From the beginning, we've had ladders. They're always been in some third-party capacity though, and you have to schedule things ahead of time. What if we had a QL ladder built directly into the game, and, that ladder was always functional... meaning, you don't schedule anything ahead of time?

The way it could work is simple - you take something like the duel detective, and when you press 'play a game', the game searches for someone within your ladder ranking range. If you're 100th on the ladder, it will find anyone within 10 places of you (either up or down on the ladder). Other than that, it works exactly the same as a regular ladder. If you beat someone ahead of you, you move into their spot and they move a spot back. If you beat someone behind you, you keep your position and they move backwards.

It could all be very official and easily built into the QL system. It could even be arranged so you can practice on one server while awaiting a ladder opponent. When the system finds an opponent, it then gives you an F1/F2 option to switch to a private server for the official match.

If people refuse to play anyone, like if they're #1 on the ladder and they simply don't participate so they can keep their #1 rank, you can kick them off the ladder by using a simple system of stagnation. Meaning, they have to play at least 1 game a week. Tokens could be used, in times of holiday's or things of that sort, to occasionally allow people more than 1 week between games. And to prevent top players from being dethroned through a conspiracy of lower-ranked players (by basically all agreeing not to play the person), you could make it so players don't know who they're playing, until they're both on the server together. And once they're both on the server, a quit counts as a forfeit.

If GTV is implemented alongside, using some kind of instant notification system (through e-mail, cell-phones, whatever), fans could be alerted to spontaneous GTV matches. And if there is money to be made through playing in GTV matches (which should be easily arranged, given the built-in ad system), the players would want to play as much as possible (meaning, they wouldn't want to sit idle at the top of the ladder, as the less they play, the less money they make). Naturally, methods of increasingly profitability in addition to or alongside the ad-system could also be implemented.