It is said many times by many people that WPPRs are secondary.
Secondary to socializing, playing, having fun etc.

But man do changes in the WPPR system send shockwaves through tournament formats!

How many side tournaments (yes I realize that they are not classified side anymore) do you think that we will see this year compared to the last few years?

When I would run WPPR 4.0 tournaments, people would contact me for assurance that the event would be an annual rather than a periodic and that they would get full points.

Other people were stunned that I do not plan to change the Maryland Pinball Championship format this year so that the WPPRs would be maximized.

People are so serious about WPPRs and maximizing the WPPR potential at events.
As though having a high WPPR ranking legitimizes a player.

Some WPPRs are just much easier to get than others.

PAPA WPPRs? Pretty tough. Certainly tougher than local tourney WPPRs.

Super league WPPRs? Look pretty easy to get. As do the DMV tournament ones ( I did not actually go to the tournament, so I'm guessing a little).

Yes, DC has a lot more opportunities for WPPRs than Richmond, but it is nothing like Portland, Seattle, or NYC.

I can't say that I care for the trend of tournaments putting such a priority on maximizing WPPRs.

I only have been to one Pinburgh, the 2012 one. After some changes to the WPPR system, I think that 11th place ended up being around 30 something points. It seems like a lot for just coming in 11th out of 200 something. It's hard to say whether or not that is tougher than winning a local tourney. But for WPPR 5, where 30 something points could be the same as winning 3-4 small tourneys, yeah I think that is too many points. Or maybe that is a good thing. Now it will be hard to go up high in the rankings just on small tourneys.
You do make a good point about why the PAPA points are tough to get.

Because I like to play in fun tournaments, and now people are planning strange formats for tournaments to max the WPPRs.
Some of the tournaments now, you don't play the same games as the people you beat and never even set foot in the same building as the people that you beat.

I can appreciate what y'all are trying to do with WPPR 5, but I can see Taylor's PoV as well. (Speaking of 1.0 and 2.0, there were no WPPRs for leagues back then Mr. VA!).

I played in more tournaments than anyone from 2002-2005, flying all over the place.
At that time, as you know, not many people cared about pinball tournaments compared to now. Many of today's best players were playing back then, but most of our league players didn't play in our local tournaments.
We would get people to come to our FPO, but I would be lucky to get ten players to come to some of my other events pre-WPPR.

I liked playing in tournaments. And running tournaments where people would show up.
So, yes I liked the way that WPPRs got many more people to participate.

It is difficult to come up with a system that gives out participation points and gives points to players of small and large events that use different formats and tries to fairly rank all of the players in the world and tries to prevent competitive people from exploiting the system. Maybe unreasonable for one list to take on all of this.

My favorite version?
When did people start going cuckoo for WPPR points?
The version right before that is my favorite.

People started that with 1.0?
Damn. So yeah I liked it right before that when you were establishing what would get points and what would not for 1.0.
I would send you an email - I ran these tournaments last year, can my players get some points?
Response - this tournament gets half points, this one gets zero.

Eh, attempt at online humor.
They were both at John's Place, within a month or two of each other, they had small turnouts. Both within a month or two of each other in winter 2005/2006.

Fairfax Winter tournament got points (half), Kamp Washington Challenge did not.

I remember that Ed Z came all the way down for one of them and I felt bad for him that there were so few players.

I get what you are saying. Especially in regards to the DMV league and SCS.

It is difficult for an area with a relatively small player base to compete with an area with a much larger player base.
Players in the DC area aren't going to have the number of points that players in Pittsburgh have unless they travel to events. There are more players in Pittsburgh and many more tournaments (even without counting the PAPA events). So tournaments there are more valuable, and they have them more often.

Similarly, Richmond has less players and events than DC. You would need to have many events to approach a level playing field for the SCS.

To clarify, I was referring to the tournament (high score to qualify then finals) and not the league.