Here's my advice. Get the ad company to only do PNG/GIF and no scripting. They can use a simple thing on their end to only send your adspace images. There's absolutely NO need for scripts, flv, or other interactive media. ZAM isn't Youtube so it doesn't need movies or anything that can interact. The only reason to have anything other than picture is to hijack or for malware. The one you have now is extremely dishonest and/or negligent. That's hurting ZAM's image by proxy.
When I say I have access to the ad company, I have access to report issues only. The people at ZAM set up the ads on the site and I have no say over that.
I have no idea what you mean by "aggressive stance against ad blockers". I use AdBlockPlus, and I see no ads on ZAM at all, and I can access all of the pages there.
That's akin to being in the arctic and saying its not so cold while wearing a coldsuit. Course it would be irresponsible of me to suggest taking that off. I don't recommend it, and I doubt you would.
You didn't answer my question. What does "aggressive stance against ad blockers" mean? To me, the implication is that ad blockers no longer work. So my comment showed that they work just fine. So what in the sam-hill are they doing that prompted your initial statement?
I use the same addon and it does not stop all ads and slows down the browser with progressively more and more ads blocked that it does get.
I dont think slow zam is the result of the ad blocker. Zam was having severe issues up till just recently. Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.
This site performance issues ZAM is still working on slowly. ZAM engineers did a great job yesterday with the site keeping it chugging along with all the traffic. We got some plans to really hit the performance issues hard this summer. Our developer is setting up a developer environment for the site over this weekend. That hasn't been done since Rale worked on that site. This will allow them to test out code without the fear of screwing something up on production *cough*. Anyways, some ad blockers have terrible memory leaks as well as some extensions. Browsers as well. This will slow your browser down badly once it eats up enough memory. You can monitor your browser by opening up the task manager and see how much memory the browser and extensions are taking up. If you're in the 80% range of used up memory your computer will eventually start writing memory to swap and that's when things get ugly. I would suggest closing your browser out every now and then to keep things running smoothly.
I know I was having issues getting redirected and had the Zeus malware popup hit my computer several times before I finally caved in and spent the 10 bucks to go add free. Considering how much I use zam 10 bucks is pocket change really. The amount of time and headaches it has saved me from over the years is more valuable than 10 bucks which is why I suggest everyone who uses the site frequently to just pony up the money. Maybe it will help to pay for new features or support more jobs. Either way a lot of players would be lost without the site. As a paid member I have had only one issue with pages trying to load but it resolved within a couple of minutes.
No, the browser was slow while a ZAM tab was open. It clears up when closed. The site loads up fine other than that. I did find out the ads blocked stop at about 377 and it stops being slow.
Interesting, and thanks for clarifying. I guess I don't leave ZAM open much any more, as I haven't seen this. Last fall, I was doing PoP progression, and had it open for weeks, and did see this (slowness, not ads coming through), and would have to close the browser and restart (as Gidono was talking about). I see the same issue at work, without ZAM being open, so browser memory creep over time, with occasional restarts needed, is a thing. Tat
Browser leaks are a thing. Though with 16GB of RAM its usually not an issue. Its just ZAM has some issues. And it just started a week or so ago when the ads started. Prior to the slowdown I saw no ads. When i saw ads it was slow. Correlation isn't causation, but.. it is a lead to go with.
I run Ublock Origin on Firefox (modified) and Chrome. They both block the ads without any issues. Now... Chrome won't let me log in to ZAM anymore (as of just a few weeks ago), though Firefox will. I'm pretty sure it has to do with the script call by clicking on the login link, but Chrome isn't having any of that nonsense. Kinda sad, since I've been a premium member since December 2001. Maybe it's just time for a change.
I'm not aware of any issues with chrome not being able to log into the site. I use chrome myself and just tested this and was able to log in. You might try clear out your cookies and cache and try logging in again.
The site alone loads up pretty quickly. When I use the link in your sig its damn near instant. About one or two seconds after it loads, the adspace propagates and causes sections on the site to shift around and then there is a noticeable latency/lag with scrolling and interacting with the site. If I can click a link before the ads pop in, it loads it very much like going to the site initially, almost instantly. But if I don't. It will take 10-20 seconds for the site to realize that a link has been clicked. That tells me your servers are fine. Even during primetime with the new EQ server available. However, the ad agency that is being used, has a very inefficient script/flash/whatever that it uses to select what to display. Its causing a detriment to the site. In addition one of my friends who has used the site without an adblocker had a similar issue that Aurastrider had. They ended up with a Zues Malware pop up that installed itself as a browser addon. Thankfully I was able to help them remove it. I don't believe Everquest players should have to pay to use your site to avoid malware. You need to push that up to the authority that can make decisions.
I've been running a browser with no ad blockers on it for 3 days now browsing through many different pages and have yet to run into any malware. If you find malware in a ad you need to let us know which ad it was by right clicking on it, copying the link address and posting that to us so I can send that off to the ad agency for removal.
