We currently have 21 players with ratings over 2000, with 3 more at 1997 or higher.

Has this ever happened before?

Well, as more players play in the ladder the rating inflates. When I first joined the ladder you could get into the top 50 with a 1500 rating. It doesn't necessarily mean the level of play is better now - just that there are more players. I haven't been following outside the top 10 too closely so I'm not sure if it's happened before - but there will be even more >2000 rated players in the future.

Might be the highest i have ever seen.

Edited 4/16/2015 18:26:17

Well, as more players play in the ladder the rating inflates.

I don't believe it's that easy. I agree with you that you can't compare ratings at different points in time to make statements about a strong or a weak ladder. I don't know how the ladder rating system works (with this bayesian ELO thing) but normally if ratings differ strongly from the standard 1400 then this means that higher skilled players usually win against lower skilled players. In games like Poker you expect the ratings to be closer together than in WarLight and WarLight ratings should be closer together than chess ratings. There are some articles on the internet about elo rating inflation in chess.

Statements like "Player A dominated the board like nobody before him because he has the highest rating difference to the second ranked players" seem quite legitimate for me.

Edited 4/16/2015 18:44:42

There's definitely rating inflation going on at the moment. I was rank 9 with a rating that'd today equate to rank 26. Not sure I can crack top 10 today, but I am sure I can crack top 25 rather easily and would definitely argue it's easier to get a 2000+ rating today than a year ago.

Yeh, there are many intricacies that I ploughed over and I generalised a bit - I was just pointing out the correlation that we've seen, and it is only a correlation.