Yes; it all takes place on Discord servers nowadays (from what I've seen mostly anyway).
Here's a list of pug servers and invites:
https://www.teamfortress.tv/63226/the-definitive-list-of-tf2-pug-servers

Regarding 6s:
If you're getting back into the game, a good spot to play is probably TF2CC as they run pugs multiple times daily for every skill group up to IM/Main. If you're beyond that, probably PugHub is a good spot.

Regarding HL:
RGL's official server runs pugs. There's also the RGL pugs website, which seems to be decently active.
There's also "Pugs that are Cozy and Comfy" which runs all the time.
Other than that, I'm not too knowledgeable since I don't really play HL.

Regarding 6s or HL:
https://tf2pugs.com/ is also a good option, but those don't have any league-based verification so you could be playing with a bunch of total shitters.

Hope that helps.

hl.tf2pickup.us for highlander games in NA :)

i took a look at the server list and my experience so far:

• one of the servers hasn't run a pug in two months(?)
  
• one of the servers hasn't verified newcomers from the past week; maybe it'll be good when i can get in
  
• one of the servers is asking me to have someone vouch for me(???)
  
• tf2pugs.com is giving me a "Steam account must be at least 3 months old." error so I can't verify myself
  
• Yoshi fixed the issue super fast :) ...tf2pugs is still pretty rudimentary and only has one or two open lobbies

i get that the sixes community is super small and only getting smaller, but like six years ago at least we had mixchamp and freakpugs (nobody's running pugchamp instances anymore?). Me personally, I haven't played TF2 regularly in years, but only recently got the itch to play some sixes again, and this has been an extremely annoying experience

the pug spreadsheet has been useless basically since it was made
pugs happen way less and mostly happen inhouse or in servers with 1000 users
imo if u wanna play tf2 casually either try to ring for ppls scrims or get a pugscrim with ur boys

yeah, makes sense that inhouse is still king

was just hoping to jump into something that didn't require committing to scrims or a league

sucks

just move to europe duh

@aelkyr can i move in

You'll need to apologize first for mocking the way I cook chicken nuggets but sure.

NON-NEGOTIABLE

https://i.redd.it/ho3ffv0xp6s71.jpg

Do you have any ideas on what would make it more useful? I'm planning on making improvements to https://pickup.tf - which uses this list - this winter.

is it the time of the year to ask for another NA pug website with a FUCKING CHAT BUILT IN and maybe elo

I’ll make the thread rn

or better yet can someone just make a discord with a crafty bot, so people don’t have to worry about running the pug (rolling meds, setting up server, moving people in channels before and after picking/the pug, maybe even automated picking/picking thru DMs with a bot.) Idk I can’t do this shit I’m not a computer guy, but that’s the free alternative to hosting a website. And it’d be easier to keep cheaters/alts out in a discord server no?

is anybody running a tf2pickup.org instance for NA? I'd be down with setting one up if nobody's bothered to yet

a discord bot would also be good and not too difficult* to implement compared to a webserver. does a bot for pugs already exist? that would be a fun project to work on

i dont rly have any useful feedback here, but the reason i say is that ive gone thru the list like 3 separate times and each time few of the "active" servers are actually active, some of the rest are outside of my skill range (fair), and often one of the rest is the shithead pugs where 2 of ur teammates will throw and say slurs every game

One was launched this september for HL - hl.tf2pickup.us which was tucked away in this tftv news post https://www.teamfortress.tv/63639/tf2pickup-org-launches-tf2pickup-eu-a-brand-new-6v6-pick-up-game-service-for-europe

Yeah that is one of the things i was hoping to address. I have plans right now to make a discord bot to get a live read on the servers that are running and track the stats to display on the site - kinda like teamwork.tf. It wouldnt be too much of a stretch to pair this with some sort of elo distribution by pug with either discord users or steam profiles. Anyone HMU if you are a competent programmer and want to help on this.

we could make one as we have assets ready for tf2pickup.us but honestly i didn't try it again because we had it running once and it was an absolute fail due to lack of proper advertising probably, but this time i think it could be good as people know how the service works and that with proper moderation games can be really balanced

https://tf2center.com/lobbies

guys can we just go back to this ik its dogshit but if we just got like a decent 30 players online at all times it wouldnt be this dry. We have decent enough solutions for the pug drout and we have the player base for it we just need to agree to consolidate in one place and just thug it out until something better comes along.

Maybe in houses are better for circlejerks and smaller groups but it seems like everyone has a horror story of some fucking paste eating freak showing up and refusing to leave or be normal so the shit just dies and the next pug discord starts and within the month the 15 people that showed up to play turn back into 0 cuz OH NO GUYS WE HAD TO INVITE THE FREAK IN AGAIN FOR THE FUNNY.

nobody likes playing against cheaters

its not really as much of an issue these days in my experience, still definitely has issues and occasionally there's the terrible lobby, but thats true of pugs too. i encourage u to give it another try

I think speedy is a tf2center admin now, I'm sure he'll ban cheaters if people report them.

I’m game for a tf2 center revival but it would be nice if there was a website with actual proper captaining AND class add ups (inhouses always play weird bcus u never know what ur scout/soldier/med main wants to play, which would heavily effect how u pick!!)

and before anyone says rgl pugs, there’s no fucking chat on that website bro wants to add up to a silent pug website

lobbies are just a fundamentally different thing than pugs and having been since forever. if u wanna lobby thats fine but it cant be a replacement for even the biggest broadest pug groups/sites

im not even saying it has to be, what i am saying is that if people are making threads every month asking where the pugs are i think its better to just be able to point them at a service that is known to at least function and has way less of a barrier to entry vs "look at this list of discord servers that will become irrelevant in 5 days when they all die and new ones pop up with different names"

sooner or later we'll have a really well implemented pug service but this interim of "we just run in house pug groups" is sorta killing the want for alot of people to play the game since its such a hassle to find a place to play consistently

Honestly, the website that's closes to that experience is probably "tf2pickup". Unfortunately it doesn't provide services to NA 6s iirc. From what I've seen though, its HL equivalent pops off from time to time: https://hl.tf2pickup.us/

ehh, 50/50 on this. IMO, RGL Pugs are bad for a different reason. That being, it only has 1 FUCKING SERVER available, SHARED BETWEEN HL PUGS! Unless its been fixed atm (haven't checked the website for a few weeks) 0_0

Anything else was just disappointment on the website design? Though, I can't blame them, iirc, the original designer left the team? I was really hoping it was going look more like this: https://rgl.gg/?a=1484 . But, its whatever ¯\_(ツ)_/¯