Stripes But No Stars
While sheer volume can keep the United States secure as the Third Force of Yu-Gi-Oh! Online for a long time to come, a lack of heavy hitters is allowing Germany to pull further and further away. YGO Online International says can you see a dawn or a twilight for the USA.
When it comes to the top of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Online world rankings, the one thing that matters the most is volume. TP stacks up quickly and it can be just as important to grab tons of spots in the lower 500 as it is to dominate the top 50 or so. High ranking dueling masters combined with a large contingent of dedicated duelists is what ensures constant growth.
For the United States, however, recent months have hinted that their inability to make an impact in one of those areas may be hampering their growth in the world rankings and that their chances of overhauling perennial runners-up Germany are growing more distant as time passes.
The gap as the end of Season 8 between the US and Germany was some 600,000 points. As of the end of Season 9 that gap had increased to 900,000 points and is inching ever closer to one million which is an enormous canyon for any nation save Japan to traverse, no matter how many duelists you can muster.
Meanwhile, as of the time of writing this article, only one American duelist has breached the top 50 in the current TP rankings. Even at the end of Season 9, America had only FOUR representatives in the top 100 TP ranked duelists (11th, 47th, 92nd and 96th).
Of course, we must take this information in perspective. The middle and lower ends of the table are filled with enough decent American duelists that 3rd place is practically guaranteed for many seasons to come (in fact, their lead over 4th placed Italy grew slightly between Seasons 8 and 9).
But mediocrity is also relative and watching the two nations ranked above them sail further and further from view while doing the bare minimum to stay ahead of those nipping at your heels represents the best example of that. If the United States wants to improve both its perception and its standing in Yu-Gi-Oh! Online, more duelists are needed there to step up and make the kind of sustained push that helped the nation reach its lofty position in the first place.
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