I think people went gaga over it due to the sample generations on the original repository (and the simplicity of implementation for arbitrary bitmaps), not so much the name.
https://github.com/mxgmn/WaveFunctionCollapse
As for global repetition, the original repo did have this to say, that selecting tiles is important.
"Note that the unrestrained knot tileset (with all 5 tiles being allowed) is not interesting for WFC, because you can't run into a situation where you can't place a tile. We call tilesets with this property "easy". Without special heuristics easy tilesets don't produce interesting global arrangements, because correlations of tiles in easy tilesets quickly fall off with a distance. "
As for global repetition, the original repo did have this to say, that selecting tiles is important. "Note that the unrestrained knot tileset (with all 5 tiles being allowed) is not interesting for WFC, because you can't run into a situation where you can't place a tile. We call tilesets with this property "easy". Without special heuristics easy tilesets don't produce interesting global arrangements, because correlations of tiles in easy tilesets quickly fall off with a distance. "