Appreciate you trying to think creatively. That's exactly what the idea of a new continent being in a new region would offer. With the current structure of having a single contiguous open world with no load times, it requires all "nodes" of the map to be located in the same datacenter most likely, so you can be shifted around/interact with people in different nodes.
Putting part of the map on another region's datacenter would mean transferring your character etc to that other regional datacenter, which would mean loading you over there (hence a new continent). And by all reports, in the previous game where they had regional zones/continents, people just hung out in their region's zone, which would undo the current effort to have a single shared world concept at this point where there aren't enough people to fill the current continent.
Your concern about needing to pay to test your connection is valid though, they are looking at putting in a free trial on the tutorial island which would allow people to test their connection. As it stands you'll unfortunately either have to use Steam's refund feature or watch videos of people playing from NA to get an idea of what your experience will be like.
Btw, thanks for the poll OP. Glad to see that basically 68% of people believe the game should not have regional servers or it should be handled by a new continent, while only 22% believe there should be regional servers in general.
You should take a look at the poll again, that's not what it says.
It says 43.3% of the players voted against the idea of them. You could argue the third option goes either way, but the fourth is entirely different from 'Yes' and 'No'.
Also, much of the player base communicates via Discord. The forums are not truly represented in way of the players using them.
I do no not appreciate attempting to 'word' your statement as if it's correct. If we want to get into anecdotal information, almost anyone I've spoken to believes there should be regional servers. I've spoken to from people from NA, to EU, to AUS.
Most NA players dislike how they're stuck in the middle ground of being worse then EU players, but then having to fight laggy AUS players.
EU players dislike having to deal with laggy NA and AUS players, but since the previous game was also in the EU they've not felt much change and have an advantage over anywhere else.
Most AUS players I encounter tell me they have to run things like ExitLag to even
play. I saw someone talking in help chat the other day saying he plays with 280 ping. That's fucking terrible. A personally close friend of mine described it perfectly, so I'll paraphrase what he said.
"You're able to hit me, parry my next attack, then hit me again. I can never get a hit in if you play purely defensive no matter how much I mix up my attacks."
People can obviously take that and say he sucks, or doesn't know the game well enough.. But trust. He played the first game almost as long as I have and exclusively played in PvP groups. The ping issue made him quit, and I don't blame him honestly. Why would you want to play with stupidly high ping? The aussies that say it's normalized and feel good - nine times out of ten are aussies who do very non-intensive things that your ping wont really matter with.
The other problem is this: If Steam sales are high enough, it's been stated multiple times they'll temporarily close sales on MO2. Which tells me their single server structure isn't capable of handling a ton of people at once. Launch is going to be a nightmare if it gets swamped with people - and will more than likely drive off more then it keeps.
I've read through the forums and seen plenty of solutions such as just allowing people to choose which region they play in, which would then allow them to play elsewhere in the current server they were on goes to shit for them (i.e. Everyone hates them, can't find any compatible guilds, etc.)
The only real issues I've seen presented is population being divided, and timezones having 'lull' times as not all types of people will be in the same region. But realistically speaking if the game is good and successful, the servers will be populated.
I get people want to play with everyone, and so do I, but the idea isn't technologically doable without a ton of issues. What we have now is a bastardized system of mechanics which compensate for latency. It's super crude and frankly makes the game less snappy. That's why you still see videos of people getting hit 10 feet away, people hitting a player and getting parried even though on your screen they didn't parry in time, etc.
A lot of people then try that stupid strawman of "go play PvP game kid DUHHRTRHUUUH!!" but even in those PvP games you don't see them cramming all types of players into on server just to fill out population. People play in regions. It's a very modern concept that typically leads to more successful games. I remember how much flak Ubisoft got when they made For Honor P2P connections. Like what the fuck were they thinking? It's on the same level as that, just it's effecting an MMO and not a lobby-styled PvP game.