My thoughts, for what it's worth.
I tend towards agreeing with those who say it would have been more accepted by the players if an island had been closed. Way back when all of this was first starting to be discussed, someone (possibly Tom?) came up with the idea that the players on the island or islands that were to be closed would be given a chance to invade other islands to try to keep their realms alive. That was a much better idea. It would have created a more exciting and dynamic event for the whole game. Imagine FEI's military powerhouses, the Arcaean Empire and Kindara, invading the EC (for instance).
On the other hand, if the freezing was the only workable thing in terms of Dev time, the freezing should have been more evenly distributed so that it didn't disproportionately effect particular realms. It would have been wiser to come up with some sort of other magical mcguffin that took regions from around the coasts of the islands (flooding, etc). Due to the larger expanse of coastlines in terms of numbers of regions, you'd probably have been able to get the desired results without hugely damaging or destroying specific realms. The code needed to give the effected realms an advantage in migration should also have been in place at the start of the event too, in order to give a boost to player morale in the face of the otherwise negative impact of the event.
The idea that the North or South polls were a random selection technique is nonsense. If you'd have wanted a really random result you could have put a poll up saying "1 to 3 or 4 to 6" to simulate the throwing of dice (or something else that couldn't have been interpreted as being directly linked to the events or geography on the map). Most people probably interpreted North or South as who they prefered in the wars that were going on on each island. Or, simply, which end of the island they liked best.
As has been said, in order for the players to have confidence in this move, it needed to be broadly perceived as fair. Perception is everything in this situation, and the perception of fairness hasn't been good.
My own feelings on the whole thing are a bit "Meh". I don't think it'll improve the situation in any way, as was the intention. But these days I also don't have the emotional attachment to the game to be really annoyed by the bungled (in my opinion) 'Event' either.
