Question

can you still get banned for unsportsmanship behavior by /ranking? Because there was a time that you could.

Depends on how stupid the GM who catches the report is.

Unlikely.

You can begin trashing someone in local chat, for no reason, then tell them to **** off and it's not considered a violation of the rules.

For /ranking?
No.

There isn't even a choice in the /report command that even pertains to /ranking someone. The closest would be "Verbal Abuse" (which would be the example in post above me) but unless you said something offending, it won't affect you.

also, no, there was never a time when you could be banned for /ranking.

Unless you do it to GM who is on a private normal account ans is having a really bad day and decides to heavily abuse their powers, highly unlikely so, no.

Wasn't the original point of /rank and /zrank to humiliate someone you dominated anyway?

Yeah the original idea for ranking was to do it to your defeated opponent, so it's never been an offence worthy of a ban. IIRC it even says it somewhere on GWsite about using them on your defeated opponent.

Er pretty sure you're wrong there

One /rank, not likely. But they don't come alone. If you indulge in a full blown abuse assault, you can get banned for that.

For example, if you position yourself correctly, you can use it as a finishing move after you defeat someone!
http://www.guildwars.com/competitive...rds/?year=2008

Indeed, can't imagine being banned for something like that, when they say(at least zrank) can be used for this.

ban the charr that rank me in eotn lol

I'll say the same as others have, it is unlikely that anyone can be banned for rank or zrank