I'm just leaving my two cents here, meaning to offend absolutly no ones, so If you feel like I insulted someone or I've been irrespectous, apologizes in advance.
I do understand what you tried to do, or atleast I partially understand it. Saying if it's right or wrong, good or bad, does not belong to me that's why I won't do it.
But there is still a point you're missing, atleast to my eyes. NWEC is a tournament, and as each tournaments taking place within the NW Scene, the aim of is to determine who is the best (Here who is technically the best Nation in Cavalry). Of course, tournament are also made in the aim to please the people taking part in it, but the first and main goal will always stay to show who, inside a group of people, or which group inside other groups of people, is the best.
That's kinda looks like "Who has the biggest E-Peen", but it's sadly is the case. I have seen any community who is mature enough, when it comes to that kind of tournament (Nation Cup being one of the most, if not the most important tournament on NW) to place "fun" before the "win".
Which means, that when the group phases will be over, we'll have teams who got through the groups, but in the Group A, two teams won't. Does that mean that the two teams who got qualified in Group B are better than those two last team in Group A ? If we're logic, yes that's the case because these teams got further in the tournament. Is it really the case though ? I think we can all agree that's it's not.
So we have a tournament which is suppose to determine, who is the best Nation in cavalry, and even before the first matchs have been played, we already know that it is kind of sidesteped. In the name of fun, I think we all got this, and after all that's your right, as the main organiser, to give that direction to your tournament. But annoucing it clearly, before, would have been a bit better, and could have prevent you from the kind of reactions you already got, and will probably keep gettting.
Personally I don't give a single fuck to who I'm fighting, as long as I got a nice fight and have the oppurtinity to give my very best. But I do understand that it's not the same thing for everyone, especially for countries'captains, and that it can trigger that kind of reaction.
Edit : Apologizes for the "novel", USE4life expressed my views in two sentence, If you don't want to read my essay, stick to what he said.