I think the fact that players in the copper / bronze / silver leagues are still having a good time with the gaming as is said above speaks volumes for the quality of the ladder. Even with a relatively small pool of players, most of which are likely to have been into Starcraft to be playing the beta, there are still appropriate matchups for those not at the top levels.

While I have worked my way up to gold/platinum, as long as there is a pool of players with 50% win rates at all skill levels, then Blizzard is doing their job. The game is going to be so massive after release as well that there are going to be a ton of players all learning togther. I have no doubt that the early days are going to be successful for the ladder.

The real test won’t come until 18 months after release and beyond, when new players will be scarce. Will there still be a way to introduce people to the game without them being too frustrated being demolished by those with 1 year+ of experience? Only time will tell.

With the limited amount of people currently in, the system works pretty well. Most of my games (out of about 60 now) are good solid games. It’s getting very rare that I or my opponent get run over in the early game, though it still does happen on both sides of the fence. I’m under 50%, but I’m higher ranked than some of the others on the list with better win ratios. That, to me, says my game has been improving and I am able to take on the guys in higher divisions/brackets more successfully then the other guys. I know my game has been improving drastically over the past few days, which says to me that the system is working beautifully. When there is a much larger player pool, I think it will perform admirably and the criticisms will disappear.