Why are counselors not publicly named/listed and should counselors be officially listed?

I vote for yes. First, I find it kind of shady and a reason for conspiration theories. Second, I'd like to see the selection of player-counselors being discussed, criticized and/or approved by the UO:R community. Call it an appeal for more democracy.

PS: It would also be very interesting to know what the tasks of counselors are. I think, it's not only new player greeting.

It would be helpful to know even if just for knowing who to point someone to for help

I thought that Occlo has a high population of counselors. I believe they spend the majority of their time helping others clean their bags. Those are counselors?

I don't want to know. I don't need to know. I don't want to bother an off duty counselor. If they are on duty, they are in game doing their jobs. If they are in IRC, they should be there as a counselor. If they are there as a player, that means they are off the clock.

Everyone does their job with their own personal bias and view on matters. If they are a good "employee" they can set those aside and do the job the way their "employer" wants the job done. If they cant, then they are not employed long.

If you have a complaint against an employee, the employer ALWAYS says they will look into it and take appropriate action. You NEVER get to find out whether that is actually true nor do you get to find out if any action, appropriate or not was taken. It is not your right. It is between Employer and Employee. You have to trust that the employer is doing his job and has earned your business. If they haven't, then don't do business with them. THAT IS YOUR ONLY & FINAL RECOURSE

The customer can influence how the Employer conducts business, but they should NEVER be allowed to dictate how that is done. If the employer allows his customers to DICTATE how he should do business, then that business is doomed to fail. You can never satisfy ALL of the people ALL of the time. I personally will not do business with someone who flip flops and says whatever it takes to placate but never takes any real action. I don't want a business to kiss my ass all the time and give me what I want cause I want it.


As long as there is balance, then I will continue to do business with them.

Now I made this general, so that you may apply it to whatever situation you see. It works for Car Shopping as well as game playing.

As always it my opinion, everyone has one, some smell better than others... you decide

Gotta watch that language. People might expect to get paid.

As to what counselors do:

The Job Description
Monitor a special system designed to notify you of new player logins, and greet new players.
Note: This needs to be done every 30-60 minutes while you are logged into your counselor account.
Monitor any incoming pages and assist players when possible. Escalating any pages to game masters when neccessary.
Spend time with new player explaining how to adapt to our server by educating them on the differences between this server and their UO experience.
Assist the administrators with testing patches on the test server.
Assist the administrators with doing research on various issues

This program is not about teleporting around the world, using staff commands or having a power trip. The Counselor program was designed for one purpose. Helping new players. Every command unrelated to this has been removed. You can not teleport, you can not use the go menu, you cannot wander the world invisible.

Taken from:

http://uorforum.com/threads/renaissance-counselor-program-now-accepting-applications.1849/

LanDarr, you describe partially the outer world situation, which is perfectly fine. But why then, do all the service people dealing with customers have their name largely visible on their shirts etc? You can go in any shop and will see a name tag. There is a reason for that. My fitness studio also lists all of their trainers, smiling brightly from a screen when I enter the building. It's just nice to know, who the persons are that are running and maintaining things in the background.

Thanks for quoting the job description of counselors. I think that answers one of my questions.

My assumption is, that this leads to very valuable insights of the game mechanics here (just an example: rare spawn timers and how they exactly work). But this is a very different topic, isn't it. Somebody ultimately has to do the testing. Would just be interesting to know who that is exactly. Once you know who that is, you can come to conclusions or not. Right now, it's just a black box that nobody openly speaks about.

I would love to help with testing and doing some counselor work if I had the time.

I don't imagine folks who are doing this are getting a leg up on the kind of information that would give them an unfair advantage on production though. Would they know the layout of level 7 maps? Most likely. Would they know when and where rare items spawn? Maybe the where, but I doubt the when.

It should be left confident, unless the counselor does not mind being known. Having names of counsellors posted would lead to a TON of silly bullshit UO:R drama. Having performed counselor duties in the past, I can confirm Rezon's statements. Your sole job is to greet new players and answer any questions they may have. Chris lays out an extremely clear set of rules when brought in to the program and does all he can to enforce the rules.

As far as mechanics/event testing, being a counselor provides no benefit in this aspect. Most of the people doing the testing are highly trusted individuals that have been around since day 1 of Beta. I have also seen Chris announce publicly numerous times he is looking for people to assist in testing new content and events before they go live.

Not everyone assisting in testing has a character in the counselor program. Thinking that if you had a list of all players in the counselor program, you could assume these same people have some unfair advantage, is simply wrong.

Yes, Markos, thanks for mentioning. I am all open for expanding the list of counselors to a list of people that were involved in testing/patching. What's the harm in mentioning these names openly?

Back to the counselors: What about people that are only few months here and not since beta? Or people that the shard majority wouldn't trust? People with rivals? People in factions (you know the hate in the faction pvp community). Stuff that happens, that Chris isn't aware of? Chris once explicitly said, that thieves are excluded (yes, he said, I can't be counselor explicitly). Is he aware of any thief toon here? Is that even fair? (No, this thread is not about my feelings, don't start arguing that way now). Right now, nobody is able to discuss anything. It's all(most) secret.

I know there is high potential for drama, but I am not sure if names should be kept secret because of that. Well, here is the poll. Let's see what UO:R thinks about it. And then, even when the majority wants the names, it doesn't mean that this will be implemented. It just shows us, what the players of UO:R want.

People that haven't been here that long will have to develop a reputation with the community and let Chris know you are interested in helping whenever and however you can. If you constantly stir up shit in IRC (Not saying you do this, just in general), or create in-game drama, or have been known to grief people in-game in any way, your chances of being selected for these types of things in the future may be at risk.

I do understand where you coming from though. From the outside, it may seem a bit shady or non-transparent. That's why I wanted to weigh in publically to give my 2 cents.

I honestly feel that if the names were released of who is a counselor it would only fuel more trash talk and claims of favoritism.

I voted yes but after reading the responses would change my vote to no. I have heard in confidence that counselors may sometimes get a minor leg up on new content or events they assist with. However there's a LOT of players on this shard that love conspiracy theorizing and creating drama over essentially nothing, and I think counselors should be spared that nonsense.

They ARE getting paid. Not in gold, items or cash perhaps, but they are getting something out of it for their efforts

I believe that folks who volunteer to be counselors, testers or just in general are helpful without any official title do it for the joy and self satisfaction of helping others and building something special here. They feel good when they do these things, that is their reward. The helpful people here are still people, some are very selfless and low maintenance. they don't need daily thanks or affirmations. They go about quietly helping folks. Others are quite different. There are also the not so quiet types with very passionate approach. Still they are helpful. There a lot of unsung heroes & helpful folks in game and in IRC who don't have an official title.

When they stop feeling good about it, its time for them to move on, take a step back, re invent their approach here. Its when they turn sour or bitter and they don't step aside and take a break that they can become a negative force, overstep boundaries and such.

Well, then I will phrase it another way. One or more counselors in my year and a half here have voiced that they believe they have had a minor advantage by helping development/testing. Whether this is true or not, it doesn't matter to me, because a) I have never personally witnessed one exploit even a moderate advantage or share knowledge even with close friends to do the same and b) I know they truly help this server for the sake of helping and not for the slightest gain. I probably shouldn't haven't written that line about a "leg up" but now that I have, I wanted to clarify. Another reason why (as if the vote matters) I would have voted yes: in my limited purview, the counselors don't exploit their positions. So.... let them do their work in peace.

*struggles with foot in mouth*