AOL Plans Console Gaming Ladder, PS2 Hookup

Thanks to Reuters for their story discussing AOL's announcement of the forthcoming 'AOL Ladders' console ranking service for PlayStation 2 and GameCube, as a partnership with the Case's Ladder ranking site. However, the free-to-AOL-subscribers ladder system isn't automatic in any way: "After finding an opponent, players play and then report their statistics [on the website]", making it a relative non-event, and seemingly unrelated to AOL's announcement of a Nintendo partnership earlier this year. Elsewhere in the article, it's mentioned that "AOL... and Sony's video game unit, Sony Computer Entertainment of America, are working on a version of the AOL service designed to run on the PS2", and that it may debut after Sony "releases a hard drive for the PS2", although this partnership has already been in progress for over two and half years.

My experience using Case's Ladder

[Kethinov]

It's been my experience that Cases's Ladder is not the best way to do PVP ranking. Years ago I played Worms2 and participated in the Case's Ladder Worms2 Roper's section and found that it was nearly impossible to rise to the top even though I was a good player. People used to rampantly cheat on Case's and never report their losses. So if I played 10 games and won 9, 1 person might be honest about his loss and I'd have a 1:1 ratio officially even though I had a 9:1 ratio in reality. I don't know if it's gotten any better lately or if this widespread dishonesty was a Worms2 thing. But I can tell you one thing. The whole experience put a bad taste in my mouth and I'll never use Case's "honor system" ever again.

Re:My experience using Case's Ladder

[AvantLegion]

My Warcraft II and Total Annihilation experiences on Case's Ladder were nothing like that. I don't think I ever had a match that went unreported, and I was in the top 50 in TA for a while. I played a good deal of matches.

Perhaps I was just lucky.

Like all things on the net...

[case_igl]

...we have improved as we learned how to do things. We did indeed have issues like you reported, and we still do sometimes today. However, we have added lots of ways for people to report them to get credit. There isn't a perfect system on the net, and ours is focused more on fun than statistically proving you are the absolute best ranked player out there.

If you think about the best rating system in the world, probably the USCF system...You pretty much know right away that you suck and can never be the champion. That's not very fun, so our system is set up around online community and peer groups.

Problems aside, the cool part is that the business started as a hobby back in 1996, and I and the other people who work for Case's are still doing something we love in gaming. I can't shake a stick at that!

Case

P.S. The Worms2 ladder has always been full of interesting characters, to say the least, hehe!

Re:Like all things on the net...

[Inda]

Cases killed the fun in W2. Roping games took over. CL2K did a much better job with WA. The community spirit lives on...

Re:aol on ps2 sheesh

[MrNybbles]

let the lagging out of Socom and other ps2 games get even worse.

Oh, you don't have any faith in New AOL 9.0 Optimized?

I hope by "Optimized" they mean they are now using a normal TCP/IP protocol instead of the custom AOL protocol stuff that seems to have no real reason to exist even if it made sence in the beginning.

AOL's Ladder

[Molina the Bofh]

You've got game.

Honor system

[MMaestro]

The honor system never works over the internet. NEVER.

So long as players can get always by lying, play under different aliases, and/or not be tracked efficiently people will always be generally assholes and not abide by the honor system. At the very bottom, there will always be someone who 'forgets' or was 'just too lazy and THEN forgets' to input their loss/win/draw.