Sleazy MMO Marketing – A Growing, Disturbing Trend

With potentially huge money to be made, it is easy to understand how MMO marketeers sometimes lose sight of ethics, honesty, and even good taste. The MMO industry is barely ten years old, and has only been huge for about five. The lack of maturity in the industry has led to a commensurate lack of standards when it comes to advertising and marketing.

Examples include World of Warcraft's exaggerated subscriber numbers, Evony's blog spam and faux porn ads, City of Heroes' "free expansion" claims, and more.

At what point will marketing tactics like these actually hurt the industry? Do customers see through it and ignore it, or do methods such as these turn them off completely from the genre?