Forums! The Musical

No, this is NOT an April Fool's joke.

The fact is, we really really need to try and raise some cash to be able to afford to move the game onto a dedicated server as soon as possible, and every penny helps. Since donations aren't going to cover it, at least for a while, I've reluctantly decided to include banner advertising in the game's forums, at least on a trial basis. Sorry everyone. Please don't hurt me.

EDIT: Well-meaning people, PLEASE don't go around clicking hundreds of ads to try and raise money for us. There are fraud-detection scripts in place and it'd be more likely to just get us kicked out of the ad program than to actually do anything useful.

EDIT: If you come across any ads you find objectionable or really out of keeping with this site, please let me know. Theoretically I have the ability to remove ads I don't like, and I've gone through and removed a bunch already that seemed a bit scammy or not quite right (like those stupid Evony ads) but I may have missed some and I'm happy to remove others if they're really not right.

There's still an evony ad at the top of this page.

On the top of EVERY page to be exact.

Cowboy, you know there's an edit button, so you don't actually have to double post.

Cowboy, you must be in their client-base...mine is for H&R Block.

-jB

I guess I should be a nice person and turn off adblocker plus on these forums then.

The ads I'm getting are ads to put ads where the ads are, lol.

Grrrr, how did an Evony ad sneak through? Bastards! I hate them with a passion. I haven't seen any myself, and I definitely didn't approve any. Guess I'll go back and check again.

Sportguy:

Elusis: Yes, that's still valid advertising. The people running the advertising site would like to sell their services to you as much as anyone else would.

Right, so I just went through ALL the approved ads, and didn't see any sign of anything Evony related. And yet... there's that skimpily clad tart sitting up there laughing at me right now. I've complained to the ad provider. Will see what happens. SIGH.

In case I didn't fully explain myself, I'm against posting Evony ads not because of the way they look or because their game may in fact be competition for us. That's not the point. The point is that they display ad banners showing cleavage, with a "Play Now" button, and usually something-or-other about "My Lord" and then... they deliver a Civilization clone (some have said "complete rip-off") that has nothing to do with the image depicted. Once in the game, they engage in... techniques to ensure players and their cash are quickly separated wherever possible, and I just really don't approve of that kind of behaviour.

They're like a prostitute that takes your credit card up front and doesn't have a satisfaction guaranteed or your money back policy.

I.. uh... wouldn't know about that

Oh wow these ads are stupid.

'I do not play often to "Boutique Chic", but... just this afternoon I tried again. When I seen the sum of 50,000€, I could not believe my eyes.'

??????

No, I don't believe my eyes either! That may as well say "I am an idiot. I am an idiot. I am an idiot. I am an idiot. If you are an idiot like me, click here! Idiot."

Seriously, you spend actual money on an ad campaign and can't even take the time to check that it makes sense? I despair of humanity.

Sorry everyone. I can't continue to subject you to this junk. Ads removed.

Alright, let's have another crack at this with Google AdSense instead. Maybe that'll be a bit less... crap.

Uh-huh. Google AdSense is amazing... It found the word "musical" and now we're getting a bunch of ads for music-related stuff. Isn't technology grand?

EDIT: I've updated the forums keywords to something more appropriate which should hopefully make Google change what it displays, once it gets around to crawling the site again and updating what it thinks we're talking about.

The Ads look much better.

You cannot escape the Evony ads, no matter how hard you try. THEY WILL FIND YOU!

I haven't seen any sex provoking ones myself, but i have seen the evony ads that are clean.

Same here. I'd still like to block them, since I loathe their business practices, but it's an improvement.