#5 - Nov. 8, 2012, 2:30 p.m.
The North American and European data centers are different in one important respect: they are located on different continents. North American players connecting to the NA data center (and European Union players connecting to the EU data center) will generally experience lower latency and a higher likelihood of playing with larger groups of other players, as those in the same data center tend to operate during similar times of the day. So there are real distinctions between the data centers which their EU/NA affiliations make clear and for that reason we will not be removing their continent designations.
We don’t match up worlds from multiple data centers for similar reasons. Ultimately, the server that runs a WvW map must live somewhere in the world and the players who connect from that same continent will have a distinct advantage over those connecting from another continent due to lower latency. In order to keep things as fair as possible to all involved we keep the matchups within each data center.
Of course it is always possible for an EU player to choose to play on an NA server, or vice-versa, but in doing so that player is choosing to take on the burden of additional latency. That situation is vastly different from our matching system placing an entire team at a latency disadvantage without their knowledge or consent.
tl;dr: data centers are on different continents, latency is an issue with inter-continental connections, data center distinctions are here to stay.
