while there's a good point to the popular opinion of HL splitting competitive tf2, a large majority of 6s TF2 being in a stalemate for so long was entirely to do with how painfully difficult it is to get into
blaming HL for being able to accomplish getting new people in is brushing off that huge chunks of 6s' accessibility relied on a really small amount of community leaders, several of which left over the years as a result of becoming so exhausted. if 6s had the amount of people willing to constantly help out like HL did, 9v9 would've died years ago