Don't call it a Nations Cup if you want to exclude any nation but EUs. Home away was fair for the NCs because those NCs were international tournaments, not EU tournaments. No one would complain about you crying cuz a EU team got rekt by NA with home away if it were a EU tournament. But it wasn't a EU tournament so deal with the fact that home away is the only fair option for a tournament that wants to be international. The fact that a EU player is host of the NC doesn't make it a EU tournament, especially if this admin (Watly) made it clear that it was a international tourney.
Absolutely right on that. It was the first NC that included both a team from Asia and three teams from South America. It even sparked a brief surge in the SA community for competitive with the, to them new, EU/NA rule set.
It was also the first NC where the US had a reasonably fair shot due to better German infrastructure and the US central/east players stepping up. That's why I would say that this argument
NA had worse average ping against every team they faced on both home and away servers.
couldn't be reasonably made anymore for NA and vice versa. As a consequence, NA got far by being a better team overall than the teams they faced. It was a hard pill to swallow for a lot of teams, so the 'waaaa ping' argument came up many times and will continue to come up many more times by people who just can't let it go.
The tournament wasn't without its flaws and it would have been a disaster if NA met China. However, I was proud of that tournament and am still proud of it. I would set it up again that way if the situation were more favourable for both me and the game at large.