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

That's fair

I would like to hear your thoughts on "councilors" that are not staff but are in a private restricted staff IRC channel...

thoughts

I just want CTFs and tournaments!

hmm
I think that Blackeye's thoughts on this aren't totally off the mark, but in this situation I don't really think the counselors get too many gameplay advantages.

He's not totally wrong though, testers do get a bit of an advantage. The people who dominated the halloween event, for example, were the ones who tested it. The people who dominate CTF even now were the people who helped design it. Many of the most prolific testers aren't counselors, though.
And becoming a tester isn't particularly hard. All you really have to do is make yourself available for it and provide feedback on systems and you'll probably be asked to come test stuff.

You got it all wrong napo.. The people that dominate ctfs are the people in voice, with valorite axes and coordinate attacks and a strategy. The guys who won the Halloween event been here for years and they are ++lames. I am sorry they designed CTF to balance out teams to even numbers and did not allow pets.

I do not think counselors get any gameplay advantages and I believe they are mostly here to benefit the community and help new players. Other than that I could care less if napo or trojancow was a counselor, as long as they are helping the community and keeping UOR strong. I believe Telamon has good judgement and I trust in his choice to choose whoever he sees fit for staff.

Yes, and the leader of that group just happens to be the person who helped design the system.
I personally don't see a problem with it, since getting in to test content is really just a matter of volunteering. It absolutely is true that the people who help test/design tend to perform better than those that don't.

I dont believe anyone needs to know besides Chris if they play here or not, this is chris' shard and i doubt he will give responcibility to just anyone or ppl he can't fully trust, and even that being said counselors have no real power

LOL Napo, I have tested lots of things, I sure as heck don't perform better at the end result than a large part of the players who never were involved with the testing.. Blanket statements just don't work. Besides, how do you know exactly who tests what?

Thats what this thread is about partially, newme! You dont know who's testing, if you arent involved.

I feel like this maybe kind of unimportant...not only that it may give the impression of favoritism, which I don't think is happening here, all around this kind of talk is bad for everyone without real solid reasoning behind digging into this subject.

" It absolutely is true that the people who help test/design tend to perform better than those that don't."

This is why I asked Napo, how he knew who was testing. Blanket statements such as this isn't good, I feel.

I agree entirely with Meradin, Chris has worked extremely hard to make sure no favoritism was happening in game, that the counselor program is above reproach.

Okay, Blackeye, I will tell you exactly why who counselors are should not be public.

Back in the days of OSI I was a Companion. Our sole duties was to greet young players, show them the simple basics of the game, how to use moongates, etc. We did not get vulnerability, we could die. We were not paid, we all were volunteers. We didn't even get fancy robes. Our compensation for doing this was our "title" showed, regardless of our reputation. It showed I was a Grand Master Mage, although my reputation was only famed. Since we could die, we were given the choice to enter Fel to greet, or not to go there. And only the character in the program received this.

Before being accepted into the Companion Program, we were tested. Taken to a place where young players were, prove we could be patient, use the Companion menu, etc. Than were interviewed by a panel. Our game history was reviewed to see if we had any negatives on our accounts.

Guess what?!?

I had people who I thought were friends, angry at me for being accepted into the program when they failed.
I had players chew me out for my title showing, even though I explained I was a companion.
I had players ask me for special things, get angry at me, when i explained I couldn't do anything like that. One reason, Companions didn't have any special abilities to bring things into the game world. I still got chewed out for not doing it.

One fellow even released a dragon outside my house.

Why did I continue to be a Companion, because I wanted to give back to a game world which I loved. I enjoyed helping out new players.

If you have read the links posted and what Chris has said, The Counselor program here is quite similar, except counselors here get pretty robes.

So very simple, Blackeye, even though we have a fantastic player community here, the potential for players being abused because they are counselors is very real. It only takes one bad apple, etc.

I used to harass companions! I stole a quest map from a seer once on atlantic too! *wistful moments* (it was a seer or an elder one, he had a green robe)

lol. Why am I not surprised, Jack. lol

Well, if the question is "exactly who", I can only answer that I don't know. I don't know every time someone tests something, after all.
I do know of people doing testing and carrying that knowledge over, though. I know people who tested the new tmap dungeons and used/are using that knowledge to snag the rares and iron man the instances.
I also know that the person who runs the big CTF team stack is the person who helped design the system, and that the overall winner of the halloween event was a person who tested the system quite thoroughly.

It's not really hard to see how a person who tests an event like halloween (where winning has a lot to do with finding silver) might have an advantage over those that come into the event with no knowledge. This followed through to the results too, as the overall winnner was one of the main testers. I can't say something blanketed like "all people who test win" or anything like that, but I have observed that those who test tend to perform better and get results faster.

Also, before this is reinterpreted as napo whining and trying to rock the boat, I will state once again that I don't really have a problem with this.

Correlation does not mean causation. What if those willing to put more time and effort into testing are also those willing to put more time and effort into trying to win?

What advantage do you think designing the CTF system brings? Aren't the rules and locations and scoring system all freely available information at this point?

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