Well, I have decided I will repost an amusing topic called "The Curious Case of Pacman87" I wrote in summer 2015 about the old rank requirements, and focused on minutes online.
Part 1:
So, when Pacman got Detective I immediately noticed that he had ranked up on September 19, 2014; exactly three years after he had joined. I didn't really think anything else about it until the other week, when looking at screenshots. I saw he got Cowboy on June 19, exactly three months before. He got Revolutionary Solider exactly three months before that, on March 19, 2014. I did more research and made a chart of the dates he ranked up. Excuse the month/day/year format.
Rank 6: 12/10/12
Rank 7: 12/12/12
Rank 8: 12/15/12
Rank 9: 12/22/12
Rank 10: 12/24/12
Rank 11: 12/28/12
Rank 12: 12/31/12
Rank 13: 1/7/13
Rank 14: 1/19/13
Rank 15: 3/19/13
Rank 16: 6/19/13
Rank 17: 7/16/13
Rank 18: 9/19/13
Rank 19: 3/19/14
Rank 20: 6/19/14
Rank 21: 9/19/14
So you instantly notice that, a month after the update, in December 2012, he starts to rank up at an extreme rate of speed. The only way this can be rationally explained is with likes. He already had enough posts from before the update. But one thing... time online. It just doesn't work. Two months after the update he reached rank 13, which has now been proven to require around 49,800 minutes. This would require him to be online for an average of roughly 14 hours a day every day after the update. This is obviously impossible (I mean seriously ). Three possibilites (at least in my eyes) are presented here. 1) The rank requirements have been changed since 2012, 2) there was a serious time online glitch after the update (which explains absurd numbers for diglett809, AwesomePythor, and thejoester300), or 3) Pacman somehow actually got 14 hours a day(yeah right). ...I'll revisit the first two points later on.
So for 6 - 13 we just have Pacman ranking up insanely fast in a month period. Rank 14+ is where it gets disturbing. As I said, I only just noticed this, these facts have been out there for ages.
So this part 1 kind of sets the tone of what I talk about in the rest of the topic. However, I never really mentioned the other weird bit that catalyzed my musing. Pacman had like 600,000 minutes online two years after the update, which is many impossible hours a day. I'm not sure if I realized the significance of this until after I posted the topic... I'll post the parts as they were originally and try to give some context from the retrospective angle. Reading this 5 years later is somewhat amusing. Anyway enjoy some old memes
Continue looking at the chart. From 6 - 13 he ranks up extremely quickly, while at rank 14+ things get extremely... coincidential. He ranks up on the 19th of each month (remember, he made his account on September 19, 2011) for EVER RANK except Musketeer, and that was just three days from the 19th. As far as I can tell, there is no logical explanation for this, except maybe Cowboy and Detective, which could actually require 33 and 36 months respectively. Considering the fact that Skul, and to a lesser extent Mishkaiel, got ranks 14 - 19 with far less account age than Pacman, this truly makes no sense. How likely is it that Pacman is going to satisfy the requires for each rank on the 19th of a month for a nearly two year period? Diglett has a similar weird coincidence in his ranking history, when he went from rank 17 to 20 on the 21st of September 2013 (he joined on the 21st of April 2009).
Yeah kids, he went through two of the highest ranks in a day. We'll come back to this later.
I just found this out... Tanner also exhibited some "anniversary ranking" in 2013. He joined on January 15, 2011. He reached Musketeer on May 15. He reached Pirate on July 14(close enough ). This is probably was merely coincidence though. Still worthy of noticing.
So we can probably also attribute Diglett's peculiar ranking on that date to coincidence as well, that was the only time he ranked up on an anniversary. But Pacman continues to stump logic. Nothing we know about the ranks indicates that he'd rank up like this. But he did. And I have no idea why.
Now, as I was saying, Pacman is not the only person to rank up strangely. Probably the most famous example is Diglett going from Musketeer to Cowboy in a day. To give you some perspective on this, four other users are currently Cowboy or higher. It took Pacman 9 months to rank up as far as Diglett did in one day. It took AwesomePythor 3 months. It took me 6 months. It took Tanner 23 months.
I don't really have anything to say about this one.
So, carrying on. How Diglett ranked up on September 21, 2013, is definitely weirder than Pacman always ranking up on an anniversary, which could possibly just be coincidence. However, going from rank 17 - 20 in a day is no coincidence. I can think of nothing that would be able to push someone through the ranks that fast. If it were likes given requirements, he would have to have given several hundred likes that day, which was impossible with the old likes limit. The gaps between any stat would be too big to leap in one day. It's impossible. Yet it happened. As Skul pointed out, there is no way Diglett could have gotten Cowboy less than a year after the update, as he'd have to have been clocking nearly 1000 minutes each day to reach the time online requirement of 317,000 minutes, and I seriously don't think he was on here for 17 hours each day, considering he was inactive for some time in early 2013. So there are, as far as I can see, two things that might have happened here. 1) The rank requirements were modified on September 21, 2013 or 2) There was a glitch on September 21, 2013. Or maybe both.
I actually have proof that something weird DID happen with the ranks between September 9, 2013, and October 8, 2013. On September 9, I got Forestman. On October 8, I got Ninja. I always marvelled at the shortness of time I was on rank 11, as others were often long stuck on the rank. After the restAPI time online was revealed and we determined Forestman to require 27,500 minutes and Ninja 42,000, I marvelled even more. I would have had to be spending an average of EIGHT HOURS EVERY DAY from when I got Forestman to when I got Ninja to jump that 14,500 minute gap. I recall my activity then, and I could have only gotten 8 hours on a weekend. During the week I wasn't even on for 6. I also computed my average time online per day for some other ranks, using our current time online stats. 10: 190 12: 153 13: 245 14: 281 15: 328 16: 405 Nowhere did I ever average 6 hours.
In summary: the MB ranks were broken and it was basically assured to be the minutes
Continuing discussing my own ranking in September 2013. Obviously, there was some sort of glitch that caused me to gain excessive time. However... was it really a glitch? Skul and I think the rank requirements may have been modified then, something edited that caused users to jump some ranks. I have evidence of rank requirement modifications in 2014, with four examples that I'll discuss later on.
But, continuing with September 2013. From August 14, 2013, to September 22 (Hey, would you look at that. The day after Diglett ranked up three times), thejoester300 went from Roman Soldier to Jester. Ten ranks. One month. Everyone was initially baffled by this. However, in early 2014 I provided a solution, stating that "He ranked up on the likes given requirements." However, after my extensive research in the past year, I see that this was not the case. He had given more than enough for Jester (Warioman56 reached Jester with 389 likes given) when he reached Highland Battler on September 4. However, the one thing that's most disturbing about Joe is his time online statistic. In December 2014, he had 465,750 minutes. This would have required him to be online for an average of nearly TEN HOURS A DAY since the update. Joe's been inactive the majority of the time since the update. This is impossible. Obviously his time online statistic glitched or was manually increased sometime in 2013. Could this have been at the same time Diglett jumped ranks? When I logged an absurd number of minutes? Certainly something strange was going on in September 2013... but mysterious rankings earlier in the year (Pacman87 specifically), still happened. Pacman got Pirate on September 19, 2013, right in the middle of the "glitch period." Coincidence?
Could the rank requirements simply have been edited, which messed up several user's stats, causing them to jump ranks? In my next post I will discuss four odd cases which lead me to believe that the rank requirements have been edited in the past.
I don't think I'll discuss the bit about editing rank requirements, though I suspect it was done to try to nullify a glitch in the minutes tracker. Just reposting this makes me realize how terrible it was
Continue looking at the chart. From 6 - 13 he ranks up extremely quickly, while at rank 14+ things get extremely... coincidential. He ranks up on the 19th of each month (remember, he made his account on September 19, 2011) for EVER RANK except Musketeer, and that was just three days from the 19th. As far as I can tell, there is no logical explanation for this, except maybe Cowboy and Detective, which could actually require 33 and 36 months respectively. Considering the fact that Skul, and to a lesser extent Mishkaiel, got ranks 14 - 19 with far less account age than Pacman, this truly makes no sense. How likely is it that Pacman is going to satisfy the requires for each rank on the 19th of a month for a nearly two year period? Diglett has a similar weird coincidence in his ranking history, when he went from rank 17 to 20 on the 21st of September 2013 (he joined on the 21st of April 2009).
Yeah kids, he went through two of the highest ranks in a day. We'll come back to this later.
I just found this out... Tanner also exhibited some "anniversary ranking" in 2013. He joined on January 15, 2011. He reached Musketeer on May 15. He reached Pirate on July 14(close enough ). This is probably was merely coincidence though. Still worthy of noticing.
So we can probably also attribute Diglett's peculiar ranking on that date to coincidence as well, that was the only time he ranked up on an anniversary. But Pacman continues to stump logic. Nothing we know about the ranks indicates that he'd rank up like this. But he did. And I have no idea why.
Now, as I was saying, Pacman is not the only person to rank up strangely. Probably the most famous example is Diglett going from Musketeer to Cowboy in a day. To give you some perspective on this, four other users are currently Cowboy or higher. It took Pacman 9 months to rank up as far as Diglett did in one day. It took AwesomePythor 3 months. It took me 6 months. It took Tanner 23 months.
I don't really have anything to say about this one.
This is what happens when we are adults 
