Fame & careers

Every player carries an Elo rating — overall, plus a separate pool per matchup (vs Terran, vs Zerg, vs Protoss), each with its own peak. Ratings move only in official play: league, playoffs, Starleague. Everyone starts from the same baseline, new players' ratings move faster until they settle, and every game's exact rating change is shown on its match page. Exhibitions move nothing.

Rankings boards the world: the Elo ladder with a per-matchup pool selector and race filters, and the most-wins board — all-time or per-season. Profiles show a player's current rank and race rank; his best career rank is kept forever, so a legend who slips in his final seasons keeps the #1 he once held.

A profile is a career in full: the skill octagon, experience, honours, career and per-matchup win-loss, per-season history, development counts, the full match archive (with a friendlies toggle), his academy record, and Career — club by club: every stint at every club, under the name the club had at the time. Renamed players keep their old handles on record ("formerly …").

Honours ride the page forever: Starleague podiums (🏆/🥈), a Junior Starleague crown (🌟), Royal Road (champion on debut group-stage appearance), the Golden Mouse (three Starleague crowns), and "Starleagues played" for the long-servers.

The head-to-head desk compares any two players' full history; Managers lists every human at the wheel, with their clubs and tenure.

Careers end the way they end in real esports: on the player's own clock. From age 26, every birthday carries a chance he decides the current season is his last — barely a whisper at first, growing steeply through the late twenties, and never before 28 for a player still at his peak: the early goodbyes belong only to those already sliding. Beyond that, form matters too: a player still fielded regularly and still playing near his own best tends to hang on years longer, while one collecting dust on a bench bows out early. Nobody outruns it — by the mid-thirties it's a certainty for everyone.

When he decides, he announces it: you're told, his page carries the farewell notice, and he sees out the season like a professional before retiring at its end. A decision made in the season's closing weeks defers instead — the whole next season becomes his farewell tour, so you always have real time to react. You hold one card — ask him to play one more season, which pushes the farewell back exactly one season. He'll only say yes once, so spend it on the right man. (You can still release him or send him off with honours before the date — the announcement is a deadline, not a cage.)

Free agents fade on their own: past 30 the unsigned drift into retirement, and any free agent nobody claims at auction three times running goes the same way. Every retiree takes up a life after the game — a coach, an analyst, a PC bang owner… the good ones become scouts you can hire.

Great careers are enshrined on retirement — Starleague podiums and truly elite peaks earn the plaque no matter where the career ended. It lives on the Hall of Fame page, with peak rating, best rank and the club-by-club journey preserved.

Clubs also hold their own halls — the Legends section on every club page. Two ways a name lands there: a long-serving player (about two seasons' tenure) sent off with honours from his page, retiring into the club's hall with a tribute you write; or a great career that simply retires at the club at the end of its final season — a legend who spent his last years with you is remembered by you, tribute or not. Free agents who age out belong to no club, so they rest in the world hall alone.

The Chronicle keeps the rest: every season's division podiums, playoff champions, Starleague finals and cup winners, forever. And the 2013 Archive holds the original world — browse it like a museum; the records there are read-only, permanently.

Anyone can write for the press: match reports, power rankings, retrospectives, trash talk of professional quality. Articles publish instantly under your manager name and the freshest run on the homepage. The archive keeps 35 community articles from 2013 — write the ones the next archive keeps.