A recent post asked Riot where the staff fell by ELO distribution and Riot actually responded. I see a couple of those guys regularly, at least I did when I was tryharding a bit and parked somewhere around 70 games over .500. From the looks of things, I’m in the top 1500-3000 players of the player base.

Here are the numbers:

Top 100:
Phreak 2417
Andy Ho (business analyst) 2310

Top 1500:
RiotJeffJew 2014
Ezreal 1985
Geeves 1970

Top 3000:
Zileas 1941
VeigarTheHorrible 1933
Pendragon 1915
Tryndamere 1900 (he was 2000 a week ago, but i guess he tried new stuff)

Shurelia was like ~1950, but not on the top 3000 list because she nerfed her rating on her primary live account to teach some of her family members the game. I don’t see her right now, so cant ask what her other smurf is called (other than darkshurelia)

Veigar would be a 2300 or 2400 if he played more on live.

I see Geeves and RiotJeffJew fairly often, by which I mean I’ve seen each of them a few times. Are you guys seeing any Rioters in your games?

It’s interesting to me that the gap is so small and that I see these guys as often as I do. I really do wonder how many people are playing the game if so many of the Riot staff are so high in the ELO charts. It’s pretty great that we’ll have access to this kind of information when Season One launches. I like to have goals in game, whether it’s just getting a win or trying to move up 100 spots on the leaderboard. I really didn’t think I was as high as I apparently am, which is also a nice bonus to this kind of info.

I promise, guys, I’ll stop bitching about my extended losing streak soon. It’s actually starting to look like things might come around. I had a really nice string of games tonight, highlighted by an exciting Kennen victory in which I picked up a quada-kill. It was good times.

Bitching aside, I am curious what your experience has been lately. For a long while there, and I mean 150 games or so, it seemed like matchmaking was treating me just fine. I was getting the occasional player I thought was probably out of his league, but for the most part games were won or lost based on errors and poor judgement, not a complete lack of skill.

Lately, though, it’s been a wreck. I had my bout with seriously noob teammates who were still level 30, but my experience since has been punctuated by anomalies like a game earlier tonight in which my team’s Warwick had played just 33 games. As someone with approximately 1500 games under my belt, I was more than a little surprised. We dominated that game, pushed to nexus in 20 minutes legitimately, but it still made little sense considering my opponents were all level 30.

A good friend also reported a game on TT recently where he was matched against two level 1 characters, both of which had zero wins. Granted, they were a premade with a friend, but even then, should they be paired up against a guy I regularly play and win with? They were beaten soundly, 13-0 in 18 minutes. That’s hardly even fun for the winning team, much less the losing side.

So how have things been – average, good, or much worse than normal? I know my ELO is headed back in the right direction, but even the matches I’ve won have had their share of what I would call mid-tier/average players on both teams.