• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EDT 02:37
CEST 08:37
KST 15:37
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
Serral wins EWC 202532Tournament Spotlight: FEL Cracow 202510Power Rank - Esports World Cup 202580RSL Season 1 - Final Week9[ASL19] Finals Recap: Standing Tall15
Community News
[BSL 2025] H2 - Team Wars, Weeklies & SB Ladder8EWC 2025 - Replay Pack4Google Play ASL (Season 20) Announced43BSL Team Wars - Bonyth, Dewalt, Hawk & Sziky teams10Weekly Cups (July 14-20): Final Check-up0
StarCraft 2
General
The GOAT ranking of GOAT rankings Tournament Spotlight: FEL Cracow 2025 Classic: "It's a thick wall to break through to become world champ" Firefly given lifetime ban by ESIC following match-fixing investigation Serral wins EWC 2025
Tourneys
TaeJa vs Creator Bo7 SC Evo Showmatch Sparkling Tuna Cup - Weekly Open Tournament Sea Duckling Open (Global, Bronze-Diamond) FEL Cracov 2025 (July 27) - $10,000 live event Esports World Cup 2025
Strategy
How did i lose this ZvP, whats the proper response
Custom Maps
External Content
Mutation # 484 Magnetic Pull Mutation #239 Bad Weather Mutation # 483 Kill Bot Wars Mutation # 482 Wheel of Misfortune
Brood War
General
Google Play ASL (Season 20) Announced Which top zerg/toss will fail in qualifiers? BGH Auto Balance -> http://bghmmr.eu/ 2025 Season 2 Ladder map pool Flash Announces (and Retracts) Hiatus From ASL
Tourneys
[ASL20] Online Qualifiers Day 1 [Megathread] Daily Proleagues Small VOD Thread 2.0 [BSL] Non-Korean Championship - Final weekend
Strategy
[G] Mineral Boosting Muta micro map competition Does 1 second matter in StarCraft? Simple Questions, Simple Answers
Other Games
General Games
Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread Nintendo Switch Thread Beyond All Reason Total Annihilation Server - TAForever [MMORPG] Tree of Savior (Successor of Ragnarok)
Dota 2
Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion
League of Legends
Heroes of the Storm
Simple Questions, Simple Answers Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Heroes of StarCraft mini-set
TL Mafia
Vanilla Mini Mafia TL Mafia Community Thread
Community
General
US Politics Mega-thread European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread Things Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine Canadian Politics Mega-thread Stop Killing Games - European Citizens Initiative
Fan Clubs
INnoVation Fan Club SKT1 Classic Fan Club!
Media & Entertainment
Anime Discussion Thread [\m/] Heavy Metal Thread Movie Discussion! [Manga] One Piece Korean Music Discussion
Sports
2024 - 2025 Football Thread Formula 1 Discussion TeamLiquid Health and Fitness Initiative For 2023 NBA General Discussion
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
Gtx660 graphics card replacement Installation of Windows 10 suck at "just a moment" Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread
TL Community
TeamLiquid Team Shirt On Sale The Automated Ban List
Blogs
ASL S20 English Commentary…
namkraft
The Link Between Fitness and…
TrAiDoS
momentary artworks from des…
tankgirl
from making sc maps to makin…
Husyelt
StarCraft improvement
iopq
Socialism Anyone?
GreenHorizons
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 458 users

Ladder Ranking system

Forum Index > BW General
Post a Reply
Nomad-
Profile Joined February 2011
119 Posts
July 20 2011 16:26 GMT
#1
Hey guys. I was just curious about how the ranking system worked for battle net ladders in starcraft 1 since i cant find anything about it. Was it organised into leagues and division like starcraft 2 or otherwise?

Thanks
XXGeneration
Profile Blog Joined November 2010
United States625 Posts
July 20 2011 16:57 GMT
#2
No, it works almost like an ELO system.

Beat someone = + points
Lose to someone = - points

The amount of points gained or lost is based upon their rank compared to your rank. Once you pass a certain threshhold in points, you become D+, C-, etc. There is also a limit of how many ranks up or down you can play. I believe it is 2. So, if you were C, you could play people who are C, C+, B-, C-, or D+ to get points.
"I was so surprised when I first played StarCraft 2. I couldn't believe that such an easy game exists... I guess the best way to attract people these days is to make things easy and simple." -Midas
greenelve
Profile Joined April 2011
Germany1392 Posts
July 20 2011 18:01 GMT
#3
XXGeneration 's explanation is for iccup, not the regular battle.net...but it should be equal (afair), wihtout the ranks ofc
z0r.de for your daily madness /// Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of men? The Shadow knows!
sM.Zik
Profile Joined June 2011
Canada2547 Posts
July 20 2011 19:13 GMT
#4
The original B.net ladder was based on a rating system, there was no divisions and no ranks.
Jaedong Fighting! | youtube.com/ZikGaming
xxpack09
Profile Blog Joined September 2010
United States2160 Posts
July 20 2011 19:15 GMT
#5
On July 21 2011 01:57 XXGeneration wrote:
No, it works almost like an ELO system.

Beat someone = + points
Lose to someone = - points

The amount of points gained or lost is based upon their rank compared to your rank. Once you pass a certain threshhold in points, you become D+, C-, etc. There is also a limit of how many ranks up or down you can play. I believe it is 2. So, if you were C, you could play people who are C, C+, B-, C-, or D+ to get points.


There is 0 rank limit on iCCup, it is just highly frowned upon
LML
Profile Blog Joined March 2007
Germany1764 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-07-20 19:21:47
July 20 2011 19:18 GMT
#6
You started with 1000 (i think) points and the maximum was 9999.
Basically you gained points for a win depending on your opponent's score, if he had alot more than you, you won more and he lost more, if he had less, you won less.
You could view the top 1000 people or something on battle.net
However, most of the accounts in there were from winbots (enter two account names, say which gets the win, which the loss and it creates a game for both, one leaves after 2minutes, and you gain pts, make new accounts for the losing part once in a while so you get more pts for the win) and also the speed for laddering was only 5 out of 7 (7=fastest) for quite some time, so it wasn't that much played anyways.

edit: yea, there is no limit for iccup, you can play vs an A+ or olymp rank as D- or E rank, no problem.
But the points you gain/lose reach a maximum after 3 or 4 ranks difference.
LML
blabber
Profile Blog Joined June 2007
United States4448 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-07-20 19:46:36
July 20 2011 19:44 GMT
#7
To play on the old Battle.net ladder, you needed 10 wins on your account (every 2 wins you get a star on your chat channel icon. Once you get the full 5 stars, you can play ladder matches). Many people would play "comp stomps" to get this fast.

Basically you choose Ladder game type (iirc) and a ladder map (most people chose Lost Temple). The game speed was automatically set to Fast and cannot be changed (the game is normally played on Fastest). You can play a 1v1 or FFA with however many people can fit on the map. If you win an FFA, you would get more points than if you won a 1v1 (I think). I remember there was no losses given for disconnects so people would just disconnect when they were losing
blabberrrrr
craz3d
Profile Joined August 2005
Bulgaria856 Posts
July 20 2011 19:53 GMT
#8
On July 21 2011 04:44 blabber wrote:
To play on the old Battle.net ladder, you needed 10 wins on your account (every 2 wins you get a star on your chat channel icon. Once you get the full 5 stars, you can play ladder matches). Many people would play "comp stomps" to get this fast.

Basically you choose Ladder game type (iirc) and a ladder map (most people chose Lost Temple). The game speed was automatically set to Fast and cannot be changed (the game is normally played on Fastest). You can play a 1v1 or FFA with however many people can fit on the map. If you win an FFA, you would get more points than if you won a 1v1 (I think). I remember there was no losses given for disconnects so people would just disconnect when they were losing


There was an option where you could set which gave losses to people who disconnected. The shitty thing about it was that if they disced, you got a draw and not a win, so if you cared, you had to talk to blizzard about it on their forums.

In the end, most of the top 1000 was people with winbots. Near the end there was also a hack which you could use to make the setting to fastest. Later on though blizz made the ladder games set to fastest by default and they even updated Lost Temple so that it was less imbalanced (but it still was!). I think the update came a couple years too late since PGT was already around at this time (iirc) which was a far superior ladder.
Hello World!
blabber
Profile Blog Joined June 2007
United States4448 Posts
July 20 2011 21:29 GMT
#9
cool that they let people play on Fastest. I think I had switched to playing War3 by that time though :D
blabberrrrr
laLAlA[uC]
Profile Blog Joined May 2009
Canada963 Posts
July 20 2011 22:31 GMT
#10
On July 21 2011 06:29 blabber wrote:
cool that they let people play on Fastest. I think I had switched to playing War3 by that time though :D


Fastest was the game speed, not the map in case you're confused s:
I'm an old man now
LML
Profile Blog Joined March 2007
Germany1764 Posts
July 20 2011 23:11 GMT
#11
oh wow, I would have loved it back then if they had let us play ladder games on fastest possible maps:D
LML
Ribbon
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
United States5278 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-07-21 07:01:19
July 20 2011 23:11 GMT
#12
On July 21 2011 01:26 Nomad- wrote:
Hey guys. I was just curious about how the ranking system worked for battle net ladders in starcraft 1 since i cant find anything about it. Was it organised into leagues and division like starcraft 2 or otherwise?

Thanks


ICCUP is organized into "ranks" which are like leagues with some major differences

1. There are a lot more of them (D- to A+ makes 15, plus Olympic at the very top and E at the bottom makes 17, as opposed to 7 SC2 leagues).

2. It's designed to be harder to advance. The playbase is not spread out roughly evenly over the leagues (like in SC2 Bnet). Most players on ICCUP are in the Ds, and being even a C player is considered an achievement. Right now, on ICCUP, there are no A, A+ or Olympic Players. Not one, according to the league standings. Some A-level players went pro in BW (Idra and Artosis were both on Entus, and day[9] was the BW player outside of Korea worth a damn for a long time. Liquid'Tyler, then known as Nony, infamously beat Idra in the TSL 2 [A BW tournament then] with a single probe)

3. Any two players can compete against each other, regardless of rank. I could log on, find a B+ player, and get crushed by him right now.

4. There is no MMR. Most leagues use ELO (which is slightly less accurate as a measure of skill, but is used in lots of types of tournaments - especially chess - because it's comparatively easy to work out). ELO is often spelled in all caps for some reason, but it's not an acronym. The system was invented by Armand Elo.

5. Your Elo Ranking is visible, but it's rare to see people talk about them. Usually, they just say "I'm D" or "That dude's A, so gosu". A 1900 D level player is generally a lot better than a 950 D player, though.

On July 21 2011 04:13 sM.Zik wrote:
The original B.net ladder was based on a rating system, there was no divisions and no ranks.


The official SC1 bnet ladder ended in I think 2005, though you can still play unranked on bnet. You probably shouldn't, though, unless you like NR20, 7-vs-1 Computer, and maphacks. I remember there were a lot of cool customs on bnet, though. I went back recently I couldn't find any of them

EDIT: Whoops! I don't know my foreign BW history. Idra was on eSTRO, then CJ Entus. Liquid'Ret was on eSTRO. Atosis lived at the eSTRO house, but not as a player He got Ret in, and presumably did other things for them. Nony (Liquid'Tyler) also joined eSTRO for five minutes, getting second in Courage.

If you're curious, Legionnaire was a foreign BW player of actual note (back in 2003!), and the best foreigner was Grrrr..., who was the only foreigner to win an OSL, but that was back when even Korea didn't care much about this whole Starcraft thing (the pre-Boxer era)
epikAnglory
Profile Blog Joined April 2011
United States1120 Posts
July 21 2011 00:03 GMT
#13
TLDR: There is no ranking system for standard Battle.net Gateway, you have to join something like iCCup.
710+ Posts with a Probe Icon =D
XXGeneration
Profile Blog Joined November 2010
United States625 Posts
July 21 2011 00:05 GMT
#14
On July 21 2011 04:15 xxpack09 wrote:
Show nested quote +
On July 21 2011 01:57 XXGeneration wrote:
No, it works almost like an ELO system.

Beat someone = + points
Lose to someone = - points

The amount of points gained or lost is based upon their rank compared to your rank. Once you pass a certain threshhold in points, you become D+, C-, etc. There is also a limit of how many ranks up or down you can play. I believe it is 2. So, if you were C, you could play people who are C, C+, B-, C-, or D+ to get points.


There is 0 rank limit on iCCup, it is just highly frowned upon


Is there a 0 rank limit for people whom you can play and get points for? I know that there is no limit for just playing, but I thought there was a limit for when you can get points.
"I was so surprised when I first played StarCraft 2. I couldn't believe that such an easy game exists... I guess the best way to attract people these days is to make things easy and simple." -Midas
Kurt_Russell
Profile Joined February 2010
Canada147 Posts
July 21 2011 01:09 GMT
#15
On July 21 2011 08:11 Ribbon wrote:
Show nested quote +



ICCUP is organized into "ranks" which are like leagues with some major differences

1. There are a lot more of them (D- to A+ makes 15, plus Olympic at the very top and E at the bottom makes 17, as opposed to 7 SC2 leagues).

2. It's designed to be harder to advance. The playbase is not spread out roughly evenly over the leagues (like in SC2 Bnet). Most players on ICCUP are in the Ds, and being even a C player is considered an achievement. Right now, on ICCUP, there are no A, A+ or Olympic Players. Not one, according to the league standings. Some A-level players went pro in BW (Idra and Artosis were both on Entus, and day[9] was the BW player outside of Korea worth a damn for a long time. Liquid'Tyler, then known as Nony, infamously beat Idra in the TSL 2 [A BW tournament then] with a single probe)

3. Any two players can compete against each other, regardless of rank. I could log on, find a B+ player, and get crushed by him right now.

4. There is no MMR. Most leagues use ELO (which is slightly less accurate as a measure of skill, but is used in lots of types of tournaments - especially chess - because it's comparatively easy to work out). ELO is often spelled in all caps for some reason, but it's not an acronym. The system was invented by Armand Elo.

5. Your Elo Ranking is visible, but it's rare to see people talk about them. Usually, they just say "I'm D" or "That dude's A, so gosu". A 1900 D level player is generally a lot better than a 950 D player, though.

On July 21 2011 04:13 sM.Zik wrote:
The original B.net ladder was based on a rating system, there was no divisions and no ranks.


The official SC1 bnet ladder ended in I think 2005, though you can still play unranked on bnet. You probably shouldn't, though, unless you like NR20, 7-vs-1 Computer, and maphacks. I remember there were a lot of cool customs on bnet, though. I went back recently I couldn't find any of them



Most worthwhile and precise response in this thread, thanks, Ribbon.

In case you're wondering how to start playing, I would suggest the aforementioned server: iccup [details in spoilers]
+ Show Spoiler +
http://www.iccup.com/starcraft/ For more details on how to run the server.

It's best to play on iccup when starting out because of latency issues b.net may have, not to mention the ranking system which makes it easier to find same-level players, unlike on B.net where there is no such system. Just have to make sure to properly open your router ports (6112 in TCP and UDP) ­ for the game ( http://portforward.com/ )

There is also a practice partner thread on the TLBW forums if you find starting out on the ladder is not the best way to go at it. Great community, just have to find the right people and resources to help you.
My captcha when signing up was in ovules :S
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
Korean StarCraft League
03:00
Week 78
Liquipedia
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
WinterStarcraft704
Nina 239
StarCraft: Brood War
Snow 1325
Larva 240
ToSsGirL 160
Rush 142
Sharp 0
Dota 2
NeuroSwarm145
XcaliburYe0
League of Legends
JimRising 660
Super Smash Bros
Mew2King116
Heroes of the Storm
Khaldor73
Other Games
summit1g6140
shahzam684
Organizations
StarCraft: Brood War
Afreeca ASL 2501
Other Games
gamesdonequick847
StarCraft: Brood War
UltimateBattle 148
lovetv 11
StarCraft 2
Blizzard YouTube
StarCraft: Brood War
BSLTrovo
sctven
[ Show 13 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• practicex 84
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• intothetv
• Kozan
• IndyKCrew
• LaughNgamezSOOP
• Migwel
• sooper7s
StarCraft: Brood War
• BSLYoutube
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
League of Legends
• Stunt774
• HappyZerGling96
Upcoming Events
CranKy Ducklings
3h 23m
BSL20 Non-Korean Champi…
5h 23m
Mihu vs QiaoGege
Zhanhun vs Dewalt
Fengzi vs TBD
WardiTV European League
9h 23m
ShoWTimE vs Harstem
Shameless vs MaxPax
HeRoMaRinE vs SKillous
ByuN vs TBD
Sparkling Tuna Cup
1d 3h
BSL20 Non-Korean Champi…
1d 7h
Bonyth vs TBD
WardiTV European League
1d 9h
Wardi Open
2 days
OSC
2 days
uThermal 2v2 Circuit
4 days
The PondCast
5 days
[ Show More ]
uThermal 2v2 Circuit
6 days
RSL Revival
6 days
Liquipedia Results

Completed

BSL 20 Non-Korean Championship
FEL Cracow 2025
Underdog Cup #2

Ongoing

Copa Latinoamericana 4
Jiahua Invitational
BSL 20 Team Wars
KCM Race Survival 2025 Season 3
BSL 21 Qualifiers
ASL Season 20: Qualifier #1
HCC Europe
CC Div. A S7
IEM Cologne 2025
FISSURE Playground #1
BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025
ESL Impact League Season 7
IEM Dallas 2025

Upcoming

ASL Season 20: Qualifier #2
ASL Season 20
CSLPRO Chat StarLAN 3
BSL Season 21
RSL Revival: Season 2
Maestros of the Game
SEL Season 2 Championship
WardiTV Summer 2025
uThermal 2v2 Main Event
MESA Nomadic Masters Fall
Thunderpick World Champ.
CAC 2025
Roobet Cup 2025
ESL Pro League S22
StarSeries Fall 2025
FISSURE Playground #2
BLAST Open Fall 2025
BLAST Open Fall Qual
Esports World Cup 2025
BLAST Bounty Fall 2025
BLAST Bounty Fall Qual
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2025 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.