The ladder is going to be a very different place for Season 2

[SinsWage]

I was poking around looking through the players in my league and I noticed that below place 15 everyone is inactive. And not just recently, most of these folks haven't played in months. I have a feeling that a lot of shaking up is going to take place once all the dead wood is chopped out of the ladder. Comments?

[Gradius]

I was poking around looking through the players in my league and I noticed that below place 15 everyone is inactive. And not just recently, most of these folks haven't played in months. I have a feeling that a lot of shaking up is going to take place once all the dead wood is chopped out of the ladder. Comments?

That just means there will be less divisions IMO.

[TheEconomist]

Damn and I was just about to get into Master League for teams.

Hope it doesn't take long to get back up there.

[Twilice]

What has it been frozen already? That can't be quite correct I just got into masters in 2v2 for about 10 minutes ago.

[sandwich_bird]

Meh, this season I made it to diamond as random in every league. Next season, I'm spamming wins in bronze to get achievements and portraits!

[Blazur]

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/2228179462

It’s an exciting time in StarCraft II history. The first ever season is drawing to a close, and Season 2 is about to begin. We have some important information on how the end of season process will happen, and the times and dates for each step.

During maintenance next Tuesday morning, March 22, the ladders will be locked. The lock will mean that no further league promotions or demotions can occur, and bonus pools will stop growing. So now’s the time to push for that promotion! Once locked to a league and division players can continue to play out their bonus pools and compete for standing within their division until the actual end of the season.

During morning maintenance the following Tuesday, March 29, Season 1 will end and Season 2 will begin. Season milestone rewards will be distributed (more info about these in an upcoming blog), and bonus pools will start over. Internal skill ratings used for matchmaking and league placement will carry over from the previous season, so players who have played their placement matches in the previous season will only need to play one new placement match.

A couple weeks later we'll be ready to launch the Grandmaster league the morning of April 12. For more information on this premiere league check out our recent blog at-
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/2452060#blog

[SinsWage]

Lock is tomorrow during maintenance. After that no more bonus pool growth or promotions/demotions. I'm just thinking if the ladder is divided up into bronze 20%, silver 20%, gold 20%, platinum 20%, diamond 18% and masters 2% won't people be getting moved around a lot once a huge chunk of people, anywhere from 40-80%, who make up these percentiles get removed from the system?

This is a real question. I'm hideously bad at math since I have dyscalculia so am I looking at it wrong? It just seems to me that simply removing so much from the equation naturally people who were mid anything could feasibly shift lower, or higher I suppose, in rank after this season ends.

[JackhammerIV]

Well they won't automatically remove people just due to "inactivity". The whole idea was that the placement match requirement to enter season 2 will weed out the players who have stopped playing on ladder. So it should increase people's ranks. But not everyone's. Depends on the amount of people who have stopped laddering in each league/division/etc. Technically i could just go through the one placement match then just stop playing but i'd still be in a division in a league.

@sandwich
They save your MMR from the previous season and carry it over though from season to season. So you'd need to lose a lot to make it down into bronze. Technically with the one placement match requirement it might in the worst circumstance bump you down into platinum from diamond.

[dustinbrowder]

I can see the ladders being stripped down and the real number of people playing will be funny.

For a game to be successful at e-sports it needs to have at least 1 million people playing per region.

[JackhammerIV]

For a game to be successful at e-sports it needs to have at least 1 million people playing per region.

Where'd you get that figure?? Well knowing it's db probably don't have to ask. I would say the more important figure is how many people watch it and/or are willing to pay to watch it.