I guess now with the casual mode quickplay they're going full on quickplay and not going back.
Really hate this trend of quickplay for fps's, sure it's more user friendly and it puts you in a "expected" balanced game quickly, but all the sense of community and social aspect of gaming is removed from it. You can't become a regular in a community server, make friends and just enjoy it with the people there regularly just like you're going to your favorite bar or cafe for a chat.
All these dumbed down features in FPSs are killing me, I mean how casual do you have to be to not be able to use a server browser...
More than anything I think it was quickplay that killed tf2, or at least a big part of the casual community. I remember portugal having 2 regular full 32 slots servers at all times, well even after 1am, full of regulars all the time, and it's where I made a lot of friends and started playing competitive. There's no portuguese servers now, I haven't seen one with people for 6 months+. Nowadays I dont even pub anymore because I don't feel any link to the game community.
I guess whatever works best and keeps the game alive, but I can't help but feel sad for all the fun times I had on community servers.