Well I guess being a programmer my self does help getting the point across to developers.

I would imagine the development process to go like this:
  1. make the feature purely web-centric, checking the "leaderboard" via browser would be easier to do for an initial prof of concept.
    Later we could access it via webaps and could also be expanded for non-players to view the live outcome of the tournament(it would require a "public view" option upon creation).
  2. client application would connect to the server to retrieve info and it should show it via both methods. The non-intrusive methods should be the default, while the permanent intrusive version would require its activation in the options pane.
  3. add voice-over for non-overlay users to indicate rank changes like:
    "you are now in" [1º,2º,3º] "place",
    "you have entered the top" [10,20,30]
    "you gained a rank"


How does the app work right now?
Does it use the api directly from SOE or does it query your server?
How does it know when an event such as you killed a player happen for it to query for the info?

Because depending on the answers the above may or may not make sense.