Originally posted by Yalexy

Seriously, can you please give me an answer for who can be held responsible if the currently blocked ads and javascripts cause any damage to my system?

That's the third time I'm asking in this thread.

Of course we cannot take responsibiliy or guarantee that something bad could not happen.  Do we take every precaution we can?  Yes.  

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.

Originally posted by 3-4thElf

Originally posted by Torluk

Originally posted by 3-4thElf

Originally posted by Admin

Originally posted by 3-4thElf

Originally posted by jacklo

Originally posted by 3-4thElf

Originally posted by stringboi

I'm trying really hard to be okay with whitelisting you guys, but the flashing and what not of the ads are really annoying. ...

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You're missing the point :)

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I think I'm being helpful to the MMORPG.com staff by politely declining to stop ABP, an app I consider a protective service rather than a revenue stealing bad guy.

You are 100% wrong.  ....

I have written hundreds of emails to game companies explaining our policy to them as we get approached with some "wink wink" kind of offers and I tell them to try our competitors out - we don't play that way.

I'll take you at your word for it. But this seems overly defensive now and makes me a tad more suspicious. 

I'm serious about making all of this feedback about "trust" from other users and I and making something educational out of it. 

"Trust us." Is the least trustworthy statement anyone can say.

If these guys were really in it for the money I think there are better ways they could do it.  Seems to me like they are gamers that love working in a game related field.  If I was genuinely worried about declining revenue in my business, I hope I'd be forgiven for being a bit defensive too.

Did you see the red bar at the top of the site?

The money is important.

I'm not accusing them of being greedy. 

I am saying that it's not a great tactic, and in this industry it's better to innovate than to beg.

I was just referring to the bit where you said: "Trust us." Is the least trustworthy statement anyone can say.

I could have edited the quoted section to make that clearer, sorry chap.  I know you said you accept his word but you cast doubt on it at the same time, I think he is genuine for the reasons I stated in my last post.

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Originally posted by Admin

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Originally posted by Yalexy Seriously, can you please give me an answer for who can be held responsible if the currently blocked ads and javascripts cause any damage to my system? That's the third time I'm asking in this thread.

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Of course we cannot take responsibiliy or guarantee that something bad could not happen.  Do we take every precaution we can?  Yes.  

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.

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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 :p

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Originally posted by Admin

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Originally posted by Yalexy Seriously, can you please give me an answer for who can be held responsible if the currently blocked ads and javascripts cause any damage to my system? That's the third time I'm asking in this thread.

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Of course we cannot take responsibiliy or guarantee that something bad could not happen.  Do we take every precaution we can?  Yes.  

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.

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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.

Originally posted by GeezerGamer

 

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Originally posted by Admin

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Originally posted by Yalexy Seriously, can you please give me an answer for who can be held responsible if the currently blocked ads and javascripts cause any damage to my system? That's the third time I'm asking in this thread.

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Of course we cannot take responsibiliy or guarantee that something bad could not happen.  Do we take every precaution we can?  Yes.  

 

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.

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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)

Originally posted by Hokie

Originally posted by Admin

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.

I'd like to comment on this.

Well first let me say I been a memeber here a very, very long time, I think I was a luker for over a year before I even created my account. Hell I remember when the games list was displayed on the front page down the right hand side of the screen and there was like seven on them. Im afraid to click the games list tab now because it takes like 5 minutes to load them all. ;)

I come here damn near every day, two to three times a day. Ive gotten so much out of this site from the Features to the Videos to the Columnists to the stupid, informative, funny, insulting posts from this community; you guys will always be on my "white list".

Happy to help.

And you know what else,

Thanks for the 8 (9) years Ive had here.

 

Now enough asskissing, about that post.

 

You make it sound that we the consumers are the problem, when really, and by your own admission, is the advertisers that have driven "us" to use ad blocking programs.

Its kind of like the argument that spam somehow kept the cost of whatever they were peddling down. No it just annoyed the f**k out of us, and increased their profits by exposing more people to it.

So if these companies are losing revenue its because they are annoying the f**k out of us the consumer and forcing us to block their products.

 

Now Ive never had a problem with the ads on this site, course I didnt know you pre-filtered them. So I guess I have to kiss your ass just a little bit more and say thanks again.

So thanks, again. :)

But its totally unfair to blame us for the problem and the direction the "free" internet maybe heading. We're not the problem and neither is the ad block software.

 

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 ;-)

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.

Originally posted by someforumguy

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.

Same here, I'm not using Linux but there's a noticable difference in load speeds without adblock running. I have no problem with ads, and I've been known to click on them from time to time, but these attention grabbing flash ads are the worst. I think that quite a few members would have no problem turing off their ad blocker if MMORPG.com dumped the flash ads and stuck to static images, I know I would.

Originally posted by Stizzled

Originally posted by someforumguy

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.

Same here, I'm not using Linux but there's a noticable difference in load speeds without adblock running. I have no problem with ads, and I've been known to click on them from time to time, but these attention grabbing flash ads are the worst. I think that quite a few members would have no problem turing off their ad blocker if MMORPG.com dumped the flash ads and stuck to static images, I know I would.

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. :(

Originally posted by Admin

Originally posted by Quizzical

I didn't see any mention on the ad policy of the text underline ads like Kontera or IntelliTXT.  I block those because they make a site basically unusable, but if you're not using them anyway, it would be good to say so on the ad policy page.

 

We currently don't do these kinds of ads but are looking at doing it for users that are not logged in the forums as a way to try and compensate for what we are losing with ad blocking.  It is not solid yet but I did not want us to say we did not do this then turn around and do it next month.

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.

Originally posted by stratasaurus
I love how all the asses on here are fine with using the forums that other people spent lots of time and money to create, and read all the articles and columns that people have poured themselves into and then get all pissy about having to look at a ad, no monthly thing to pay, noone even asking you to the click the ad, just have it there and then have the balls to say that they don't need this site cause this information is somewhere else.  You guys are total d-berries and I hope someone comes along and steals the crap you have worked so hard for.

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. 

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by Admin

Originally posted by Quizzical

I didn't see any mention on the ad policy of the text underline ads like Kontera or IntelliTXT.  I block those because they make a site basically unusable, but if you're not using them anyway, it would be good to say so on the ad policy page.

 

We currently don't do these kinds of ads but are looking at doing it for users that are not logged in the forums as a way to try and compensate for what we are losing with ad blocking.  It is not solid yet but I did not want us to say we did not do this then turn around and do it next month.

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.

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.

Originally posted by Ichmen

Originally posted by stratasaurus
I love how all the asses on here are fine with using the forums that other people spent lots of time and money to create, and read all the articles and columns that people have poured themselves into and then get all pissy about having to look at a ad, no monthly thing to pay, noone even asking you to the click the ad, just have it there and then have the balls to say that they don't need this site cause this information is somewhere else.  You guys are total d-berries and I hope someone comes along and steals the crap you have worked so hard for.

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. 

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.

Originally posted by stratasaurus

Originally posted by Ichmen

Originally posted by stratasaurus
I love how all the asses on here are fine with using the forums that other people spent lots of time and money to create, and read all the articles and columns that people have poured themselves into and then get all pissy about having to look at a ad, no monthly thing to pay, noone even asking you to the click the ad, just have it there and then have the balls to say that they don't need this site cause this information is somewhere else.  You guys are total d-berries and I hope someone comes along and steals the crap you have worked so hard for.

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. 

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.

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.