I miss this so much. I used to play TF2 on a server that ran a single, somewhat obscure, map. Lots of randoms would drop by to try the map; some would stay and become regulars, some wouldn't. I did. The same regulars would be there every week, many of them every day. Some players were good, some not so good, nobody took it too seriously - we tried hard, but nobody got salty. There was the odd feud, but no griefing. They had alltalk voice chat on, and there was a constant stream of entertaining chit-chat. One guy would come on half-cut and start lecturing about physics. We had a half-joking clan tag, someone set up a website with a forum, there was a challenge match against an American clan at some point. Good times.

It's been rubbish since matchmaking came in.