Hmm I don't think anyone has "battled for rank" on the ladder in years. When top players do a 1v1 series I don't think it's been because of the ladder for a long long time. People liked having it so they could track their game histories but that's the only thing I think most anyone was using it for. Am I terribly wrong? If anything this should have increased interest in ranks because now there is actually an "end" to the ladder and someone will be declared a winner. Normally there's never anything like that so there's even less point.
I'll switch GOW back on for a one-month September season. Maybe that will be a better introduction to the "season" and "champion" format we're trying here since as I well know GOW is mostly the only thing anyone cares about. But that takes away the intentionality of playing these games and of it being a ladder-- then players kind of just get autoranked from playing normally. That's fine I guess but then it's not really of interest that much, imo, so in October I would roll back out a Halloween themed season with no GOW.
That's my current plans anyway, unless we get a flood of people saying they actually care about rankings on the old format.