To bring the "world" back to osu! World Cup, I have thought of a way of ensuring there is less drama about the participating countries. tl;dr but please read before bringing out your bazookas. It's just an idea.
I know this requires even more organizing, but I think it would be fair if the world was divided into more or less equally-numbered groups, like Africa and Europe etc. In those groups, all of the countries listed in the group (which means all of the country communities in osu! would be placed in a group based on the geographical and national setting) can present their team if they want to, and in every group there would be a mini-tournament from where the best countries would proceed to the OWC, making up 32 participants. This way, each and every country, be they really small and weak or really huge and skilled, would have the chance to play for a slot in the OWC and there would not (hopefully) be a case where people would complain because this or that country didn't even get a chance. There would be universal guidelines that would apply to each group, and as there would of course be the main tournament management, a group manager for each group would be assigned to be responsible for the success of the mini-tournament. That would divide workload between the tournament management overall and it would in my opinion be easier for everyone, both the staff and the players, to handle this tournament... The mini-tournaments could be held, let's say, in mid-August or September, this would leave people enough time to practice and the management to organize.