Granted this won't work for "middle ground" servers like you want... but if you or your friend wants to bite the bullet and deal with the ping manually you can do what me and a friend do... my friend is in Oceania and I'm in US West. They don't mind the 200+ ping as much as I do, so I:
funny enough, my friend from India and I have used that same exact process too. Prob will just go back to that... too bad this game has such terrible ping bloat when playing with international friends.
I can play other pvp/multiplayer games with that same friend from India and - while the ping isn't great, it's no-where near as bad as 2042's is (300+). Dunno what the deal is.
