“WE’RE CLOSING. WHOOPS! JUUUUST KIDDING!” [Author: Lum the Mad]

Yet another story in the MMORPG site deadpool today.

EQ Forge is one of the most popular class-specific message board sites out there, hosting the canonical ranger and shaman boards and quite a few other resources besides.

EQ Forge (this month anyway) is getting banner ads from UGO. You remember them from the last couple stories, right? Anyway, recently, without telling anyone, they recently started running pop-up ads for eBay. Users hate pop-up ads. I don’t have to tell you this. You already removed this site from your bookmark list anyway over us running pop-up ads. Either that or the last update which made no sense. Something of the sort. ANYWAY.

In any event, the EQ Forge users were PISSED. And let Sunmoon (the site’s administrator) know in no uncertain terms.

I have no problems with adds, even annoying flash adds that hog system resources to bounce an inane monkey back and forth. BUT pop-up suck totally and completely and should be banned like aspestos.

And Sunmoon responded, first graciously, then abruptly, and then finally:

Give me two minutes and I’ll show you what happens without advertising….

And then he replaced the EQ Forge forums briefly with this message:

We are sorry, due to financial difficulties of running a site of this size, without receiving any revenue in return proved to be too much of a burden for its owner, Sunmoon. I regret the decision, but pissed off users griping about banner ads and posting workarounds drove advertisers away and thus closed out our only source of funding.

It was only up a few moments, but long enough for someone to send me a panic-stricken email about yet another website falling to Market Forces.

In other news, there was some patch in EQ, and UO is working on some expansion, and AC is doing some sequel thing. Never mind that. We’ll continue to bring you news from the real action.