Welcome Ghiblee! Glad to have you as our new community manager.
Here's some poetry.
Gentle whispers as the Orange Mushrooms rest their heads,
A new community manager approaches, watching this thread,
They are welcomed with glee, new opportunities to spearhead,
may their positive impact across the Maple World be widespread.
Ghiblee, you're here; with Arwoo by your side,
an awesome team emerges, an ace once savage now filled with pride,
I hope you enjoy our community and will be our guide,
until we meet again, this Corsair will be dockside.
As of November of 2016, six months ago, the Rankings for all regions has been broken and character images have not been working for ALL players.
This effects more than just the main MapleStory site; other fansites including Nexon's own official fan-sites have been negatively impacted by this, requiring developers to no longer support the character rankings or otherwise get a character's image. Players also no longer have a way to visually see their own characters or other friends.
Global MapleStory is the only service that is effected by this issue as all other regions including MapleStory Korea have very well designed rankings from both a front-end and back-end perspective.
It's been enough time. The amount of work required to get character images generating again should not be so resource-heavy that it has been completely abandoned and become an after thought. There has not once been any official response as to why it has been one of the longest standing issues with the main site and I wish it were resolved.
The MapleStory community contains an amazing collection of individuals who are willing to dedicate their time at no cost to benefiting others, which would include providing whatever coding is necessary or resources to be able to have an actually functioning ranking for players.
The MapleStory rankings and character images have been broken for almost a quarter of a year now, as well as many other issues experienced on the rankings itself. I want to see some attention brought to it, especially when so many other sites like BasilMarket (used to) depend on the avatars functioning, but now have to resort to players uploading images manually (which you also can't do through the official site, and have to create it via MapleSimulator).
There are countless bug reports and dozens of mentions of it.
Without a Community Manager focused solely on MapleStory, there is very little that can be done in regard to interfacing directly with the community and providing enough valuable feedback to be able to make differences in the game. @OneLetter does a fantastic job, but it still takes two to tango in this situation.
Making reports via Customer Service does have an effect, but it doesn't yield the same results as collective data provided by a Community Manager. The same is said about Volunteers or other individuals who have a bit more direct communication like myself. This is one thing that Michael did well at (at least from a 70% external, 30% internal glimpse) and I'm saddened for the decision for his leave to take place right before the holidays, when there is already a lessened employee-base and the need for communication is even more important for issues such as this.
