I added this idea to Uservoice. If you like the idea, you can vote for its implementation on Uservoice at http://warlight.uservoice.com/forums/77051-warlight-features/suggestions/1521999-ladder-seasons-

Copy/pasted summary:

This would cause the ladder to run for a determined period of time and then reset. The time period would have to be determined, but 3 or 4 months seems reasonable. At the conclusion of the 'season' final rankings would be permanently posted to a player's profile if they finished in the top (insert arbitrary number, such as 10, here). This would allow newer players to improve during the season and not have their early learning curve losses haunt them forever. The conclusion of a season could also see a massive tournament with the rankings used as seeds to determine a winner for that season.

Really liking this idea, except for the fact that it takes long enough as it is to establish a stable ladder ranking system. The seasons would have to be something like half a year each...and people would need to play roughly the same amount of games each wouldn't they?

i like the idea too. It would be great if it changed up the map as well, and didn't always use the world map that it does.

http://warlight.net/Forum/Thread.aspx?ThreadID=1056

I considered adding it to that thread, but it's geared towards a different purpose than this. This is a bit of a structure revamp, whereas those ideas are geared more towards ladder additions. I figured it also might get lost in the shuffle there pretty easily. :)

it was more directed at MoDogg's comment

I don't like this idea... seems misguided. Perhaps part of the reason I feel I don't like it is because the current ladder system is broken to me and it seems like you're trying to fix the wrong thing by adding seasons. If the system was proper this would just toss people back into having to play a bunch of people that aren't matched well against each other. And on top of that the current system already removes the relevancy of 3 month old and older games... so you aren't haunted forever already.

It could maybe make some kind of sense if the settings were different, but even then you could just have another ladder with alternate map/settings. And I guess in that scenario a similar thing would be to lock in the rankings and retire the previous ladder instead of having more than one 1v1 ladder going at the same time. That might be something worth considering. Might be nice to have one consistent forever ladder unless people feel or some reason it gets too dull and redundant playing forever in one ladder with the same settings.