There are banner Ad on eq2player that could jeopardize acounts!

shalom wrote:

Lol, agreed. Talk about your doom-and-gloom merchants. Last time i checked anyway, the stationplayers home page was a public site Anyway. My god, if they can get a bit more revenue to help fund improvements to this game and others. What is the problem? SOE's assured us it's safe. So accept that. Go and unleash your anger on that pesky Orc that just keeps laughing at you as you run by.

OMG ROTFL I'm the 1,000,000th customer!

What's the chance of that!

What?! But it said I'm the 1,000,000th customer!!!

LIES!

Gnobrin wrote:

Interesting that the adverts are "reviewed" and "permitted" by said web team, and very reassuring that our "account information is perfectly fine.". Though, question does come to mind concerning the validity of this comment when the mentioned advertisements actually advertise and link to a competitors game.
Example:


Unless, of course this is SOE's intention, and the advert shown above has been "reviewed" and "permitted", then I can agree that there is no need for the "oh noes" posts. One step forward, three steps back.

I didn't notice the adds since I use Firefox and I block them, but I checked with Internet Explorer and that look ugly. SOE official sites don't need cheap adds, it looks like they need money or something and decided to put cheap adds to fill the blank. That look bad and I would remove it OR put adds only about SOE games, services, or whatever. Not random adds about Internet quiz, smiley or other stupid things no one want to see. That was a bad decision of the webmaster.

ROFL @ the LOTRO ad on EQ2players, that is too funny and ironic for words and REALLY makes me feel comfortable that the ads are reviewed and given the "official" ok.

Anyway, it is pretty ridiculous that there are banner ads on EQ2players, or any other SOE site for that matter. It would be one thing if the ads were for SOE/Sony products b/c that's an internal thing, but these are regular adds on sites that we PAY for. We shouldn't have to deal with ads on sites that we pay for access to the features on them. If EQ2players was a free service like the WoW armory, it still wouldn't be acceptable b/c it's part of our monthly subscription. But there being ads on a site THAT WE PAY EXTRA above and beyond our monthly fee is just flat-out reprehensible and you people should be embarrassed for "double dipping" as it were.

Eandiil@Lucan DLere wrote:

If just this extra features would work !!!!
I guess they need the adds to get some money to actually can pay someone to fix the extras^^

These ads either need to be removed or you need to stop charging us. Its just rediculous that I'm paying for advertisements from an unknown and untrusted 3rd party source. One of the reason I use Players over fansites is the lack of advertisements. I should feel safe logging into it. And I dont.
It needs to stop. Now. Get rid of these banners!

This may be old news, but after mentioning it to some guildmates they were suprised to see them as well. The other day I went to the site to check some things out and my system started grinding. Turns out IE was having a fit over a rotating banner ad at the bottom of the screen. I hit reload and the banner ad actually spawned a popup that both IE and Google Toolbar didn't catch.
One of the folks I mentioned it to actually noticed that if you go to your character inventory screen on eq2players, and try to view some of the equipment in their profiel. The pop up for the equipment spawned UNDER the ad, making it impossible to read.
I mean come on, this isn't a third party Fansite. You can only guess at what type of conclusions were being brought up regarding these ad's.

Harpax wrote:

You're right, it's old (and not particularly encouraging) news. You missed two threads alone on the front page of this very forum on this very topic:
From the unecessarily alarmist:
There are banner Ad on eq2player that could jeopardize acounts!
to the more pertinent question of:
Why are there ads when I look at EQ2Players when I paid extra for it?
Harpax wrote:

Nope, I think the discussion (both in the Forums and amounst the players in other venues) have pretty much covered the entire breadth of possibilities. Hilarity ensues. Oh, wait, this isn't a FOX sitcom. I meant to say, deep-seated consumer resentment ensues.
BTW, I happen to agree with you, I think the change was asinine.

Ok, I have enough problems with advertisements on a paid service such as this. That is bad enough. Especially since they are mostly the annoying and classless "You are the millionth customer" type. I am honestly surprised that the website staff (more likely the team who is in charge of it, as I don't think the staff has been empowered to do so) has not weeded out such bad advertisements. That is a matter that has already been discussed.

However, I just got an attempted pop-up add from tribal fusion when I visited the page today.

Pop-up ads on a paid service.

ENTIRELY UNACCEPTABLE.
Whoever is in charge of this should reconsider their decision.
Please address this as soon as possible, as it will definitely drive away your customer base. No one feels safe on a site with pop-ups.

Yeah, it is pretty ridiculous and entirely unacceptable IMHO, check out my post from this thread in which the situation is discussed w/ commentary from Grimwell and others

For those too lazy to click the link:

Anyway, it is pretty ridiculous that there are banner ads on EQ2players, or any other SOE site for that matter. It would be one thing if the ads were for SOE/Sony products b/c that's an internal thing, but these are regular adds on sites that we PAY for. We shouldn't have to deal with ads on sites that we pay for access to the features on them. If EQ2players was a free service like the WoW armory, it still wouldn't be acceptable b/c it's part of our monthly subscription. But there being ads on a site THAT WE PAY EXTRA above and beyond our monthly fee is just flat-out reprehensible and you people should be embarrassed for "double dipping" as it were.

While the normal advertisements are a problem on their own, it is the pop ups alone that I am concerned with for this thread.

I understand that Grimwell already said that he can only pass on our feedback to the team in charge of them, and I can appreciate that. As such, I consider my feedback on the banners issue to have been given to the proper channels and hope some QA can occur on the ads because of our feedback.

However, allowing third party advertisements to generate any pop-up ads is a great deal different than banners. This type of advertisement can cause an entire customer base to label the site as dangerous, and I would hate to see this happen on the verge of it being completed.

EQ2Players has great potential, but this may have a serious impact on the willingness of the game population to use it.

Ok if you are going to bomb me with ads, then the services offered on the eq2players site should be free. Very ugly of sony putting ads up everywhere. Have they taken that big of a loss of players they need to suplement with ads?
Whats next NPC's that spew ads when you get close to them? Or opening chests takes you to a sponser site before you can loot? LOL you must complete 3 offers on page 1, 2 offers on page 2, and 1 offer on page 3 before you can loot your master 1 spell.

I'd say you should probably QQ more.

Orcinus@Venekor wrote:

We already have LoN MOTDs, LoN System Messages, and LoN loot. That's close enough to in-game ads if you ask me, considering that LoN and EQ2 are (supposed to be?) two different products...

But back on the topic of eq2players ads: yes, I agree that having you pay for this service AND having you to suffer through ads is bad. But if it hadn't been posted in these forums, I would never have even noticed there were ads now. Firefox + AdBlock took care of that for me. Similar solutions also exist for other browsers in case Firefox ain't your cup of tea.

Now, are ad-blockers ethical? You be the judge. Personally, I find my mental well-being more important than their ads revenue. TV spots are every 10 mins - but website ads are every page click. So it's up to them: they let me block the ads, or they pay my psychologist's consultation bills. Thanks to them, I'm always afraid when I close the lights at night that a monkey wearing boxing gloves might come from under my bed to beat the hell out of me. I also have nightmares about winning the lottery every 5 mins, only to find out that I have to move to Nigeria first to claim my prize.

I didn't actually get the pop-up at first because I do have a pop-up blocker. But I couldn't figure out why I would get a pop-up on EQ2Players, so I enabled them briefly to see what it was. I figured it was some new feature they had coming that either involved an activeX control or they were routing pm's on the forums through to you when you signed in on EQ2Players. Long and short was that I figured it was something useful. I was truly surprised to find it was a pop-up ad. Hence the post.

On a side note, I agree with you about the LoN spam using the system messages being a poor decision, Lantis.

Edit: However, you're on your own against the evil monkey with boxing gloves. . . I have my hands full with the one wielding tambourines.

Well, apparently pop-up ads are considered to be at the same type of advertising as normal banner ads because that thread has been merged with this one.


I strongly disagree with such, but c’est la vie. If the response given already about the banner ads applies to the pop-up ones as well, then I will refrain from posting any further on my own about the issue.

Pop Up ads are not meant to be present on our sites. We are seeing them too, and removing the associated advertisers as they come up.

Thank you, Jabru. It is good to know it is being worked on.