you want, I am sure there will be fingers pointing all over the place ;-)
- MMORPG.COM Staff -
The dead know only one thing: it is better to be alive.
I started using Adblock because of this website. I never did mind advertising on websites. But I surf websites on my linux pc. Flash+linux has had always performance issues and with the website already as slow as it is, the ads made it even a lot slower. So when using Adblock Plus, I get a lot less stalls because of ridiculously bloated flash.
So I don't mind ads in general, but I do mind ads on an already slow website that slows the website even more down.
Unfortunately if you don't run flash ads in the gaming world you don't sell any ads. It is all advertisers want to run anymore. The funny thing is that most of my data has always shown that users click more on JPG banners that SWF ones - and I have told many advertisers this just to be ignored.
If we said no to flash ads we would be closing our doors in 60 days - end of story.
- MMORPG.COM Staff -
The dead know only one thing: it is better to be alive.
As far as obnoxious ads go, the "mouseover covers up what you were reading" ads are worse than most other types. It's not as bad as malware or things that completely break the site (i.e., prevent the real content from displaying at all), and probably not as bad as auto-play audio, but worse than anything else I've seen.
I guess that what you have to do is dictated some by what advertisers will pay for. If all they'll buy is ads that prevent users from reading text, then you do what you have to do. But if you do go that route, then you should expect to quickly lose a large fraction of the users who haven't figured out how to block them. I don't block most ads, but I draw the line at the mouseover ads, because those make a site nearly unusable.
a majority of people are not upset about ads, its that a majority of ads are full of malice code that can hyjack your browser or corrupt your pc (aka viruses) that many tend to disable such things. i have no problem with ads being used, i would just like some other means to have the ads on mmorpg then me having to disable my adblocker. flash/java ads are extremely annoying and distracting 99.99% of the time. other ads are just out right stupid..
if im on a gaming site why am i getting adult ads or car ads.. that sort of thing. i personally would rather not go to bed just to find out i got some major worm virus off mmorpg's ad bars because one of their providers got hacked/hyjacked and the code inputted.
I hate contexual ads too. This is why if we use them it will only be showing up for users that are not logged in. Again, we are just trying to adapt to an ever changing landscape.
- MMORPG.COM Staff -
The dead know only one thing: it is better to be alive.
You can sugar coat it all you want fact of the matter is it has been explained that this is how this site is able to be and by using it without supporting that you are expecting others to pay for what you are taking for free, thats the fact of it period.
I'll click the ads more often from now on. I know it has no impact on the site's bottom line, but privately to me it feels like I'm "sticking it" to these high horse riders that are easily distracted by flashing lights, and thus, block ads.
actually you are wrong, as i have said. i have no problem with the ads, provided there is a means for mmorpg to run them that does not require me to modify my adblocker. if there is a section for ads to be displayed where i wont risk a ninja download of viruses then fine. but the fact remains i use my adblock to block the ads i do not wish to see, namely the ads i get spammed on youtube and facebook. i have be hit by malice adware before hence why i am apprehensive of allowing it the chance to infect me again.
i have no plans to whitelist mmorpg's ads until there is either a gurentee that i will not recieve any malice code from them on their site, or there is a section create that has all their ads displayed that have all be fully tested and proven clean.
i take my personal infomation and pc security very seriously. i am not expecting people to pay for any of the content i view nor do i ask anyone to.
No I wont whitelist you, simply because I dont like or support the majority of the companies you advert ( I dont worry about any malicious code in your adverts, Im 100% certain you check those things and run a tight ship) But I loathe alot of the advert content. I would also gladly remove the background adverts if I could. I have once or twice accidently clicked them and ended up in some terrispace of f2p korean crapspazm.
However, I would, in a second, purchase a premium membership to the tune of whatever you guys calculate you are losing pr user with adblock on, pr month. - I think that is fair.
There's solutions other then ads to handle the financial stuff for sites that provide interesting content for the users.
Micropayments via Flattr or PayPal, where users/subscribers, who don't want ads can pay a few cents every month is the way to go.
Let's say some 25 cents per month for example. With your favourite 10 websites all using this model it would be a lousy $2.50 per month, and the quality of content and the users would be way better this way aswell actually.
With 25 cents per user and posibly some 100k users willing to pay that little amount of money, we're allready looking at $25k per month. Some $1500 per employee and $10k for the servers and bandwith paid per month this way.
And I actually happen to know websites driven by a single person with a few hundred followers paying their costs by using the service of Flattr. So this is no science fiction really, but a system proven to be working.
The problem with subscriptions for websites arises only, if the people running them get greedy and demand a few dollars each month.
drawback to a subscription based system (a pure system anyway) is that not everyone will/can pay for the subscription. there are alot of sites that use a "premium model" while i like the freemode of mmorpg, i honestly dont know if i personally would pay a subscription to it. even at 0.01 cent a day it would depend on my personal views on that. and im sure many others would simply not bother. (which is why we have p2p/b2p/f2p games)
i guess it would depend on how its setup though. im just not sure if id personally pay X amount a month for a website. i dont buy a sub for gamespot for that very reason, i just dont know if ill use the products provided to feel i got my money's worth.
thats why i wouldnt mind seeing an ad section on the site that people can go to, to basicly click/view/pick their nose of the ad bars provided to mmorpg and there by generate increased income.
Wow, I wouldn't give a flying leap if you were the president of the entire flipping universe. You don't make insulting accusations towards your fan base. We don't buy anything here nor is anything requiring a subscription to view or reply too. We are in no way shape or form stealing any of your precious loots by having a adblocker on.
I've been using this site for a many many years for the forums. The articles are just there for looks to me. I refuse to turn off my adblocker because my last computer I had got face stomped by viruses from websites that I trusted. My computer's health is a billion times more important to me.
Since you are the god of this site and you can't fire yourself, well you could but I doubt you will, you should really think hard on what you are going to type to a person who frequents this site before you press SUBMIT.
shame on you craig
EDIT: oh and adblockers arent the thing that is going to ruin the free internetz, things like SOPA and the new TTP are going to kill the internetz.
Playing: Smite, Marvel Heroes
Played: Nexus:Kingdom of the Winds, Everquest, DAoC, Everquest 2, WoW, Matrix Online, Vangaurd, SWG, DDO, EVE, Fallen Earth, LoTRo, CoX, Champions Online, WAR, Darkfall, Mortal Online, Guild Wars, Rift, Tera, Aion, AoC, Gods and Heroes, DCUO, FF14, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, Wildstar, ESO, ArcheAge
Waiting On: Nothing. Mmorpg's are dead.
The people in this thread are joking right? I've been running no ad blockers besides firefox basic & chrome with built in popup protection for years. No viruses, no mis-clicks, no hackers, no keyloggers, no problems. Total internet security does not require adblockers to run a squared away machine.
Honestly, I am amazed that the staff at MMORPG works so hard with such a uncooperative group of people. A group of people well known to many other communities to steer clear of. Props to MMORPG.com, you have more patience and business ethic than I do.
Then again, you can't expect people who do not understand advertising to be able to comprehend what you are asking of them without getting NWO responses.
I won't be blocking your ads or anything elses in the name of internet security & fears of "damage to my machine." I am just baffled at some of the ridiculousness I just read. I had to stop, I can only take so much fear & ignorance in a certain period of time from others.
Also, thanks for the beta key that I am not allowed to name.
This
So uh... on the mainpage befeore you login, there is an ad displayed above the Warplanes beta giveaway - to the right of hte games, guilds, etc block. After you login, it now displays part of the header info - trending games, your name, messages, etc - that bit.
After you logout on the mainpage, that ad area now displays the login as part of the headerblock that's displayed in that ad area...
...but that appears to be when the page loads as www.mmorpg.com/index.cfm as opposed to just www.mmorpg.com....
...it's dropping the networkbar inside where the ad would display on the index.cfm page.
A cursory compare does not display anything that would result in that difference. Of course, in the process of looking at that - there's an issue with one of the styles - netowrkbar instead of networkbar.
Still though, it's a curious thing. It's happening within the hepro div - well, inside the insidediv div inside hepro. That div's checked as part of the cAb function that slaps up the red banner at the top. You're basically checking that div height to see if it is 0, and if it is - it's because the ad's not being displayed and thus the red banner appears at the top.
So it's likely an issue with one of the programatically generated iframes that's working differently based off of whether it sees itself as www.mmorpg.com or www.mmorpg.com/index.cfm - with the index.cfm page not handling the code correctly and displaying the networkbar inside the hepro...
...and then it's the case that it's not that it's the networkbar it's replicating, but it's likely replicating the whole page within that insidediv and only that small portion is showing. Which could tie into some of the complaints about slowness on the site. It's loading the page at least twice. Who knows if it's calling itself again within that small broken div, eh?
Just a case that when on www.mmorpg.com, using the src="#" working fine for the function to display the ad and when it's on the www.mmorpg.com/index.cfm page - src="#" is actually pulling the page itself...index.cfm....
It's little things like this...which kind of eat away at overall confidence in a site. Course, I've seen far worse out there....
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
I use adblock (and yes, I just adblocked the banner you put up), and have no intention of whitelisting you guys right now. Here's why:
Your site design is too busy, even without ads. Enabling ads with your current layout, is just distracting. What makes it worse is that the ads you guys tend to show are animation-heavy, so there's all this extra movement jumping around the screen. In fact, even with the ads disabled, your site still looks like it's 80% advertisements anyway, which is just comical.
Fix your site design so that it's less obnoxious, and I won't mind the ads. If you want examples of good sites that I have whitelisted, here are a few fairly relevant examples:
slashdot.org
arstechnica.com
penny-arcade.com
You make me like charity
Just adblock the bar element.
You make me like charity