PROTEST: Help Stop The Lords of Everquest Pop-Up Madness
 

There is a disturbing phenomenon occurring on the Everquest servers. It began with Legacy of Yheska. Pop up ads, appearing during log in. The citizens of Norrath found this to be an annoyance, but we collectively shrugged, assuming that Sony would realize those ads interfere with our gameplay and remove them. Eventually they did, and we gave it no more thought.

Our complacence was a mistake.

Today we see a new breed of pop up. It appears during log in. when switching characters. Even in game, where we pay for recreation, it assails us with systemwide messages. The Lords of Everquest spam is everywhere, and there seems to be no end in sight.

No more.

We have this chance, this one chance to stop this evil from spreading. Citizens of Norrath! Join me in taking a stand against these marketing tactics, and together, we can show Sony that we WILL NOT STAND FOR IT!!!! This is not a balancing issue that most classes of the world can choose to ignore! Like it or not, this is your game. Will you chose to act? Or stand idly by, forever wondering if you could have made a difference as pop up after pop up interrupts your gaming experience?

You can make a difference!

On Wednesday, December 10th 2003 at 8pm eastern, 6pm central, and 4pm pacific time, join your fellow players in a serverwide revolt against the pop-ups and in game spam. There are three ways you can help.

1. I will be hosting a mass protest on the Bertoxxulous server in the Plane of Knowledge next to the Nexus stone on December 10th 2003 at 8pm eastern, 7pm central, and 5pm pacific time. You are invited and encouraged to create a new character (or bring an existing one!) and join in. The more people we have there, the stronger our position will be. Once we are gathered there, we will proceed to phase 2.

2. Even if you can’t make the protest on Bertoxxulous, you can help with this phase. At precisely 8:15 eastern, 7:15 Central and 5:15 pacific time, all protest participants will be asked to /petition the following text:

“I hereby submit this petition in protest of the Lords of Everquest pop up advertisements and in-game spam. Consider this petition notification that I will not even consider buying Lords of Everquest until the ads are completely removed from Everquest. Thank you”

If you like, please feel free to add: “p.s. Kaolian sends his regards”
3. The third and final phase of this protest will be the e-mail campaign. Please send a short message to [email protected] asking them to remove the pop ups. Please, do not spam them with multiple messages, the goal here is to show them that we will not be ignored, not to knock them off line with a denial of service attack.

We will be coordinating the protest from this thread at Allakhazams:
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/for...887539773572461
Please check back for updated information as it becomes available

Together, we can reclaim the magic that was Everquest from the hands of corporate greed. Viva la Resistance!!!!!!

Kaolian Drachensborn – an Irate player.

edit: fixed times.

lets all protest
 

Awesome, i am full on with this idea. I too am tired of the ads. I'm not getting it, so why should i have to read it constantly? EVERYONE should do it. 12-10, im there ...Rolarin Nimbaru, 52 Pathfinder ...7th hammer

Weird... got add one time, clicked no and it has never bothered me again.

Bleh
 

I get the ad everytime I'm logging in and once I'm logged in, they send at leat 4 system-wide messages saying to buy it. I beta tested the game and its nothing new really in my opinion, play warcraft III instead =P. I'm totally up for the protest idea!

I too took a look at the beta and I couldn't discern anything even remotely "revolutionary". It looks and plays exactly like most other RTS's out there and so far the only "revolutionary and innovative" aspect I've seen is the way in which they promote it.

Not only do we get the endless string of pop ups and in-game adds but they also play on our dedication to the original EQ by giving free playtime and a spot in the EQ2 beta if you buy the damn thing. Note how the reward is related to the original EQ game, and not to the RTS game, as if LoEQ is of secondary importance in and of itself and their main goal is to hawk off as many copies they can before people realize there's nothing "revolutionary" at all about it and promptly uninstall it.

Also, if thats how selective they are with their beta testers I fear to see how EQ2 will look upon release. If getting a copy of LoEQ is all you need to qualify as a beta tester...

/shrug

It's really not as bad in game as everyone is saying. There's the MoTD, and OCCASIONALLY there is a system-wide message. I just got done with an 11 hour play session and there wasn't one system-wide message. Same with yesterday, and the day before that.

As far as the pop-up while logging in, all you have to do is press escape. That's it. Is that really ruining your game experience? Come on.

Sorry to be rude, but in my opinion, the people who are having such a huge issue with this are probably the same people that need to start with their weapons equipped and their hotkeys made for them. "It's just too hard to press escape or click a button, and it's too hard to ignore the 3 line system-wide message." Give me a break.

Granted, it's poor marketing, and as said above, it's kinda stupid to prey on people's loyalty to EQ to sell something that's basically unrelated, but in-game protests? Sheesh.

it is that bad
 

On Firiona it has definantly been bad...maybe you've been lucky and not been on durring the serverwide messages but the other night there were three all within an hour of each other. This is getting rediculos, I'll be at the protest, with both of my accounts, count on that.

And why not?

Changes aren't known to happen when people sit around and shrug. :)

Of course, if it isn't a problem for you then you're free to go do whatever you want. But obviously others have a problem with this. Belitteling them and their concerns is not nice.

Times
 

Ok just noticed this....it says 8:15 Eastern, 6:15 Central, 4:15 Pacific...so is Eastern going an hour before the rest? Central is only an hour behind Eastern, not two. I'm in Mountain and I'm two hours behind Eastern...

More spam
 

I just logged of EQ - but at the beginning of that session it downloaded eqnews.txt another commercial for LoEQ.

I agree that it has gone overboard with their ads. I accepted the LDoN, at least it was relevant, but LoEQ isn't an expansion - it's a whole other game.

this is an awesome idea! and I will, if I can be there for the whole thing wether or not my computer blows up from the lag! = )

If the protest is actually to be at 8pm eastern... I think that translates to:
7pm central
6pm mountain
5pm pacific

I may be wrong do to some weirdness with daylight savings time or something... but I think these times are correct.

As far as the merrit for the protest... sure it's easy to click "no" when you get the popups. I got three the last time I logged in... one at the patcher, one on the old parchment background, and one graphical purple one on the server select screen. The point isn't that it's not all that bad now (I think it's plenty bad, but some might argue that), The point is that if we don't do something, I promise you it will get worse.
If we let it go... and they decide to start having ad windows pop up in front of EQ during your play session... would you still say "It's easy to click no...".

We're paying for this service. We shouldn't be inundated with advertising. I've been a paying customer to SoE for as long as they have run EQ... they don't need to "sell" me on their products. I'm either going to play LoE or I'm not... bothering me is certainly not going to get me more interested. They are doing it simply because it's easy for them, and it's free. It needs to stop.


fozz

I am there, I am sooo...................... well lets just say i dont like them any more :P.
62 mage 7Th Hammer/55 ranger Veeshan

Two things...

1. I agree with organizing a show of support for something you disagree with, BUT some of the things listed above can get you banned. Mis-use of the /petition system can get you a 2 or 3 day suspension. I would recommend if you want to participate in the above mentioned "stand-in" or the email to sony, then please do so. neither of those should cause any issues. But please do not send in a petition. you will be clogging up the cue, and those who are having real ingame problems will not be able to get help.. this is why mis-use of it can get you a "warning" suspension (usually 2 or 3 days)


2. Companies don't tend to react well to threats. Its simply not good buisness practice to allow anyone to "take hostages". SOE does listen to the feedback given, and if a lot of people give feedback then they listen even more. But I will go against the masses and say that everytime someone wants to "protest" something going on in the game with a "stand-in" or "mass-cancelling of accounts" you will see little or no help from SOE. We pay to play thier game, they listen to our feedback to make the game more fun, but it would completely stupid of them to make any changes because "people protested" because then *any* time someone wanted something change they would *again* "take hostages" as it were.

Again, it is your call, I think simply using the feedback in the DEV forum would be plenty, but if you choose to participate in the rest, and for any reason it does not go the way you want (ie, you get booted, banned, nerfed), just know that you brought attention on yourself.

I see Pepsi and Nokia adds in eq's near future~