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asmkm22
Member Posts: 1,788
You might want to reconsider your stance on the Scarlet Blade ads (and any future ads like it). I specifically whitelisted you guys with Adblock Plus a few months ago, but recently went back to blocking them again. I know hosting this site isn't free, and it's not a charity service for the community. I also know you guys, like most other content providers, probably hate ad blockers as much as we hate ads. I've read through your ad policy which, seems to be about 5 or 6 years behind the reality of the internet today.
There is a solution, however! All of these sites, including yours, that simply throw up whatever ads they can only to complain that people are blocking them, don't seem to realize that there are better ways of handling the situation. Maybe some of you already visit these sites, but on the off chance that you aren't aware of their advertising methods...
1. Penny Arcade. They actually don't do ads at all anymore since moving over to a fundraising model, but I'm talking about what they did BEFORE that. They basically made it clear that advertisements were a necessary evil and that, if they had to use them, they'd do so with class and dignity. Rather than just plugging in some AdSense code and letting google provide the rest, they chose ads based on quality of not only the product in question, but the quality of the ad itself. If they thought a game wasn't very good for reasons beyond personal preferences, they wouldn't sell ad space for it (no matter what was being offered in payment). If they thought a particular advertisement was misleading or inaccurate, or NSFW, they'd reject it.
Basically, they had standards which were clearly communicated to advertisers and readers alike. They understood that good ads can actually contribute to a site, visually, when standards are laid out. You guys are close to this, with your ad policy restricting things like flashing banners and stuff, but the Scarlet Blade thing has shown you aren't actually all that selective.
2. Slashdot. They have a "normal" ad method, in that they have various ads spaced around the site, serving up ads relevant to their readers (tech, science, some gaming, etc). What makes their system worth mentioning, is that people who contribute to the site by making well-regarded comments and posts (judged by other readers), have the option to disable ads by clicking a check box on the front page.
Basically, they reward people who are contributing something to the site in the form of high-quality comments, with the ability to hide the ads. The whole thing resets after 3 or 4 days, so if you stop contributing, then the ads show back up, which I think is a great way of rewarding people. You guys could do something similar with the "rank" status of each user. I don't know what the metrics for rank are, and I suspect they'd have to be tuned to reflect quality rather than quality of postings, but it's one possibility.
3. OKCupid. This is site that I've been following for a long time due to the statistics and mathematics they report about human behavior related to dating (blog.okcupid.com -- it's seriously interesting stuff). Anyway, a few months ago the ads that I normally block were replaced with generic boxes that basically said "since you're blocking the ads, and we can't really do anything about it, we'd like to offer you chance to disable ads entirely for a $5 donation." There was no popup box trying to get my attention or anything; just a simple recognition of the problem and a fair solution, which I gladly took them up on.
Your site already has the user account infrastructure in place to do something like this. As long as privacy issues were addressed (don't store CC info at all), you could probably do nicely with such an offer, even if it "expired" after a year. I know I'd pay you $5 right now to disable ads for a year. I don't know what kind of advertising details your program has, but unless it's based on a metric like Monthly Page Views, rather than Per Click, you're getting nothing out of me when I block them.
I know this will probably just get locked like the others, but I guess I just really don't care. I think you guys are handling ads wrong (along with a large portion of the internet, really), and wanted to voice my opinion on it; there ARE better ways of doing it. I'd love to see you guys actually address the issue head on, because the whole adblock thing is only going to get worse for you otherwise.
You make me like charity
Comments
I say it in ALL the thread I see like this.:
DONT LIKE IT, DONT LOG IN. Stop telling others what to do.
Much easier just to block the ads and be done with it. Of course, that doesn't actually help the website much, so I prefer door number 3: constructive criticism with possible solutions.
You make me like charity
What a well versed and highly thought out plan
Well they asked for us to unblock them, then the Scarlet nonsense came, I whined like others but it disappeared before my patience was up. Thought it was gone for good but nope here it is so->Adblock, I'm sorry mmorpg.com I was willing but now I'm fed up.
oh, the irony...
A creative person is motivated by the desire to achieve, not the desire to beat others.
Is that really irony?
But it's only your opinion the Ads are inappropriate. In my opinion they're for a game so they're fine. Why are you( and those who agree with you ) right and the site should change and the rest of us wrong ?
If you learn English from a song ....yes it is.
is there anyway to block scarlet blade adds?
I agree!
Let's think about this...This ad may have some clevege and some, oh my "suggestive themes" But get real, my nephew plays call of duty, he's 13 and that child is vile. I'd much rather him see some softcore than to listen at the creatues on xboxlive. I see the ad might effect.. whom? workers? Why the heck are you on mmorpg.com while you're working in the first place?!
Really it's 2013...Pg-13 movies show more than this Ad campaign.
"I am shocked — shocked— to find that gambling is going on in here!"
Captain Louis Renault -- Casablanca
Yet not nearly as annoying as the multiple posts complaining about them.
They aren't "wrong" in the sense that they have to change anything. If they like the revenue they are getting, and they aren't concerned about people using adblock, then nothing needs to be changed.
They have, however, complained about how more and more people are using adblock, so it's obviously somewhat relevant.
You make me like charity
Yes, it's not that difficult... here's what my front page looks like:
You make me like charity
I do check mmorpg.com while at job. Yes, I can do it, my boss won't be mad if he notices me browsing mmorpg.com.
However, if he notices some half-nude women he may get a wrong impression about what I am doing: staring at porn or just looking at mmorpg-dedicated site.
No, it makes no problem for me to block every single Scarlet Porn ad and I will block them as soon as I see them. The problem is an attitude.
OP i right: mmorpg.com could reconsider its own ads policy. Example: i never turn off/block adds on Facebook. If I dislike, I may hide with a very good chance to never see it again. If they offer me some porn sites, I would close, mark as "insulting" and hopefully won't see them ever again. And if I like ad - I will allow it to stay.
But so far - almighty AdBlock Plus is blocking every single add there.
http://www.mmoblogg.wordpress.com
nice, how?
Stop telling me what to do. :-)
But seriously, I added specificly for those ads an blocker. I'm a family guy with kids and I like this site and am reading it at home. To avoid displaying that kind of kind of ads to my kids I added the blocker.
Install AdBlockPlus and blacklist the pictures. The background ad and banner won't go away by default, since they aren't technically "ads" and are instead just pictures. Everytime you load a page up, it takes a image from whatever advertisement campaign is going on, from the "images.mmorpg.com/images" directory.
They prefix their image file names with the date they were added, so like one image might be "20130323_sbus_rest_of_image_name.jpg.
You can just blacklist the image itself, which you may have to do several times as the small group of total images all load in, or you can just blacklist the prefix, like "images.mmorgp.com/images/20130323*" which blocks any image that starts with 20130323. Every few weeks, or months, when they add a new batch of images, you just view the image name to get the format and update the list. Takes about 10 seconds.
You make me like charity
You make me like charity
I reallly cannot see the problem with these adverts at all. Most fantasy titles have a hint of erotisism about them when introducing the female form ... Conan was doing it years ago. It would seem to be the folks that protest too much are those whom take up their employers time on the net when they should be working and that all the fuss is just basically guilt.
I think it is clever marketing and has possibly boosted the Scarlet Blades player numbers. Of course this site needs to keep advertising and really there is no nudity here, the rest of the imagery is down to being unwrapped by your own imagination.
If this got banned then would every Sorceress with a Basque. Also superhero-wise Wonder Woman would be in trouble, dress her up too much and you would be wondering if she were a woman at all. Then all the male characters would also have to be dumbed down not to look like chippendales. So great we could all play mmo's with Mr and Mrs Average and the 'meek would inherit the world' of warcraft even...... where Axes become less sharp and intimidating and Swords are just for dress and ceremony and where battle and PvP take place within a Government Chamber where often the most feeble can shout as loud as giants without the fear of physical retaliation.
I think the whole point of playing MMO's is that they allow players to envelope themselves in all types of fantasy. This site stands out to bring a multitude of games for public attention and opinion. It would all start becoming a tad dull if too many ridiculous censoring measures were carried out.
...Well...this is my opinion.
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.