I am looking for some other perspectives, ideas, and complaints on home/away servers.
Right now, the biggest obstacles to both teams playing on one server are East Russia, USA, Canada, and Braz(s)il.
Brazil - There's been some discussion about using a San Jose server where both teams will get about 240 ms ping. This sounds much less fun than a home/away split. This won't solve problems for their matches against USA and Canada, so another rule would have to exist for them. Brazil has offered to host a server for NC in Brazil.
USA - Traditionally played home matches in NY. However, some US players get worse pings in NY than Europeans, so it isn't fair to call it a home server. A central server would add ~20 ms to pings from Europe, and offer a range of 15-90 ms pings for US players. Currently, most competitions take place in Chicago servers (you can test ping at USA_Central_POM), so while some US players will get 90 ping, it is what they are used to playing competitively.
Canada - Same situation as US, but 25% of their team is on the west coast. Playing in NY severely cripples their team. Again, playing in Chicago would lower their ping to 80-90 ms, which is what they are used to playing at.
Kazakhstan/Eastern Russia: What do you prefer for home servers? Do you have servers with suitable ping in your area?
My opinions from an administrative perspective:
It would be easiest to have home/away servers for every team. These would be on an approved list before the tournament starts, and teams would have the ability to practice where they will be playing. Some teams may have the same home server as another team. If captains wanted to play all matches on one server, they could agree to this ahead of the match (say, a week in advance). All matches must be played on one(or two) of the servers in the NC 2013 server list(if both captains agree, you could play all matches on a server that is neither team's home server).
This way, we could have one blanket rule that we could apply to all teams, but teams could choose to play on only one server if desired.
Also, if you have a complaint regarding USA/Canada using a Chicago server for a home server, check your ping there first. Any of these will do:
USA_Central_POM
USA_Central_Wappaw
Balion_War_Room
USA_Event