Ranking Module

[lupos]

As you may have noticed there is now a new ranking module thingy over on the right hand side of the front page. It's a bit low on detail, which I will shortly remedy, but I wanted to take a moment to explain exactly how it works.

Basically, it's next week's ranking now, up to the minute. Or, up to the 5 minute to be precise, ironically I think. What it does is every 5 minutes it updates based on everyone's record so far from the most recent Monday at noon EST. Unlike the RP ranking, which can be easily pulled up on the fly whenever the page is loaded, this requires a rather complex bit of code to figure out. So, rather than make the site take an extra 30 seconds to load, we just update it every 5 minutes.

Without doing to much back patting I just wanted to point out that this is not a feature found on the Japanese site. They do have a very similar widget, but it is only update once a week when the rankings go up. I'm rather hopeful that this kind of up to the minute stat tracking will keep our top iczers out there battling even more fiercely for those top spots. And more people playing longer is always good for everyone. Except of course all those WoW widows out there.

Unofficially I'm going to call it a BETA for at least a day just because I'm sure there must be some sort of bug in there somewhere. In the meantime, if anyone happens to notice any issues please let me know at lupos@alteil.com .

[Grain]

If it doesn't handle RP, what are we being ranked for exactly?

[slashzero]

It uses the points used in the weekly player rankings. (+2 win +1 draw -1 loss, I believe.)

[lupos]

Correct. Where as, your chance of going from 100th to 1st place in the course of a week in RP is slim, this ranking is basically reset every Monday at noon.

[arfort]

But I did get from 1500 to 1st in a week. (but didn't stay there for very long the first time).

[Candi]

Would it be too much to ask for this to be top 5? Top 3 is nice, but it's not nearly as dynamic as I think top 5 would be.

Looking now it's a battle for first between two people and third place changes occasionally. But third is pretty far off the mark. I am sure there is more interesting stuff happening around 4th and 5th position.

[lupos]

I'm actually working on an edit/updated version of this as we speak. It may look the same now but I fixed it so now if we have a tie at any point in the top 3 it will add more results. Especially good for multiple people fighting for 3rd. I do agree though that 5 would be more exciting but I think next week when everyone gets a fresh start at it things might be a bit closer. Also as a safe guard it won't actually update until 1pm on Monday to allow a little time for people to actually fight a few battles.

The other issue with making it bigger is that we don't want them to take up to much space. Could probably narrow down the height of each result though. I'm actually intending to redo it with as a flash object so it can change size as necessary for more results and maybe even expand down to show more results when rolled over.

It's still a work in progress so any comments or ideas are much appreciated.

[arfort]

I think anyone would appreciate being able to scroll down and see where they themselves stand and who's near them.

[lupos]

I see you're gaining.... good work!

As for the longer list, I'm tempted to make a link to a whole page with everyone but then that sort of ruins the bir reveal on Monday. And I'm a fan of the ranking reveal. Maybe just a page of all the current ranking top 5's or even 10's. We'll see.

[Romdeau]

The top 3 seem ridiculously spaced out-I'm sure this won't happen too often in the future, but I'd like to throw in my vote for a top 5 as well. It's not particularly interesting watching the gaps widen between the 3 Gowen powerhouses