This is the conclusion of a series of posts by a 64 year old pops (that’s me) blogging my journey to see what level I can achieve in this season’s Fortnite Ranked Battle Royale Build (Chapter 5 Season 2). Each week, I shared my progress, observations, and learnings.
I did it!
Last night I made it to Fortnite’s highest ranked level; Unreal! Unlike my journey to get here, this last 4 percent of the way was surprisingly easy. I was 96% of the way there when I sat down to stream last night and it took only 3 games for me to hit Unreal. The first game I played, I finished in 17th place and my ranking remained the same. The next game I had one of my best finishes and came in 3rd place which bumped me up to 98%. That was followed up by a 5th place finish which earned me the final 2 percent!
Here is a capture of the screen displayed when I made it:
What does this mean?
It means I achieved something hard. Most achieve this with a combination of great offense and defense. Like the handful of other campers that have achieved this rank, I did it by strategically surviving when playing alongside the very best (who by the way know people hide and are pretty good at finding us!).
Statistically, according to FortniteTracker.com less than 1% of all ranked players achieve Unreal Rankings. Here’s a snapshot of the distribution among the the various ranks:
Source: FortniteTracker.com
My Journey from Champion level to Unreal
Like many projects in life, the last 20% of the work can require 80% of the effort. My experience was close to that. It took 214 games for me to graduate from Champion to Unreal. Below is a chart of my progress. You can see, I faced much adversity along the way. The most challenging was when I slid from 62% down to 49%. That was one of several stretches where I wasn’t sure I would make it to Unreal.
Closing Thoughts
This was a challenge that I enjoyed very much. It inspired me to start the Fortnite blog PopsPlaysToo.com. A few days ago, it also got me started streaming as a means to help document my path to Unreal. If you’d like to watch me play sometime, check me out on Twitch.
Where this goes from here? Not sure. Guess I’ll keep doing what I do. Exploring, learning, and having fun. Thanks for your interest in my journey!
