Oh wow, I had totally forgotten about server hunting.
I kept a list of "good" servers (based on ping, map rotation, who played there, mods, etc), but when they were empty finding somewhere else was a complete pain.
I miss the camaraderie on some of those dedicated servers, but I know I wouldn't be able to get into something like that these days.
I think a lot of that camaraderie and sense of community has moved to places like Discord and Reddit.
I have a group that regularly plays Overwatch together every Friday. Whenever more than 5 people show up, we play custom games. The workshop is surprisingly powerful, so it even gives us some of the experience we used to get with mods for games like Quake and Unreal.
When we have 5 or fewer people though, we really appreciate the game's matchmaking, even though it is far from perfect. It is a lot better at creating balanced matches than any server auto-balance feature ever was, while always keeping us on the same team.
I kept a list of "good" servers (based on ping, map rotation, who played there, mods, etc), but when they were empty finding somewhere else was a complete pain.
I miss the camaraderie on some of those dedicated servers, but I know I wouldn't be able to get into something like that these days.