When looking back at the soon-to-be 2 years of Quake Live one can't look past the fact that, eventhough the game provided us with some great events and added a breath of fresh air to the quake franchise, it hasn't really tapped the theoretically huge potential a free to play and easy to setup competetive online game should have.

With the release of a paid subscription service and the game dropping its beta status (hopefully) soon, I think it might be time to once again look at the possibilities that id have with this project and share our thoughts about possible features just like we did 2 years ago. Who knows, maybe id will be more willing to listen this time around – after all they are supposedly increasing the size of the ql team and might have picked up some enthusiasm for the project looking at the excitement that the Intel Extreme Masters have generated.

While I'm sure that almost everyone on ESR has given some thought to this and came up with his or her personal reasons and possible solutions to this issue I would just like to present an idea that crossed my mind recently and expand a little upon why I think this particular feature should be integrated. If this doesn't get trolled to death I'd like to hear your thoughts on this and what other ideas you've got in your heads ;)

As you can see from the title, what I'm talking about are regional rankings. As far as I know Quake Live already uses an ELO-based ranking system for their (duel) match making. Also, when you sign up for the game, it asks you for your adress, zip code etc.

Now what is stopping them from implementing a regional ranking system using those two pieces of information? The way I would like to see this done is having the entire playerbase be put in a ranking according to their ELO-rating (world ranking) and then have this consist of sub-divisions which consist of sub-divisions yet again – think e.g.

World=>Continent=>Nation=>State=>County=>City=>District.

While practically nobody playing the game will ever get to the top of the world (nor try to), the further you filter the list, the further you will get to the top of the respective sub-division.

The benefits of this as I see them would be the following:

1.) It should be pretty easy to implement.

2.) It would bring the competition to the players, rather than the other way round, giving a sense of achievement and something to work for to players of all skill levels while simultaneously raising awareness of the skill it takes to be at the top of the world.

3.) It would add to the social aspect of the game – allowing people to see whether there are other players in their vicinity, who those players are etc, thus helping build local communities which I think can help a competitive game immensely and certainly adds to the fun one can have with it.

Now throw in some social network features (messages, groups, better chat?) and this would be amazing.

What do you think? Will we ever get to see something like this get done?