Your assessment seems to be in error.
About the Reddit poll
- It has selection and sampling bias as any internet poll
- Although it is a possibility that the poll results were mis-reported to what respondents voted/stated, the overwhelming evidence suggest the results were accurately documented.
- Polls do not need to be done by “anyone official”. The key thing is that the person who did the poll has integrity. As discussed later, all evidence validates that the results were reported with integrity and accuracy.
- Dependent on the proposed change, the D2R forum shows that some changes are very popular (e.g. reopening cow level) while some are far more contentious (charm inventory and optional personal loot). The reddit poll results correlate with the D2R forum as well as the reddit diablo forums. As noted, the second most “liked” “change” thread OP was about a charm inventory, highlighting that the OP’s personal bias and inaccurate assessment. The most liked thread is about changing the amazon face.
- To vote, there were safeguards in place to avoid ballot stuffing. This is a good thing, not bad as OP suggests.
- Although self-reporting can lead to respondents lying about things, it is incredibly far-fetched to think that in a poll about D2R that respondents were not D2 players. This poll was advertised on reddit diablo/diablo 2 subreddits, this D2R forum, d2jsp, and Rhykker’s youtube channel. The idea that this poll’s result was the consequence of a mass conspiracy of D3 players is far-fetched lunacy. This is the same type of conspiratorial nonsense that some claim that the D2R forum that requires pre-purchase of D2R is being overrun by D3 players who paid $40 to troll/ruin D2R.
- The survey included 86 pages of comments. These were clearly written by many, many unique individuals. In this is my comment verbatim, highlighting the post did actually contain the real words of respondents. These quotes were all over the place in terms of content, writing style, topics, and game knowledge.
- To my knowledge, no one has provided any direct evidence whatsoever that the poll reporting is not credible in any way. Even streamers that disagree with the results relative to what they want in D2R agree that the poll is credible.
I think it represents qualitative what the D2 community wants and is incredibly helpful to cite. Irrespective, Blizzard is doing their own survey, which will yield similar results.