there are some old players in eu but not many idk about other regions
causal is back bots are mostly gone
game is dying still there are usually 1 or 2 active mge servers over here
in eu 1 or 2 dm servers usually become active bit b4 scrims start. https://serverlist.tf/
yes private pugs are still big usually on discord NA also has rgl pugs https://pugs.tf.plus/
in terms of scrims it depends on the team but there are many teams with more relaxed scrim schedules both 6s and hl