The original idea isn't very good, but if say you could see the 5 people infront and behind you in ranks that would help. The most annoying part of the rankings is getting into the top 100. There is quite a bit of competition there, and it is nice to know who you are up against.
Also, there needs to be some sort of tabs on how quickly some people get AP...some people can get over 1000+ in 1 or two days...how? I wonder?
Doesn't need to all be on one page. I personally think it's a good ides. Assuming you could break it into 5 pages (1-100, 101-200, etc...) it's be cool to see how close you are to jumping ahead. O, and nick, battle.net (Blizzard Entertainment online games) has 1-1000 in, like, 30 categories of a few different games. I'd guess other online games like that also do.
I'm pretty sure that I've said this before, but I think that users should be able to see the top 100, as well as the 5 people ahead of them and the 5 people behind them.