: Ironic, I think. Bungie built something for those interested in earning and
: showing their skill and it was shunned. I wonder if Arena was an
: experiment to prove/disprove the realities of human nature in gaming? It
: was very sparsely populated through most of it's more active life. If it
: wasn't an experiment then it was an embarrassing failure in my opinion.

: I wonder if the same thing would happen if a playlist was created and
: dedicated to the sole purpose of earning a visible 0-50 rank? Presupposing
: there was no way to farm a 50, I am confident it would shed wannabes
: players like fleas. The remaining 50 capable players would slug it out
: until the real 50 level players began to show and everyone else would
: leave. Then the 50 level players would leave because there was no one left
: to play against except themselves and to play meant seriously risking
: losing their cherished 50.

Call of Duty's ranked playlists, the Leagues, have about the same ratio of players to the rest of the playlists as Reach did at about the same time after release.

People overvalue the 'draw' of ranked play. When playlists aren't forcibly gated behind rank, we discover people didn't want to play Ranked Team Slayer or Ranked SWAT, they just wanted to play Team Slayer and SWAT.