Various comments/opinions: If people want to buy/peruse stuff, they'll find a way to look for it. Whether in the MarketPlace or the Marketplace AND the Showcase. I realize R'City needs to make money. And I know merchants want to make money. But, I'm a bit tired of being the lowest common denominator in life. I'm tired of advertising thrown in my face when I am trying to do something else. One can't drive down the darn road, turn on the radio or TV, go to a website, open a magazine, get your email, get your snail mail, open a bill, rent a movie or DVD, and (well, you get the idea) without having ads thrown at you. I'm so sick of it, I don't listen to the radio any more and I record any TV program so I can skip the ads. When I log into R'City, I get an ad. In fact, every page I go to seems to have an ad. Then to have ads sprinkled throughout the threads, well, adds even more. But as someone said above, just skip them. Easy for me, but there was a time when I had dial-up and I bet a lot of people still have dial-up...so, waiting for ads to come in only adds to the misery of R'City (which can be slow even on cable sometimes). So, if I want ads, I know where to find them. Why find them? Why have a Showcase? Because, as a largly automated group of people, categorizing things is what we expect. Logical sense. The reason we have folders on our PCs. Also, why have a vendor post "upcoming" items? Easy...to allow questions (like I asked about the new Howler by Samctum Art). Or to get feedback so the vendor can adjust what s/he is making (like recently with Ironhart's new building). Also, since R'City allows information about products being sold at other places, I can see even more items (without having to visit each of those sites). For the person who said I can just look in the MarketPlace when it's finally released, well, not all the items in the Showcase go to R'City's Marketplace. So, I'm glad there is a Showcase and the opportunity to "chat" with the vendor. An "ad" flag? Not sure it will work. People who don't want to see ads will just flip the switch. And, for people like me, I'll flip the switch and just go to the Showcase/Marketplace when I'm in the mood for ads. Just another opinion...FWIW.