The EU vs NA debate is back: Who is the best Fortnite region?

Fortnite fans are once again arguing over which region is the strongest, but is anyone truly “on top”?

Much like the controversial topics of aim assist and controller versus keyboard and mouse, conversation always tends to get heated when it comes to comparing Fortnite regions.

As you would expect, the subject generally crops up around the time of major international tournaments. But with a global pandemic putting these sorts of events on hold, it hasn’t really been a key talking point since DreamHack Anaheim in February.

However, the latest episode of the FNTASIA podcast with popular casters Arten “Ballatw” Esa and Shayan “ShyoWager” Shehryar seems to have reignited the debate. They discussed the issue with guest Jonathan “Calc” Weber, who also recently appeared on local television in a segment about the rapid growth of esports.

I think in an fncs a top NA team could perform very well due to having more practice but in cash cups top teams that place in Na won’t place in EU as easily

— liquid cented (@Cented7) October 16, 2020

Since the inception of competitive Fortnite, it has been widely accepted that Europe and North America East are the two most stacked regions in terms of talent. This is primarily owing to their comparatively large playerbases, though new stats show that Brazil are now up there in terms of participation.

For the most part, the community is also in agreement that EU is home to the more aggressive players, who are often stronger fighters, whilst NAE pros tend to have superior game sense thanks to their high-quality practice.

It’s when the dialogue turns to “who is better?” that things start to get fiery.

“Dude, EU sucks” laughed Calc, “When NA players watch EU’s endgames, they cringe”. The BBG star did concede that Europe has some great fighters but passionately backed his own server as the dominant region.

ShyoWager defended EU, asking how the likes of Benjy “Benjyfishy” David Fish and others consistently place in NA events on high ping. Benjyfishy has since tweeted, saying “I want a good NA trio to come to EU so bad just to see how they would do”.

Calc did state during the podcast that he and his trio had seriously considered the move to Europe. Aside from the increased prize pool, this would obviously give them the chance to prove that NA can compete in EU. Unfortunately, due to the ongoing impact of Covid-19, we are unlikely to see anything like this for the foreseeable future.

Until international competition is back on the cards, there really is no way to answer this question. Even then, it can be hard to extrapolate much from rare, one-off events.