I wonder if it would add any excitement to add "rankings" to the forum... a leader board based off wins in games. What type of criteria would occur points and would it be pointless? I know there aren't allot of regular players left but would be fun to have a leader board...

Cross-game and cross-server might be difficult because you end up comparing a lot of apples to oranges in addition to validating nuances in rules and SysOp styles/subjectivity.

However, within a game, or standardized set of rules I think we could easily define what an 'Apple' is, and have some regular game where people can compare apples to apples and fight for the leaderboard.

First thing we should do is define a small number of game types with specific rules/attributes that people would compete in (similar to weight-classes in boxing). After that we can define the win/scoring criteria.

I just wonder if it matters anymore... seems like a cool idea but I don't know how many active players we have anymore...

I'd like to think there are enough, but even if not I would be a fun project that has the chance to add some vitality back on. If I get my simulator project working, we could gain even more new players. Bottom line, can't hurt.

Like I mentioned above, we should start with a standardized game with standard 'win' requirements. I think the best one to get energy would be a quick death match style game. How are those normally run/won? I imagine unlimited turns, published bang date/time, win scenario is kill other players...but what's the end point? What is the definitive 'the game is over and XXX won!'?

It would be nice to have a B.O.T.E. type game again.

Each active server send their best team to play against other teams representing other servers.

What are the details of the BOTE gam?

BOTE used to be a incredibly popular tournament in which the Sysop from each server would field a team of its best players. Cruncher I don't remember when BOTE was historically hosted and I don't know if enough Sysops/players exist to field a good pool of teams. I would love that.

Back to the question at hand, we would need to establish both a standard ranking point system based off high level criteria... what criteria would we use? How would we track it? Would any Sysops/GameOps be open to providing a consistent list of "winners"?

Some examples may be:

"Conquest" - winning game by destroying all opponents (100 points)
"Team win" - winning a game as a team
"Unlimited warrior" - winning an unlimited game
"Turn warrior" - winning a turn based game

Points could be established and tracked. I can build a SQL/PHP tool to do this but again, is there any interest?

I think we are in the situation of "Build it and they will come". I am happy to host and/or update a leaderboard.

In this case I think you're right that there may not be enough activity to have a number of teams participate. Our best bet is an I divides competition and grow from there.