I think the information form a !list control class could be useful for the following reasons:
1 - Prestige. For players that have a lot of xp on their favorite character, a ranked xp list may bring value to the xp after 125 million.
I'm having some difficulty connecting the dots. What exactly is "useful" about knowing this "information", and how exactly does publicly sharing a "ranked xp list" in a system without meaningful rules bring "value" to anything?
The hc list is universally known to be meaningless--subjective, of course, but I believe I'm somewhat qualified to speak on the history, evolution, and value of the hardcore list as an objectively-useful metric, and I claim as a fact, not an opinion, that the logical basis for promoting it as a meaningful resource, quickly unravelled over time, as any singular or objectively-useful meaning to the list evaporated. Of course, it never lost value for those seeking prestige--keep this in mind later, as I'll be touching again on hardcore mode and the hardcore list. For now, I'll say that the list serves more as a lens to magnify a player's prestige amongst their close peers, rather than a lens for providing insight and clarity on data that's objectively or rationally meaningful to developers.
Finding personal aggrandizement valuable is subjective, of course, so I'm only speaking to the objective "value" inherent in knowing such "information" (the usage of these words appear to be an attempt to lend gravitas to what otherwise looks somewhat egotistical). I'm sure if you find other players who are as devoted to their own prestige, as yourself, you can find some collective value in such a list. Players sharing a similar mindset with interest public self-promotion, may well find the competition to be valuable. There is nothing to prevent you from maintaining such a list and sharing it as a matter of course. After all, to check the XP on any toon from any account vault in the game, is an extremely easy task, as I'm sure you're already well-aware.
I'm equally that sure everyone would agree that past attempts to codify prestige recordkeeping on the server (such as the legendarily-memed Conqueror of HG concept) resulted in a mixed reaction, at best. Furthermore--while not a fact--in my opinion, it resulted in a polarization of the server across ideological lines (virtually every player was pressured to pick a side, despite the entire debate being of dubious merit), and in a perceived devaluation of "lower-prestige" players' time and efforts, at worst.
However, I wouldn't relegate the entire concept to the trash-bin quite yet, because after some thought, I have some ideas on how to turn even the most-questionably sourced ingredients into a delicious dish. After all, even the finest tuna steak smelled fishy at some point. Perhaps I could offer some assistance in the form of suggestions for accomplishing this goal, in a way that transfers the onus of labor from devs, to you, as the one who cares intensely for the prestige factor.
Perhaps a grassroots clout-chasing organization could be the secret sauce that saves the day. For example, perhaps every week you could copypasta your Prestige List into !chat, so everyone can read it (even hours after the fact, via webdash), or a forum thread, which I'm sure will yield plenty of traffic and bring public attention to your prestige, as the idea of a SIMTool-generated ingame list would seem to provide.
It's obvious that this is all about prestige, but attempting to link prestige to "value" is--again--dubious, at best. It seems that no amount of discussion will ever stifle or eliminate the desire for certain players to have everyone know exactly where they stand on a prestige list, but I find it rather disconcerting to attempt to draw a logical link between prestige and "value for xp over 125mil" when clearly there isn't even unanimous agreement over whether that value is needed or lacking in the first place. We have quite the impressive collection of suggestions for bringing concrete ingame value to said XP, all of which are worth the attention they garnered by players and developers, by virtue of seeking value that would be universally accepted. All of these suggestions for bringing value to XP over 125 million have yet to be approved, so it strikes a discordant note to suggest that value could be found in scorekeeping prestige (as opposed to, say, custom appearance prestige).
2 - Trends. Being able to see xp levels of various classes, it may help pinpointing what and when which classes that may need a buff or a nerf. For example, if a certain control class has many 60-63 characters, but none higher than 70, there may be a reason to buff that class.
Again, I find this odd, considering that the means to record, track, and publicly share this information are already codified (literally, and figuratively) into the game; after all, the mysql database already contains this information and already has been hooked into by mechanisms for public access.
For instance, webdash (to publicly show at any given time what level and class any logged-in toon has), !playerinfo (to show that and more), and again simply logging in to view any player's vault, already provide mechanisms for accurate information sharing, updated in real-time, and accessible to anyone interested in "checking the pulse" of the meta to find "trends".
I'm sure this two-item-long list of benefits for a Prestie List isn't what it looks like--a thinly-veiled attempt to provide some sort of meaningful foundation to a suggestion lacking clear logical basis. However, what it does look like, is an attempt to use concepts such as value and balance and trends, to present a suggestion primarily motivated by prestige, as a suggestion primarily motivated by improving the health of the server by assisting in accurate balancing.
I find the assumption of meaningful relationship between the number of characters in a given control class, and of what level, to be unsupportable, to say nothing of the motivation for seeking such a relationship.
I don't believe it likely, or even possible, to establish any mathematical structure which can provide the analysis required to properly demonstrate a quantifiable correlation between this particular datum and evidence for buffs/nerfs. As touched on above, not only does multiboxing already virtually invalidate the accuracy and value of such a list in terms of prestige, it also obfuscates any glimmer of balance-relevant information gleaned from such recordkeeping, as well. In short, the game doesn't keep score in a way that numbers can represent (even playtime hours is impossible to accurately record, let alone draw conclusions from), so creating a top score list is rather strange.
Perhaps an algorithm could be created which provides some marginally useful metric for drawing a parallel between the number of characters of a given control class, and the level of each, across accounts (keeping in mind that a meaningful relationship between vault and player is already nearly impossible to determine, let alone a relationship between "helper bot" vs "1st class citizen"), but such an algorithm would only be imitating, not replacing, the intelligent procedure already used by human developers as they attempt to identify where buffs and nerfs should be applied.
Such an algorithm could likely provide a quick reference to assist this process--even if the information is likely already available in the form of mysql commands which are capable of producing the relevant information--but of course, developers using such an algorithm for the purpose of setting a balance roadmap doesn't do much for the sake of promoting a given player's "prestige", which again seems to be the penultimate motivation, incentive, and intent behind this suggestion.
Fortunately for any player interested in self-aggrandizement, there are endless possibilities for pursuing the goal of publicly-sharing a Prestige Tier List. It didn't take me much time to think of some ideas, so I would imagine a player who actually is focused on ways to publicly demonstrate which players have the most XP, could easily come up with some better suggestions. After all, this is a fairly small and tight-knit community, and there are various tools for both gaining and sharing information, both public and private.
I'm quite sure that an ingame command is a bit unnecessary by any stretch of the imagination, especially after considering the resource consumption involved (which, at more than "zero", is already of doubtful practicality). However, in good faith, I won't discount the possibility that either the command itself, or the architecture to construct the command, could be meaningful enough for both players and developers to be worth promoting.
I have some free time to devote to helping by suggesting ideas or providing feedback, so please let me know if there's any way I could be of use for this project.
For example, perhaps we could create a script framework that uses webserver data to generate a list of recently-played class and level information, which, over time, would be populated by accounts and characters that are representative of current trends. Of course, this information would still be subject to the problematic caveats of requiring some deeper analysis to provide meaningful conclusions, but as there does seem to be interest, perhaps the developers wouldn't be opposed to allowing players to access the information and share it publicly.
As for precise XP totals, I'm not sure if it's relevant for the sake of anything but prestige. Nonetheless, I've given some thought on how attain this information, with the following result: I'm uncertain if the script framework that produces level information is specifically checking XP amounts and extrapolating level from there, or if it's only regurgitating the level given by an earlier command or script; but obviously at some layer of interchange, XP is being translated to level, so hooking into that data or mechanism shouldn't be impossible.
At the end of the day, I'm sure that prestige-seekers are most likely to find the prestige they seek by playing hardcore mode, with a Prestige List already included as part of the package. Unless there is some particular reason why choosing to play normal mode and amassing prestige based on reputation is not suitable, I find the desire to artificially create and track prestige to be rather unproductive. I'm equally sure that the majority of normal mode players don't give much thought to who is the Most Prestigious player in the game, who is the Second Most Prestigious, and so forth. I could be wrong, so perhaps a poll is in order, to determine how many players are invested in keeping track of OP's Lifetime XP Acquisition and the associated prestige.