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I've whitelisted the site...However, please don't call me a pirate again for 'stealing' your content. I gladly thank you for providing me a place to discuss MMO's and games in general, but I don't like being insulted by the staff. Thanks.
The half naked girls in the ads are one of the draws that keep me coming back here. Reading the interesting forums and seeing videos and hearing about new games is the other thing.
Also, has there been any thought to requesting donations? I would donate if it offered immunity from temporary bans for trolling.
I do not block ads, but I do have a script blocker. Unless someone can guarantee I will not get anymore automated script root attempts, I do not see myself allowing scripts from untrusted sources.
** edit **
Just wanted to be clear, the scripts weren't loading from MMORPG.com. It was doubleclick or one of the other advertising only networks it was coming from. I don't want to be a thorn in the side of a great site, but there's a limit to how much risk I'm going to take to view a website.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
LOL! If we ever did a subscription type thing, it would NOT provide you immunity from the banhammer. Sorry!
Or people who donate can flag/ban trolls for even longer.
Believe it or not, Alexa isn't the best resource. We were up in 2011 over 2010, and we're up in 2012 over 2011. Largely because of games like GW2, and SWTOR, absolutely. In my time here as a member, and as a staff member we've never really been a place for WoW fans. The community doesn't support the game, like they do say... EVE.
A few years ago, 15% of folks used ad blockers. Now, it's more like 40%. You can begin to understand why a trend like that might have a site like ours making a kindly proactive request to users who believe in what we do. And we do thank those who white-list us. Believe me... my house, car, and food thank you.
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
My Review Manifesto
Follow me on Twitter if you dare.
Without going to far off topic I agree with this post. If you discuss this topic with musicians you tend to hear why exactly attacking consumers who participate in these topics is a bad thing. While content creators (eg web sites, musicians, authors ect) see everyone who uses there content as someone who would have paid for the content if they had not downloaded it. There are many, many people who would refuse to pay for the content (in the context of this discussion they would refuse to visit this site) who support the content in indirect ways such as sampling before buying or advertising by word of mouths/reviews. It is not a black and white discussion, there are shades of grey.
Take me for example, I would pay to have and ad free site, but I would not come to this site at all if I had to see the ads. I am constantly referring people who do not use an adblocker to this site. So while they may not collect revenue from me directly, they are getting profits indirectly from people I refer who would not otherwise come here.
:-(
Can I donate to get ads that only show half naked girls?
Joking of course
Seriously though, how bout some Victoria's Secret ads?
This is flat out wrong. If you want to "Stop people from stealing your content" then make all the infomation password protected, and charge people to access it. But to say we are stealing your content because we choose to block ads is ridiculous. And who ever typed this behind the anonymous "Admin" account should be fired.
All I heard was... "Well aren't you just a little lolly pop triple dipped in psycho."
Haha! Apparently the marketing department just has to shift there focus and we all would be happy.
Sorry but turning it off turns the site into a mess. Ads everywhere. I don't mind the site but I'm slowly being drawn away to other websites with a cleaner look and I find myself coming here less and less anyways. Your layout is outdated and far too messy IMO.
I also suggest running the Noscript addon.
Classic
Likely not, but I think there are plenty of sites out there you can "donate" to in order to see half (or fully) naked girls ;-)
- MMORPG.COM Staff -
The dead know only one thing: it is better to be alive.
i quite agree with this. because the admin account just called me a pirate for reading game reviews/game content provided by 3rd party game studios i will not be whitelisting mmorpg. i use adblocker for youtube and some facebook crap ads.
should mmorpg find another source of income that does not require me to disable my adblocking (as i view all adware as hazerdous and quite annoying) i would have no issue whitelisting them for its access. should they not throw out insulting comments as "you pirate our content by adblocking".
While I completely disagree with the comment posted by the Admin, I can almost see there position as it is hard for them to change there business model to keep up with the change in consumer habits. It really comes down to a much broader morality debate that is being had with the advent of the internet. It is impossible for authors (using this in a loose sense) to charge for content on the internet as a free to pay model. A drop in revenue to a site like this means they have to change there tactics to draw consumers to support them.
This is no different than how the music industry was reluctant to change there models from forcing users to buy compact discs to downloading invidual songs. The authors can try to fight the consumer but like anything, when you attack someone they may end up resenting you. The model they use must change and they are doing the first step in it by asking people to turn off there ad blockers. Eventually they may require users to do this to access their content. Who knows, one day perhaps we will have preloaded cards that take transfer a few cents to the pages we access in order to keep them running. Sort of like a f2p model where each website we go to is a cash shop item and we purchase access rights.
Either way attacking those who effectively pay there salaries is not really a good idea, but I think that they are smart enough to be dimplomatic about it in the end.
The Admin account is not anonymous. I am Craig McGregor the President/CEO of the company and the co-owner and founder of the site.
The trend in AdBlock is concerning for me, not just on our site here, but on the Internet as a whole. It is a growing problem and I feel it will eventually lead to the end of the "free Internet" that we all know and love. If sites cannot stay afloat from advertising sales they have few options left: a) start charging for access to content b) start doing really unethical tihngs like Advertorial content c) syndicate into large networks with pay access like Cable TV "packages". Personally I like the advertising model both as a site operator and as a user of hundreds of free websites.
- MMORPG.COM Staff -
The dead know only one thing: it is better to be alive.
I don't even pay attention to the ads. I was using an ad blocker recently because the ads themselves weren't displaying correctly. Other than that, the ads have never bothered me to the point where it made me want to rage quit the website.
In a systems analysis class I took several years ago, MMORPG.com was used as an example of how to design a good interface (I showed MMORPG.com to my instructor because I was curious what he thought of it, and he later showed it to the class). Regardless of the ads, it's a very well-built website. It's attractive, good colors, easy to use, great content. I approve of MMORPG.com, and the crazy amount of mostly-relevant ads
Wow! That's really awesome. Thanks for the kind words!
I'm only here for the forums. I don't really care about the articles, especially considering they rarely hold MMO developers/publishers to task. It's more of an MMO news aggregator and hype machine.
I do disable the ad blocker here but it's mainly because the website is unreadable otherwise.
It does not matter if you click the ads. We sell ads based on impressions, not clicks/results. So even if you don't click the ads you hurt our entire site by running a blocker. Running adblock on a site that supports itself with advertisements is no different than downloading pirated movies, music or video games. You are in a sense stealing our content that we work hard to create and pay to an entire team to create.
This is flat out wrong. If you want to "Stop people from stealing your content" then make all the infomation password protected, and charge people to access it. But to say we are stealing your content because we choose to block ads is ridiculous. And who ever typed this behind the anonymous "Admin" account should be fired.
The Admin account is not anonymous. I am Craig McGregor the President/CEO of the company and the co-owner and founder of the site.
Then you should be ashamed of yourself and how you represent your company. To make such a statement that calls, I would guess, a majority of your user base thieves and pirates is not a way to gain more support for this site.
All I heard was... "Well aren't you just a little lolly pop triple dipped in psycho."
I've always tended to just ignore ads. Here, TV, Radio, magazines. Unless it's something I actually care about, I ignore them. I'll give that the flashy ones are harder to ignore. But I still do.
Regardless, all of our content here is FREE. The ads make sure we can support our families, pay our rent, and buy our food. We're not asking you to click them. Just, if you believe in the work we do, please don't block them.
Also, Craig is "Admin". He's the President and CEO of the site. He started it more than ten years ago. It quickly became his full-time job. You can read more about him and the rest of our staff here - http://www.mmorpg.com/bio.cfm
That's literally all of us, minus the incredible core freelancers we hire for reviews and other content by the article or video. We're not Gamespot, or IGN, or even Curse. We don't have investor money feeding us. It's all done in-house, and we all work remotely across the country and even the globe (for some writers).
Anyway, I'm rambling. Just wanted to give you guys some feedback from a worker's point of view. I also work full-time at a hospital. Obviously, one job definitely does a lot more "good work" for society, but I love this one far more. It's a dream job. I'd do it for free. But then I'd probably have to sell my house and I'm not sure my wife would appreciate that.
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
My Review Manifesto
Follow me on Twitter if you dare.
Same.
And for largely the same reasons: the writers on this site hype up every game, and largely ignore the shortcomings most of these games, especially those released last 5 years.
It is not an accident, that if you go and look at the official review scores on this site, with one exception that I saw, the official review score is/was higher than the player review score for "major" mmo titles (F2P clone crap, who cares.). BY an approximate average of .6-.7 or so. That is not a small bump.
Almost every single one.
That is not an accident, its policy.
With such an abject lack of objectivity, the reviews are utterly worthless to me at this site.
And the "features" and "previews" and "inside looks" and all the rest of that stuff, are the hyped up crap, that I mentioned before. So likewise, worthless.
The forums are the only thing of use here.
You guys do a great job of making the content accessible. There's always room for improvement though. The basic layout and functionallity is great, but the site could use some new artwork. Specifically the main navigation bar could use an update. Something like RTSguru.com, but with the MMORPG.com colors.
Oh and the mobile version of MMORPG.com needs an update. At the very least you gotta put the recent forum post tracker on there