In an interview with GamesOnNet, Dustin Browder has said that the Heart of the Swarm expansion for Starcraft II will have its own ladder system. Players will still be able to play on there Wings of Liberty ladders if they choose in order “to deal with new units or balance problems or anything like that.”
Dustin also had this to say:
games.on.net: Can you comment on the custom maps system, and specifically if Blizzard has any plans to make it easier to find and play maps that aren’t currently tagged as “popular” on battle.net?
Dustin: That’s a really great question, and something we’re actively working on. We’ve got a number of plans for it – what’s going to make it in and when, I’m not sure yet, but we definitely know that we need to do a better job of finding new maps and promoting them to users. We’re looking at something called an “up and coming” area of the game so we can look at and see some maps that aren’t on the popular list yet but that people are enthusiastic about and they’re starting to play a lot of, so that people can go to that area and see what’s going on there. We’re trying to find a way so that you can just randomly pick a new map, and just play it with a bunch of other players who have also agreed to just try new stuff and see if that’s a way we can move some maps that aren’t getting a lot of play right now into an “up and coming” category and then hopefully from there to the popular category. We obviously also want to improve search functionality down the road. We have lots of plans for the future but in the short term we’re definitely going to be making some fixes that should hopefully improve the situation for all our fans.
Source: GamesOnNet – Interview