The Ladder is Dead...

We hear this a lot! Players and viewers complain that the ranked ladder is dead for the pro scene. AoE2 has lost Hera recently to this. We lost MBL (for a few days at least) because of this. It is a claim I hate.

Ultimately, AoE2 has maintained its player base. Despite challenges from AoE4, the ending of restrictions around the pandemic and the lack of S-Tier 1v1 tournaments to focus on, the player base has remained at around the same level.

And yet players don't seem happy. The top level scene (let's say around 50 players) are not as active on the 1v1 ranked ladder, at the moment. But I don't think it is fair to refer to it as dead. There are so many options for players that I feel they are being a little narrow-minded with this view.

The past three months has seen a resurgence of team lobbies for Nomad during the day and then Black Forest in the evenings (mostly). Players (especially streamers) prepared to branch out from their comfortable norm have managed to enjoy this different rhythm and it has provided some excellent content for their audiences. As a viewer myself, it has been so refreshing to see the likes of Jordan, Viper, MBL etc playing for fun and I've enjoyed it so much I've gone looking for more streamers to watch late night Black Forest games. This hype has even led to the next Rage Forest event with player drafting taking place this week.

In other tournaments, just this week we have seen four different events ongoing (DWL, RotC, MoS2 and WR). This is a huge variety of maps, settings and play styles all in a competitive environment. While these prizepools are not on the level of S-Tier events, they still pose an excellent chance for players (especially streamers) to create engaging content.

These tournaments have seen a marked improvement to some of the players involved. World Rumble was specifically catering to players outside of the 'top 16' (or those invited to KOTD4). Even then, we had Dragonstar put in a remarkable performance to beat some established names on his way to winning the tournament.

World Rumble: hosted by OGN - group and final stage bracket

In Masters of Socotra 2, we have seen five of the qualifying players knock out invited players in just the first round of the main event. Again, players are being rewarded for their preparedness.

Masters of Socotra 2: Hosted by JonSlow - main event bracket

Then in Return of the Clans, just tonight we have seen Deceptive Baguettes overcome Suomi. A team with the pocket player (for most) sets rated 400 Elo points below his opposite number. Does Annotoph care about his comparative rating with well known names like The Max or Villese? I doubt it, he's just been part of guaranteeing some prize money from this event.

If these are still not for you, there are still showmatches or even just practice games that can be played. The community is small enough and, more importantly, close-knit enough to enable players to contact each other to play at similar times. It doesn't even have to be complicated settings, just an agreement between them to queue at the same time.

There are options out there. Players have chances to compete on a more regular basis than before. There are just less 1v1s on Arabia than they would like.