As if the Official Forums weren't bad enough...

...now they got adds polluting them right above the posts in an manner that you cannot avoid them.

I know the blues have said that the whole Activision merger hasn't changed anything, but this move has the aforementioned's dirty, groping, greedy fingers written all over it.

My reasoning?

The CEO of Activision, Bobby Kotick, is quoted to say:

"With respect to the franchises that don't have the potential to be exploited every year across every platform with clear sequel potential that can meet our objectives of over time becoming $100 million plus franchises, that's a strategy that has worked very well for us.""

Granted, he was speaking about the easily milked franchises of Guitar Hero and Call of Duty, but the fact that he explicitly said 'EXPLOITED' made me a very unhappy camper. And what rubs salt into the wounds is how stupid the person in charge of these ads on the officials forums thinks Blizzard fans are.

They're already making more money than most of us will in our entire lifetime, but to simply assume that we want to become so addicted to conspicuous consumption (one of the many reasons why our economy's in the pooper) that we'll bite is simply insulting.

It was fine as it was. The ads were out of the way and unintrusive. If a blizzard fan wanted Blizzard swag, they knew where to get it. This is not the way to go about doing it.