I've been waiting for a response from BlackTide for five days now. He told me that he had been busy for a few days, last night, after I poked him on Facebook and would respond today, so I'm just waiting for that. I don't think pouring out the details here would be in anyone's interest or really necessary, and I don't have permission from him to do so anyway.MaHuD said:
In terms of him hosting, I think I can say that he hasn't requested to be lead admin and also told me that he's quite happy not to have to do it, in fact.
Lots of posts about alliances and player rights. This is an issue every year. Of course, there are likely to be very specific cases and what's important is that they are open to review. The admins are willing to listen to any requests but we do have a set of rules in place as well.
The rule clearly includes references to previous nations cups. In the interests of consistency, that is how they have been written.
Honestly I don't see the need to allow players to change nationality year on year. Real sports certainly don't allow it and while esports are different, I think people prefer to see that consistency. If I played for Team Turkey (lived and worked here for three years, speak the language), it would feel wrong to me. Aside from the fact that I wouldn't actually get into the team anyway, I am known as a previous player for the UK team and people would expect to see me there.
Having a ruleset that depends on previous years is the way to produce that result. Perhaps something allowing people to change, who haven't participated in the last 3 (for example) nations cups could be a good idea. My feeling, though, is that it isn't worth consideration unless a specific case like that arises.
The ping difference is an interesting point.
When I ran the Nations Cup 2011, we had a situation arise in the USA vs Ukraine game where a Ukrainian player, revealed to be studying abroad in America, showed up at the match. I didn't allow that player to play because there had been no mention of this in the ping testing conducted prior to the match. My feeling is that it was the right call (although it infuriated the Russian speaking community and seemed to do nothing to pacify the Americans... sign of a good compromise?) - players playing in different countries from the one they represent are fine but if they're going to be used, it has to be known beforehand because it might affect the choice of server used. It's nothing that can't be dealt with though.
Thanks everyone for all the input and to Alene for reminding people of their sanity! I've read everything posted here and of course it'll be factored in to our decisions.
