Nice news :-)

It's nice I guess, but why fragment an already small (and shrinking?) community. It's hard enough to run a normal ESL/BIBS/CB league without having mass defaults.

I'm not sure QuakeLive community is shrinking to be honest. If you ask me the question I'd say it's rather growing. And still it's a "new game", with improvements coming ( servers, maps,.. ) there will be no point in playing Q3 anymore.

We are talking about sport, of course it's an e-sport but this is the same thing. You want to support, play, and chase a ladder or a cup that is from your country or nearby vicinity.

Lot of players do speak english but not all, there are still a lot of people who speak their mother language only, so local ladders and local cups are good for them as they don't have to think about the language issue.

And if the community is growing in the upcoming months/years ( wich I do believe ) the fragmented community will be easier to manage. I'm not sure that kind of things is made for short term. In my opinion, starting with a "fragmented" community ( wich is not really because you can still discuss with everyone you want ) even if it brings issues like you mention, is the right thing to do if you want something well balanced in the future.

I don't think this is gonna fragment anything if any... I think this is a good mean to attract benelux players playing other games to try and test quakelive, bet they'd be more eager to play benelux cups rather than european cups tbh...

strong national communities result in a stronger overall community

Good news, would be great to see Quake Live in the EPS Benelux next season.

I think this is a good thing, it would open doors for new Benelux players that cannot just enter the European cups/leagues without meeting good players in early rounds of an cups, they can try it in Benelux and grow from there

Agreed :)