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Post by
xaratherus
I'm really not certain what the big deal is. Did it surprise me at first? Yes.
Do I like the original layout better? Yes.
Am I deft enough to avoid clicking on it? Yes (most of the time).
Are any of the people complaining offering to offset the revenue from the ad by donating money to Wowhead, a site that is a completely free resource to the WoW community but that takes a large amount of time and money to maintain and develop? I doubt it.
Perhaps before screaming "ZOMGZ HAXX TH0TTB0T H3R3 1 C0MZ!" people should think about the fact that resources like this take time and money to develop and support - and if advertising helps keep the site free (and it isn't in a browser-hijacking, pop-up driven manner) I'm all for it.
Post by
onyxmoncton
As a sort of courtesy thing, I've decided against blocking the ad, though I do admit I was stunned for a second when I loaded it for the first time.
Maybe it's because of my NoScript addon or something, but all right-clicking does is open my little right-click menu. Out of curiosity, I did click the ad, but, as someone else said, I'm not sure how many WoW-players are going to buy into a monitor that seems to be meant for ZOMG KILLIN' games. I mean, I'm running WoW on a laptop where my spell detail and other visual effects are down so low that Smite looks even less intimidating than it already did. (Kinda like a little yellow sparkle on the opponent's chest. Ooh, scary.) Also, graphical glitches out of the rear end.
Likewise, most people I know play WoW on their junkers, and use the good computer for the system-intensive non-rpgs.
However, I get what's going on, and I know it isn't going to be forever, so keep on going with your thing for all I care. Still over nine-thousand times better than Thottbot, and still less of an eyesore even with LAWLSAURUS REX staring me down with his weird red vibes and dumb-looking glasses. It will pass, and we can resume having a clean interface once more.
So, painful as it is to say, I support the ad. Lawlsaurus gives me a chuckle whenever I see his dumb expression anyway.
Post by
JayRay
First of all, I don't see how anyone could like it.
Not saying it should be removed, but if people actually say: "Oh, that ad makes this site look cool" than that is just stupid.
I don't like the way the ad influences the sites look.
I like how it allows Wowhead to keep wowheading.
Those two balance things out for the most part. I still don't like it, but I also like wowhead.
If everyone had a preference, I am pretty sure they would choose to hide the ad. (Still can't figure out how :(
Post by
49206
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
119439
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
JayRay
This is my opinion;
I believe a frontpage of any website should be free of advertisers, popups, etc. A frontpage is like a first impression to a new person, if they see a bunch of adverts on it they'll most likely think the website will be riddled with adverts and popups and the like. I'd like a frontpage nice and clean, not with a giant advert stuck on it.
Yeah, this is a really, really good point.
Post by
24183
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Arador
Could go on a long tirade here but it doesn't matter. I'll keep it short.
Fact is, this ad makes the site look unprofessional, and I have experts in site design backing me up in this opinion. Sacrificing professionalism for some extra money reeks of selling out, but not that it's really a surprise, with the switch of ownership.
At least other sites (slashdot, metacritic, del.icio.us) know you don't need to sacrifice quality to be successful. It's all about the content.
Post by
Mischieff
To Wowhead
- I support the ad only because it gives you guys revenue. Hell, I even clicked it and browsed the site for about 3 minutes. There. I made you guys some money.
To everyone else
- Yes, I don't like it, but I support it cause it makes wowhead money and helps keep our resource free of charge. Click it and support wowhead. Oh yeah, deal with it.
Post by
dpoyesac
When Wowhead first became known to the public it had the upper hand on other database sites as they were all financed by gold selling adds and leveling services.
Now I think most people have carried this in their subconsciousness that Wowhead is a site that won't
'sell out'
their users for the sheer point of extra cash. Now, while I still understand that a site in growth, like Wowhead, needs the money to keep updating and expanding server capacity I think this add is in conflict with the image that a lot of people have carried around for the last year and a half or so.
Yep. This is exactly right. The Wowhead guys are in an unenviable position -- Wowhead isn't a just website, or a database site, or a way to get quests done faster; Wowhead is a
community
. People feel like this is their space. Just think of all the comments or forum posts that are a variant of 'This is wowhead -- keep stuff like that on Thottbot.'
This, of course, means we are automatically against anything that feels like it threatens that sense of community.
Post by
9912
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Mischieff
To Wowhead
- I support the ad only because it gives you guys revenue. Hell, I even clicked it and browsed the site for about 3 minutes. There. I made you guys some money.
To everyone else
- Yes, I don't like it, but I support it cause it makes wowhead money and helps keep our resource free of charge. Click it and support wowhead. Oh yeah, deal with it.
WOWDB does not have ads.
And WoWHead is part of a bigger network, sure they can earn their money from there.
If WOWDB can do it, sure can WoWHead.
Anyways I've editted the WoWHead site personally in my browser and removed it.
Usually smaller adds are fine for me but not when the ENTIRE site is masked as one big sick advertisement.
And no, gamespot and gamespy and such do not have this.
WoWDB is also run by Curse, which has a lot of revenue behind it. Also, WoWDB does not get near the amount of traffic that WoWhead does.
Post by
Wildhorn
Imo, they could have at least used a Devilsaur instead this loosy T-Rex
>.> <.< >.> >_<
omg another awesome capchat: yu8me (you hate me)
Post by
tecnobrat
I have been in the advertising industry for 5 years. Advertising is getting harder and harder to make money, and costs are not dropping. People are blocking ads more and more frequently. Servers and bandwidth are as expensive as ever, especially how everything is becoming more interactive, more flash, etc.
I'd like to just point out some mistakes in some previous posters information:
WOWDB does not have ads.
And WoWHead is part of a bigger network, sure they can earn their money from there.
If WOWDB can do it, sure can WoWHead.
It doesn't?
http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/993/curseaockd2.png
<= Top of the page.
WoWDB is also run by Curse, which has a lot of revenue behind it. Also, WoWDB does not get near the amount of traffic that WoWhead does.
And go to curse.com, and check out what they did for their new site. If they had "a lot of revenue" I guess they wouldn't need to do the same thing you are complaining about here eh?
http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/4229/curseskinwy3.png
Also curse has been employing interstitial ads for a long time. Those ads that show a full page ad, and you have to wait 20 seconds or click next to go to the page you want. In my opinion those are much worse than a front-page only skin.
Also ... gamespot has also started running skins:
http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/8498/gamespottg2.png
- Bubble gum anyone?
There are a lot of sites out there running skins. PhotoBucket has been running them for awhile, and they look great. Personally I am not a fan of the design of the current wowhead skin, purely from a design perspective, but its NOT horrible, I've seen much much worse.
Anyways, it is a short-lived campaign, and as Miyari said, it will be gone soon enough.
Edit: Also, the curse-owned site worldofraids.com has put a firefox logo inside their logo. I assume as some promotion of the firefox 3 release tomorrow.
http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/3104/wordj1.png
Post by
Wildhorn
Nice idea changing the O for some logo. You could do that too, this is the kind of stuff I would not mind.
man wtf with the awesome capchat I get today... this time it is "own3d"
Post by
Malgayne
You guys seriously need to chill. I love this website and I adore this community, and I wouldn't do anything to hurt it. Frankly, I don't think the site skin looks that great--you should have seen how it looked BEFORE they sent it to us for approval. But it's
just an ad
. There are ads on the internet, and there are ads on Wowhead. I'm sorry that you guys find them offensive--believe me, if I had a choice we would offer the site free of charge. But considering the number of users who employ ad blockers, and the number of users who are just too smart to click on banner ads--combined with the bandwidth costs of
serving
this data to you guys, as well as the programs we employ that
aren't
ad supported (like
everything on this page
), we need to find a way to cover our costs.
The entire banner ad industry has proven incredibly sleazy. The amount of pageviews we get in a day is so tremendous that the ad sales guys--who are performing exceptionally well--can only cover a tiny fraction of the traffic we serve. This means we have to go to high volume traffic networks to cover the remainder of our banner ads, and by necessity the quality control on ads like that is not as good as it is on ads that we approve by hand. This results in ads the beep, ads that flash, ads that make noise, and all the other ads that make it a hassle to get to the data you want. But if we DON'T use those high traffic banner ad networks--and at last count Wowhead's traffic drained all of the available banners from 10 or more of them--then we can't afford our monthly bandwidth costs.
Running ads on the site with poor quality control is
not acceptable to me
. Failing to cover my bandwidth costs, shutting down the site, and going to get a REAL job is
also
not acceptable to me. The only remaining option is to try and find more controlled ways of generating revenue for the site. One of those is establishing a subscription/donation program, which we're working on.
Aside from that, what are our options?
We can run popups on every page.
We can require you to pay money for the service.
We can run interstitial ads, like Curse does--the ones that interrupt your browsing and force you to look at an ad before you can continue browsing.
We can put more ads on the pages.
We can require you to click through more pages to reach the information you want.
Or instead, we can start trying to find alternate methods of advertising--hand-approved ads, by companies we have personally spoken to. Ads that don't redirect your browser, or flash, or beep, for products that we think that you just
might
be interested in--like I said, I'm testing the product on Wednesday.
The campaign lasts for 2 days. This time tomorrow it will already be gone and you'll be back to the homepage you love. In the meantime, we can afford to run the website a little longer, and I can spend more of my time working to make the site BETTER, rather then spending my days tracking down and removing these annoying banners.
That is, unless I need to keep replying to this thread. ;)
Post by
13359
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Mischieff
Jeebus, the amount of whining about an ad?
Granted, it's a big ad, but fairly inobtrusive compared to pretty much every other site out there. Just check the screenshots from Curse posted further up.
I use an Adblocker, but I disable the filtering on websites I use a lot and find useful. Wowhead is one of these. The first time i saw the Dino ad, I clicked it, curious about what it was. It hasn't been a problem since then.
I just hope Malgayne and the rest of the Wowhead crew can continue developing this great site. It's fast, it's clean, it has a ton of great features, and did I mention it's fast?
Less qq, more dataz!
/agreed.
Also, to
Technobrat
- I was trying to defend you guys for putting the ad up. Thanks for trying to put me on the spot.
Post by
Malgayne
I don't think he was trying to put you on the spot. Just quoting a source which pointed out the connection between Wowdb and Curse.
Post by
Mischieff
I don't think he was trying to put you on the spot. Just quoting a source which pointed out the connection between Wowdb and Curse.
Looks aimed to me, with the "Previous posters" (plural) comment, and the "a lot of revenue" quote. I'm not mad or anything, just trying to defend myself in the eyes of the mods/admins. So yeah, don't beat him anymore
Malgayne
=P
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