I, personally - and to my (mostly first-hand) knowledge, the Phoenix Project (and MWM) as an organization - have never been "anti-corporate." I know there are sentiments that run the gamut out there, and there is a lot of concern about making sure we are not an "evil corporation," but it is definitely not a helpful position to assume that "evil" is an essential part of "corporation."
As has been said, we lost CoH to bad business decisions and (potentially) interpersonal politics at the highest level. These kinds of things could have cost us our game even if the organization that owned it had been totally non-profit and anti-corporate, itself. Politics happen. Now, there may well have been a profit motivated aspect, but to the best of our external examination (and here, I use "our" to encompass the whole Save CoH movement) can confirm, it looks like there has to have been either a gross miscalculation as to the profits that could have been made, or there must have been somebody who wanted it gone and used "only making us millions rather than tens of millions" as the "business" reason. This is why we got the bit about not fitting with their company direction (or whatever it was): the decision was made based on something the decision-makers wanted more than just profit.
MWM will never, unless its leadership changes drastically, be "anti-corporate." We will always (again, unless its leadership changes drastically) be "pro-community," however. While we are more than happy to do business with corporations (and even non-corporate businesses) - large and small - that will help us make a sustainable and profitable product, our primary purpose is to build and sustain this game for this community. We view any business partners we obtain as complicit in that effort, and if they prove to be detrimental to doing so, we will end that relationship. However, I firmly agree with those who've commented on how optionally interactive, product-placement and "real-world simulating" ads (e.g. billboards, storefronts) are beneficial to ALL involved: they improve the immersiveness of our game world; they provide our sponsors with a service they value enough to pay us; the right implementation can help us with my personal goal of getting ways for 100% free players to gain access to paid-only aspects of the game; any income that doesn't come directly from the players means less pressure to try to charge for things we might prefer not to; and the interactive nature of the optional aspects can increase the RL QoL of our players who find something they DO want. Heck, in a lot of ways, we'd be getting sponsors to pay us to produce more content for the game. And more content is always good, as long as it fits with the feel and theme of the game. (And obviously, we intend to be very dedicated to enforcing that.)
As for changing out store-fronts, that's something we would have to be able to do, of course. If McDonald's stops paying us for the storefronts in the game, we want to be able to let Wendy's move in if they're going to pay for the privilege. IT can be more involved, programmatically, than changing out a billboard or a flyer or a bus-side ad, but that's why packages that include real-estate in game will cost sponsors more to have in place. They also will increase immersiveness and provide better options for optional interactive content that the sponsor could have us put together, making it still worth it, of course.
