I played pretty hardcore way back with Medal of Honor and CoD + expansion and CoD2. I'd play clan matches where we would have to play on each others' servers. It was always an advantage to those who lived closest to the server, as there was always an advantage to the lower ping. In the old days, a kill was a kill, not a kill from calling in an air raid. I think I still have screenshots of my kill/loss being 108:7 and 56:0. I was seriously that good. Even if I had 80 ping and other people had 20 ping, I'd still do good, but my teammates wouldn't. So in the end, having a higher ping isn't that much of an advantage against great players, but against decent to good players, it's almost unfair.