Me, an Australian, who plays WOW with 300+ ping:
Growing up in south America and the only thing with local servers were things that could be community hosted like counter strike 1.6 and mu online. 250 ping on every online game wasn’t fun
I remember the dial up only servers for CS, it was great because everybody had a shit connection
What MMO has you “join[ing] the closest game”
Gunbound jumps to mind for me, back in the day I would be the one to screw up the rooms ping.
I don’t keep up MMOs anymore, but i know GuildWars2 the game is divided in areas and each area can have multiple instances, much like a room would work on that context. Perhaps they played a similar game with extra information to choose the best room for you.
Or it’s the looser definition that’s sort of taken hold over the years to mean any multiplayer game
Here I go again on my own,
Going down the only road I’ve ever known,
Like a drifter, I was born to walk alone