Just before we start the stream yesterday, I was kind of complaining about how I found the NWWC tasteless for a few years with a redundant final each edition. Now, it's pretty much again the same trio in the semi-final but NL had a real shot at winning this match against France and the pick-up of someone like ONeil gave Ireland the chance to show they don't miss much (hello Ivan??) to be able to content (and actually beat) the current top 3. The match versus Germany was really entertaining and as some people mentioned, I don't think the scoreline accurately depicts the balance of power. Germany was the better team and deserve to go through but there is a world in which Ireland could have run away with the victory that is totally credible.
Eventually, however, I think there is room for different other formats to be considered. We spent 7 weeks to end up with the outcome literally everybody expected, there were no major upsets whatsoever and a lot of matches were absolute stomps. Now the same could be said about different other competitive tournaments in the NW scene but in the NWWC's case, I feel there is probably a way to optimize the tournament considering it's a competition that only really involves a slim part of the community, with groups of people that won't play with one another after that.
Splitting the tournament into two divisions could be one way to strengthen the importance of each match and avoid official encounters that bring absolutely nothing to the table. You would get more chances to fight teams of a similar skill level while keeping a minimum of diversity within your different brackets. I just don't see the point in putting nations such as Netherlands, France, England, Germany, Poland, Sweden, Spain & Ireland with the rest whereas a competition where from the get-go, you get to have tough and potentially closer match-up seems more interesting in my perspective.
Tldr: I am obviously talking from a viewer perspective but waiting so long for 4-5 good matches seems a bit of a waste to me. I know the hosts probably trust a good format to keep everyone happy in the end but it doesn't hurt to weight the pros & cons of taking a different route if it helps making the overall tournament much more interesting.
