Thank you for coming to the Story Forums and responding, Mirasol.
6 Likes
I did not even realize I was hereâŚ
If you quote someone it sends a notification and I just went with it. I normally would not be here because Lore is fantastic, but not my area of particular interest. I would not want to look like a total noob - because I am.
*waves at Lore folks!" Hope all is as well as can be for you before the Holiday and that you enjoy it.
17 Likes
Well, thank you anyway! I didnât know you only had thirty-nine people. I thought the invites would have rolled out faster.
5 Likes
It could just be the characters marked as being part of the Community Council that get shown, the ones that have green text. Everyone on the council will asumedly make a post while being a part of it at some point, otherwise thatâd be a waste of a spot. Potential harassment is a legit consideration, though I think thatâs something every member should have thought about before joining. Going from what people on the EU have done, it seems people donât have to use their mains and can mark whatever character they want which is perfectly acceptable. There doesnât have to be any social media linked to the character or listed, since if anyone fakes being someone else on the council, the person theyâre pretending to be can confirm or deny here on the forums.
They donât have a choice. The EU license and database is totally separate from the Americas. They had to make level 10 NA trial accounts to even post. Most did link their main on EU though.
All I know is our CM said only one was removed. So any claims of 2 goes against that.
1 Like
I presume they will now check posting histories across the account now too, and I hope they transparently communicate if anyone else gets removed.
This sort of stuff requires being transparent to regain good will and faith in the effort imho
11 Likes
Did Prosident have a questionable posting history?
Yes. Some folks used the usual methods to find alts and the usual typical GD nastiness was found.
7 Likes
Canât NA people make a new character and get them to level 10 just for the purpose of posting on the community council?
Iâm not particularly referring to that situation, Iâm just trying to give some advice and feedback to avoid some problems in the future.
This sort of stuff and a whole lot more. The fact they didnât consider a way for the CC people to source the larger community for suggestions beyond the very same method Blizzard themselves could have been using this entire time leaves a bad taste. This Discord drama is made worse when you consider the Discord could have been made in good faith to begin with, and to fill a need Blizzard ignored.
2 Likes
According to some people on the council itâs not about what the greater community wants but itâs about what they themselves want.
4 Likes
Donât you mean EU people? And yes, they do. Thatâs what Erevien does.
Does the community council need a civics 101 lesson 
they arenât princes of the realm enforcing their personal will but selected representatives from the community to represent and negotiate the competing wills of the community
4 Likes
No, I mean NA people who post on the community council too. AFAIK whoever is on the council picks one of their characters to be marked as being a part of it. So if thatâs true, someone can make a completely new character and use that to avoid potential harassment.
1 Like
Oh, my bad. But, even with that, it is very easy to find alts, using sites like https://check-pvp.fr/.
1 Like
I donât think theyâre wrong. But thatâs mainly because Iâm thinking of it as more of a focus group thatâs viewable to the public. These are pretty much random people, itâs not likely most of them would have a better view on collective opinions than Blizz does with the tools that are available to them. This just seems to be a group size that they probably think they can interact with more directly with some back and forth on various ideas without it devolving into general forums noise drowning out anything useful.
If this was sold more as community leaders or something Iâd feel differently, but this just seems like a glorified, more involved survey of players.
5 Likes
I just realised that the name of the guy who went on that Discord rant about how Black humans shouldnât be in Stormwind because itâs based on Medieval Europe, sounds like the name of a guy who made a thread on here about how Orcs arenât based on a real life race. It could be a coincidence.
Looks like all of the groups are no longer visible on the WoW side. Blizzard may have had their hand forced by the intense influx of trolling and smurf accounts (some of which is playing out in spades on the D3 and D2R side). The players have grown accustomed to feeling like they can harass others freely on the fora because Blizzardâs lackadaisical moderation as of late has allowed such a high level of toxicity to fester and grow. And with the holiday break upon us, theyâre manned with a skeleton crew, so itâs entirely possible theyâre heading off additional targeted harassment at the pass by only allowing group view by Blizzard employees and those in the specific specialty groups (cs-mvp, WCC, etc.).
They potentially could, I suppose, but the point is to be public facing, not to hide behind a sock puppet account, so the players here on the NA region are using their normal account and using a special âgroupâ pulldown menu that is available to them to display the primary group they belong to in their posts. I donât have such a pulldown, but would if I belonged to more than one group such as the MVPs do (they belong to âmvp/cs-mvpâ and âWarcraft Community Councilâ if in the WCC as well). The Discourse software has a lot of knobs Blizzard can turn for viewability and sortability. I bet it gets overwhelming even to the CMs on occasion. 
I think Evelysaa does in fact mean NA. Theyâre referring to a means of providing cover against being targeted by using a LV 10 sock puppet character to protect their mains from being harassed. EU players simply have no alternative due to regional databases being entirely separate. That may change one day if D2Râs global database becomes fully operational and is able to serve as a model for the other games. I do know Blizzard wants to have everyone in the same pool, but that bothersome fellow known as latency makes such an infrastructure tricky to implement.
I would say theyâre semi-random. There was an application process and forum posting history is definitely taken into account during that process. When I applied I did so under the accessibility umbrella as that is where my primary focus lies. That doesnât mean I have no views on other aspects of the game, just that accessibility is what matters most to me as a disabled player.
The very nature of the council is that it acts more as a decentralized forum than a leader forum. Thatâs why Blizzard is choosing players from as many backgrounds as possible. Mirasol, while being an MVP already, is primarily a casual player and likely focuses on that aspect insofar as the council is concerned, just as I am focused more on accessibility and technical issues. My take on the accessibility side is that we need a good mix of people with different needs so we get as much representation as possible for that community. That is supposed to be the primary goal of the WCC - widespread representation of as many aspects as possible within the confines of the limited number of people in the council.
I think Blizzard may have somewhat erred in naming it a âcouncilâ as doing so implies a leadership role, which is why so many players are treating the group the way they are currently. In reality, it is more like an advisory board than a true council as we understand it at large.
4 Likes
I mean random more in the sense that Blizz didnât pick who was able to apply, from their end the selection of applications they got was random.
I was just making the point more that theyâre not being chosen to speak for the community. Theyâre picked out of the community to speak for themselves, to like you said try and get a variety of voices as feedback. So people chosen saying that they shouldnât be trying to represent the player base arenât being elitist, theyâre just stating why theyâre there.
Yeah, but council sounds cooler than focus group, and rule of cool and all, canât have it be accurate and boring.
1 Like
True, but the purpose of doing it this way is they had a wider selection of possible viewpoints. Had they used entirely internally targeted applications, it would have opened them up to accusations of preferrential treatment (i.e., the âinfluencerâ syndrome). I think they wanted to avoid that for the most part. There are some influencers on the WCC. That was inevitable. They just didnât want it to be only influencers. D2R for example is kind of heading down a rabbit hole where only influencers appear to have the devsâ ears, in particular a singular influencer that keeps appearing at every turn. Thatâs what they donât want here.
I dunno, they could have probably come up with something else that fits the purpose while not implying the assumption of a leadership role. Sometimes the effort to be snazzy can backfire, especially in an environment that has a high level of toxicity. Ironically, a âcouncilâ can work here whereas on the D2R side the effort would be assaulted from every direction by some of the most vitriolic posters. Weâd probably be in a much better place regarding the WCCâs acceptance if Blizzard had been maintaining a more reasonable level of moderation and thus a better kind of community. Thatâs on them though. The toxicity is entirely player driven however, so thatâs on us.